Book Review: Arthur C. Clarke, _Dolphin Island_

Book Review: Arthur C. Clarke's Dolphin Island

If you read any How to Write a Book book, one of the first comments is that every author must know his/her audience. For certain, science fiction writers of the 1960's knew that if they were to get an audience addicted to science fiction books, they must first write novels that teenagers would read. Heinlein's Red Planet, or Have Space Suit, Will Travel, and Clarke's Dolphin Island, are some examples.

A note about science fiction and fantasy, from one looking back at the 20th century. In the 1960's, during the heat of the space race and the development of nuclear power, television, computers...etc... science and technology were thought to be the savior of the future. There is nothing that science cannot do, no disease they cannot treat, no problem it cannot solve. Shows like Star Trek proved this theory (although with Roddenberry's idea, that happened only with the addition of the human spirit, the will to adapt and expand their learning). And for the next couple of decades, this was basically true. Small Pox was decimated, the telephone and computer made communication and productivity soar. But the naivety that nothing is impossible through science came to a tragic head when the AIDS virus hit in the 1980's. Suddenly, there was a disease that nothing could be done about. Technology had caught up with science fiction, and suddenly, there were no more gadgets that could be thought up that weren't already invented. Thus the rapidly expanding genre of science fiction fizzled out in the 1980's, and fantasy novels became the going theme. This is especially true in Young Adult fiction, with JK Rowling and Christopher Paolini proving that the dragon is much more profitable than the space ship, at least by today's kid's standards. With the exception of Star Wars novels, there are very few children's science fiction books these days. It is up to the reading adults to find and republish those books that will inspire today's teenagers to take up the cross of science (sorry, the metaphor was there) and carry it forward into the future.

Arthur C. Clarke (the late, having lived out his many years in Sri Lanka), wrote Dolphin Island early in his career, presumably after a trip to Austrailia, where most of the book takes place. The book is light, with an episodic feel to it. Each chapter throws a problem up to Johnny, the main character, and it is up to him, and the Dolphins, and the scientists on the island to solve them. The book is a great read for boys who like the out of doors, for readers of Gary Paulsen or Jean Craighead George. The book is out of print, but can be easily found online for a reasonable amount. Definitely worth looking into, if you have children or love science fiction. For adults, check out Clarke's Songs of a Distant Earth, which shares in the same theme and feel.

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Next up is Coldplay's Viva la Vida, which I'm listening to now.

Economic Irony; The Future of the Bookstore

Economic Ironies: "An old man, turned 98..."

If nothing else has proven the insane way we live, driving some 2 hours to get to work each day, consider my own gas bill. I have a gas card that basically has me pay for all the gas I buy during the month all at one time. Which works for me because I only have to worry about one bill. But, naturally, that bill has gone up over the past month. My normal bill, prior to now, was about $190 (which is high anyway) Now, it came up to $300. The irony of this is that this, plus my education loan (which I used to get a Masters in Education, that I don't use right now), now approximately equals my second paycheck. So, basically, two weeks out of the month I am paying for the gas I put into the car. So if I went nowhere all month long, I would only have to work half the time. (Course, it's more complicated than that, but you get the picture.) Now, suppose that you lived within walking distance of your job... there would be no need to spend money to get to work only to make money. I'd be earning almost a whole other paycheck.

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The Book Vending Machine

Let's take the bookstore to it's most modern, technological extreme, and save on electricity, space, payroll, rent, shrink...etc... I've talked for ages about having a vending machine that would spit out books that might in a traditional setting be more likely to be lifted (e-bay is seeing a plethora of goods sold for 50% off, but the result is 100% profit.). It would save on payroll because there would be no need for cashiers. But to be fair, people go to a book store for a more personal touch by employees that know their wares.

But technology cannot be ignored. The free market system will demand to save money by streamlining the bookstore into a modern day marriage of paper and machine. So imagine. A bookstore the size of a wireless phone store, with a slightly larger storage area, so say double that, or more. The store itself would be run by 2 or three individuals, who would assist customers on state of the art computer devices that would show books on a virtual bookshelf. The customers could scan through all the books, much like they would real books, or conversely, books on Amazon, and could read a synopsis, the first chapter, see video interviews with the authors, get reviews from other readers, etc... much like Borders.com does now. But it would take the place of having the actual books on the shelf. At the front of the store would be a display of the most popular and new books, and one register would be available for those transactions. Further, the next level of popular books (delivered each week by truck, and constantly monitored by computer and by corporate people, could be modified easily, would be stored in the storage areas, which would look much like the record centers of doctors offices. Very well alphabetized, organized and computer placed where you would know that XYZ by John Grisham would be in Shelf B, Row C... It could be retreived by a single employee in no time at all, and the customer would have had ample time to know if they actually wanted it or not by the information on the computer.

But what of CD's or DVD's, or Audiobooks? The answer is simple... computers would be equipped with devices that could burn CD's or DVD's with the correct music, video, or audiobook, and it could be purchased at the computer itself. You could burn individual tracks, or download the mp3's to an ipod via usb ports. This would reduce manufacturing prices, reduce theft, and reduce payroll. This is currently being tried at the Borders Concept Stores, at Ann Arbor and elsewhere. And it would take up very little more room than a table or two, which would save on space and the money it takes to maintain it.

Sure, this isn't a library, where books sit on shelves willing to be flipped through, and the bibliophiles that love the smell of dusty tomes will balk at the idea, but it is the best answer for all the problems that the current bookstore is facing.

Adding Points to the Compass.

Driving by churches up and down the way, I have always admired how creative people can get with modifying cliches and other sayings to bring a religious message across. I've even remarked about how some techniques, such as a fake hundred dollar bill with a message on the bottom side, left on a counter or other such place, is remarkably effective. Recently, however, I have found that outright deception is used, and it's not something I approve of, especially when it comes to my place of work.

Recently, I have found bookmarks inside of our copies of Philip Pullman's Golden Compass, that on the one side says "Golden Compass Collectible," and on the other is a tract decrying the philosophies of the book and providing scriptures that go against the plot. Now, while I know that, in the end, God becomes the bad guy, and certainly, to people of Christian faith, the turning of a children's fantasy to a allegory of atheism one would offend, I do not approve of the deceptive use of a bookmark to spread messages against the book itself. If I allowed this, I would just as well let PETA put animal abuse brochures in copies of Old Yeller or have NAMBLA put messages about pedophilia in copies of The Gift of Fear. Borders, and all places that sell or loan books (like libraries) have a policy of anti-censorship. But this goes the other way as well. It would be against our policy to let other groups come in and include their points of view in books that are already here to be sold.

Let them come and stand outside our door and tell people, this book is evil, (which, btw, they didn't do until the movie came out. I read the books some years ago.), or write their own books and sell them alongside, but deceiving people by using a bookmark is wrong and they were subsequently all thrown away.

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A short blog. Not one I had anticipated writing, but that's what blogs are for, to provide a medium for journaling, an instant recording of thoughts and feelings when the time arises.

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Oh, and who said that it was time to bake Georgia in an oven at 350 degrees.... it was too hot today... I am looking forward to my next days off, when I can go, maybe, to the lake and swim. Hopefully the water is warm enough, and the cars have enough gas .

Webcams, Hot teens, and Youtube: "WHY?"

Recently I was watching the news, and I caught a story about how teenagers were using webcams and cell phones and taking nude pictures of themselves. These pictures would then be traded around to their friends, and eventually, through ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, or through the exhibitionism of the teen, would wind up on the internet on various and sundering websites, usually reserved for pedophiles and the like. The piece was meant to shock parents and other people about the evils of the internet, about the promiscuity of teenagers today, about how wrong everything in today's world actually is. And the news story stopped there.

The problem that this news story does is that it never digs below the surface, to find out the root of the issue. It never lifts the rock to find the things wiggling under the surface. The piece was constructed to link with the moral principles of the viewing public, to shock the Religious Right into seeing just how bad their kids actually are. But it was never made to seek the answer "Why?"

Why is it that teenagers today are doing things that could only be done with the Polaroid camera many years ago. Now, mind, I'm sure that the Polaroid was used for just such practices, but there was no way for every single person on Earth see it afterward. At the most, they might have been floated around at school, or hid under a bed, but usually the people that saw such pictures were people that knew the person in question. Nowadays, with the Internet and its endless capacity to store videos, pictures, sound bites...etc... and with the technology now cheap enough and available enough for every teenager in America to have access to such a device (digital camera, cell phone, camcorder...etc...), it is just a matter of a few mouse clicks and pictures au natural can be floated on the internet for all to see. The anonymity of such an act can be intoxicating, the wide scope of the internet would make one think that even if a picture was posted, no one would see it, because the odds of meeting someone who actually did see it would be astronomical, based on the number of people who view the internet each day and their distance from the person.

Also, the prevalence of porn on the internet, especially those sites of every day "amateurs," like college students, who are paid many dollars to pose (and do other things) makes it so much more acceptable, in the minds of today's teens, to do the same thing.

I do not think that people should be surprised that sexual photos, or even videos, would show up on the internet. We find it normal that videos of violence, accidental or otherwise, comic or otherwise, would show up on places like Youtube and Myspace. What makes people so shocked that sex would not be there just as much as violence is? Anyone can do it, and with the now easy availability of the technology to actually make such photos/videos, inevitability takes over.

(Before I go on, notice that I am not evaluating the moral or religious consequences of the acts, only why and how it's happening. When looking at any issue, it is often valuable to take a look at it from a perspective of a scientist or anthropologist, who would look at the patterns in human society and determine why something is happening, not evaluate the moral implications of the act.)

So availability of technology is one thing, but there's another reason why self-pornography is becoming more and more prevalent.

Neil Postman (see earlier blogs for a series on his work and the application to today's world (he died in the 1980's, well before the Internet became commonplace. Would that he had lived to expound his theories to today's world.)) theorized in The Disappearance of Childhood that the control of information between adults and children is the most important aspect in determining the growth of the child. (The parent raises the child, makes sense.) But in some societies, both historical and presently, that is exactly what does not happen. We are living in a revolutionary time where the amount of information that is available expounds itself quite frequently. There are millions of Terabytes of information (and when I talk about information, I mean anything that we can see, hear, or process through into our brains.) being created and disseminated every day. Televisions shows, radio, music, web sites updated daily, and all being thrown out into the world unedited and unsupervised. Now, if parents were able to intercept all this stimuli, and feed children only what they could process or should process, then the child would have an incremental growing up, where stage by stage they are exposed to the world and all its wonders and horrors. This is called Childhood. But when all the information is thrown at a young human being, and they process it as best they can, but have learned basically everything that an Adult has, they have had no incremental learning, and therefore never have had a childhood at all.

Thus children see Ultimate fighting on tv, and then adults are shocked to see videos of 8 year olds pummeling each other bloody, with their friends all watching. They see sit-coms on television and then become experts at telling off their parents in disrespectful ways. Every parent becomes Homer Simpson or Peg Bundy. They see pornography on the internet and figure, "Why not, I can do it, too." So it should hardly be surprising what is being done in imitation of the adult world. Yet sweeps month comes around and all these shocking stories of girls video taping violent confrontations, or kids trading nude pictures of each other, are shown with "shock and awe," to prime-time viewers every night.

So I'm saying that all children should be blocked from TV and Internet until their 18 years old, and we should all home school our children...etc... No, of course not. I have no answer to the issue at hand, and as for an ethical conversation, that is for the individual to have with his or her family, with himself, and with God.

One opinion that I will give is that the people who produced the piece should be educated enough to be familiar with Postman's theories, and to realize that a lot of the acts that go on in today's world are simply imitations of the information given out by the media. Perhaps this is left out intentionally, because there is nothing that will attract people to the Internet or to TV more than sex and violence, and the advertising that goes along with it. To influence our shopping habits and to direct our lives is too tempting not to report on all aspects of a story, including the ones that might implicate the media itself. I think it's necessary, nevertheless, to know why an issue is important, to see how it effects my life and the lives of those around me, and to be able to look at all sides of an issue. If we are to simply accept what goes on in the world around us as inevitable, let us at least know why something is happening, so that we can change it if we need to.

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[Addendum to this blog, as I don't know where to fit it in. Perhaps one reason why teenagers find no problem in posting pictures of a risque fashion on the internet is because they are self-absorbed enough not to understand the implications of such an act. I found it interesting that a critic for the movie Cloverfield described the twenty-somethings living in New York City as the Myspace Generation (see my blog on that review). It is ironic that the main video camera of that movie was a digital camcorder, much like the ones teens use today to place stuff on Youtube or Myspace. Also, note that for some reason, I found very little sympathy for the deaths of those teens as the monster attacked the city. I find it ironic that with the increase in social networks, in public exposure to everyone's private lives, that it actually is de-personalizing us, making us just one more character in a movie, one more red-shirted ensign to be slaughtered by an alien presence. I think honestly, if we are to have a social network, it should be done in person, away from the computers and the cell phone texting. It amazes me what people say to each other on these networks, calling each other all sorts of names, which, if said in real life, would result in a black eye. But here, on the Internet, all things are anonymous, and fleeting, even if they will stay in electronic databases for as long as the mainframes survive. There are some databases that have recorded Usenet conversations and arguments back some 20 years. I would not be surprised if I could find what I said to people on the Monkees News groups back when I was a freshman in College. So while the internet might be anonymous, and fleeting, it does remember everything, and it takes a little searching by the right people to uncover it. ]

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Oh, and on a personal note, I just mowed a third of our backyard, which I do once a year whether it needs it or not. :)

Movie Review: C. of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I have to be quite honest, in that my experience with reading the books so many years ago, Prince Caspian was the weak book dealing with the main characters (I do not count Horse and his Boy or The Magician's Nephew in this... they are mere side stories to the main storyline. They are also books 5 and 6 in the old way of ordering the books. If you go to Borders, and look at my displays for Narnia, I have put the books in the order that I read them. ) So I thoroughly expect the next two movies (Silver Chair and Voyage of the Dawn Treader to be spectacular movies.

So my expectations for this movie were met, in that it wasn't the best book of the series, so it wouldn't have been the best movie (see also the HP series, where HP5 was the weakest book, so it has been, so far, the weakest movie). Overall, I give it a B-, which is in line with most critics. In fact, you can go to Yahoo! Movies and read most any critic's review, and they will, for once, be right.

Two things stuck out, one good, one bad. The bad first. Someone should have told the directors that it is not necessary to do slo-mo battle scenes for minutes on end. It became tedious and irritating. For me, battle scenes = potty breaks. But everyone loves them, so they have to be in each fantasy movie. BORING!!!

The wonderful part of the movie, and the only thing that keeps me from giving this a "Sea" (sorry, had to), was the Christian theme of faith and reliance upon God, instead of trying to do it yourself, which was better displayed in the film than even in the book. In this respect, the movie is better than the book, because the failings of Peter and Susan to not see Aslan, and further, the determination that Peter had to take back Narnia from Miraz (and the subsequent deaths that Peter was responsible for), all because he would not wait for Aslan to solve the problems in his own time. Of course, it was the lessons that Peter and Susan had to learn before going back to the real world. This theme alone makes the film worth seeing. I was very impressed with the ability to put such a worthy lesson in the middle of a contemporary movie.

I think that, in future fantasy films, people will start becoming tired of the endless battle scenes, and will yearn for fantasy without bloodshed. Of course, I'm dead wrong on this. There have been battle scenes in movies from Lawrence of Arabia to Star Wars to the upcoming Mummy movie, which I have no interest in seeing. This is why I have such a love for Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, or with the film The Neverending Story, because they can make wonderful fantasy works without having thousands die in battles (now most of which are CGI created ad nauseum.)

My opinion is, that if you haven't seen it yet, wait for it to come out on DVD and then rent it or whatever, so you can fast forward past the battle scenes, but pay attention to the themes of faith and responsibility, which makes it stand out as a children's movie.

Self-injury

It's a serious topic, one that I've happened across lately with a friend of mine. I thought about my own life, and about what the causes of hurting one self actually is, what psychological relief it provides, and I realized that a lot of us have the same desires to hurt ourselves the same as people who have the need to cut or injure themselves. But I will admit I know very little about it, and so I did some research on the internet, and found this site, which makes it more clear than anything I could ever do:

http://www.focusas.com/SelfInjury.html

Because it's not only physical harm that affects the same psychological release. When I was really depressed, I would go out and buy packs of Magic the Gathering cards at the bookstore in Macon near my class. It iddn't matter what it did to my credit card, or to my financial health. I did it anyway... or eating at Applebee's everyday. It didn't matter what it did to my health. Or even worse, when I got really mad or depressed because of an arguement I would have, I would go to bed without brushing my teeth, just because it would hurt me in the long run, but I didn't care.

And think of the people that gamble when they are broke, or drink, or whatever, even though they know of the harm it does, but do it anyway, out of some pent up anger at themselves or someone else. Or eating...yes we eat high sugar/fat foods when we are depressed, but is it more a issue of eating that way because we know that someday it's going to kill us? It's like former Governor Huckabe wrote in his book, Stop Digging your Grave with a Knife and Fork. It's so true, we know we're dying, and yet we do nothing about it. There must be some pent up anger, some need for validation in our lives to keep us striving to live longer. But without that, we simply give up, and we smoke anyway, or eat to clog our arteries. Course that brings up religious questions about what would be considered suicide, but that's another post.

We make our choices, and pray that they won't be bad, or at least not permanent. I know that the people that I know that would hurt themselves, because of one reason or another, are very dear to me, and they can always depend on me to see them through if they ever need my help. All they have to do is call me. And as for myself...well, I'll do my best, but sometimes, hurting yourself is necessary. In the words of Engiwook's wife, the witch from the Neverending Story, "It has to hurt if it's going to heal." Maybe we do need a little pain in our lives in order to gain the strength to get better again. Maybe we have lived in such a world where pain has been taken away by so many things, drugs, the government, our own sedentry lives, that we have to do things that are drastic just to feel anything anymore. It is a question I will revisit, and see if I can figure it our further. In the meantime, I shall pray for the strength to continue, for me, and for my friends.

Molding Hearts, Reading Books, Being Happy

I began to think about my heart as a lump of unmolded clay, but with a hole, much like a doughnut. It beats and beats, and normally is satisfied, with a good meal, with a cozy night's sleep, with the sunshine and a mild breeze. But there comes a point when you meet someone, that the clay around the whole forms an exact image of that person. The strange property of this clay is that, when those people go away, the imprint of their being rests forever, but other people can still form imprints as well.

In my heart, there are two imprints, and they remain forever a molded part deep inside me. Whenever they come back in my life, they will fit perfectly, as if some part of a puzzle resolved, a picture brought back into clarity. And although there might be others that will imprint themselves into my heart, those two will always remain there.

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I find it amazing, on these social networks, how much people hate reading. Time and time again I see profiles that, when it asks what their favorite book is, they answer, "I hate reading," or "Who has the time?" or something else, sometimes a vulgar response. That is the quickest way for me to close that profile out and discard it like so much spam into my inbox. I think I might have an answer for this. I was helping a customer, a adolescent black male (African American...this isn't a police report, and Glenn Beck is right, he's an American that happens to have distant African roots, and I'm describing him as having dark or black skin, so there ) anyway... he was probably a junior in high school, and he was looking for a book to read for school. He selected a book from the computer about the movie National Treasure, which was actually a kid's book, about a 4th grade reading level. But that's okay... I have taught kids that were in middle or high school and read at that level... I understand that. So as I was walking him back to the kid's department, he was talking on his cell phone. He told whoever it was that he was at Borders looking for a book, to which the person on the other end exclaimed (I suppose), "A book!" He told the person that he wanted to actually read something, even though a "brother" with a book was usually called gay. This took me by surprise. I've known from teaching experience that it is not popular in most cultures to be intelligent, or to succeed in school work. But I've also given an 8th grader, a black male, an 88 on an English test and watched him jump up and shout to his friend on the other side of the room that he made a B on his grammar test. Totally out of character, and it is one of the best memories I have from teaching. Students want to learn, they want to read, but the idea that doing so is socially unacceptable is keeping many of our kids from being the best people that they can be. The further accusation that someone that reads is "gay" is also unacceptable. The gay people that I know are very intelligent and literate, this is true, but the logic argument that thus if you read, you must be gay, is totally flawed.

As a footnote, I was not able to find the book, which frustrated me no end. I told him that I'm sure he'll be able to find something to read. As I got up and was going to suggest something else, I found that he had already left and was walking out. Doubly frustrating was that I found the books later in the cabinets under the board books where I store books.

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Little things that make me happy:

After cracking open the eggs at breakfast, being able to throw the shells half way across the kitchen, and hit the trash can (no, I am not a basketball player), with kudos if I can bounce it off the cabinet, off the wall, and into the can. :)

Being able to pull my belt off my pants without it getting caught on one of my belt loops (happened today, actually ) Yes, I know, I'm weird.

The perfectly made mocha javakula at the cafe, with no ice bumps and a perfect sweetness (well, most good food will make me happy.)

Turning off the microwave right when the 1 goes to 0, leaving the clock blank, but not having sounded the "squealer" as my grandmother calls it. And similarly, waking up one minute before my alarm goes off and not having to hear the stupid thing.

And for those millions of people reading this (yeah, right), what little things like that make you happy?