Politics as it Might Be: Political Science Fiction

     Martin Greenberg & Patricia Warrick. Political Science Fiction (1974) A college textbook, complete with introductory notes to each story, designed to guide the student through the difficulties of unfamiliar ideas. Ignore those bits, and you have an interesting and sometimes entertaining collection of short stories. The ideologies of the Cold War intrude on some of the stories, which makes them not only dated but silly.
     A handful of classics redeem the collection, such as Gordon Dickson’s Call Him Lord, in which the Emperor's eldest son visits Earth to be tested, and fails. Or Alfred Bester’s Disappearing Act, a nicely done satire on the futility of practical solutions. Or Isaac Asimov’s Franchise, in which a single, statistically normal, citizen is selected, whose answers to questions will determine who is elected President.
    All in all, an entertaining read. Out of print of course, but worth picking up if you find a copy. ** to ****

John Allen, the Genius of Monterey

     Linn Westcott. Model Railroading with John Allen (1981) The first few signs of Allen’s genius were few and hardly noticed: a few photos, and a couple of articles in the model railroad magazines in the 1940s. Then people took notice, and editors solicited more photos and manuscripts. By the early 1960s, John Allen was famous among model railroaders. His Gorre and Daphetid demonstrated what Frank Ellison had pioneered in America: that a well-designed layout was a combination of visual and operational concepts whose purpose was to provide the operator (and casual visitor) with the impression of a complete world. The goal was plausibility. Layout designers have taken this principle to heart ever since, whether the layout was based on the owner’s imagined fantasy or on some slice of actual railroad.
     The Gorre and Daphetid is a fictional bridge line across the Akinbak mountain range, somewhere in western America. It provides vital local transportation in an area with few and dangerously steep and winding roads. It’s not much of a money-maker, and its management has bought most of its rolling stock secondhand. Passenger traffic serves mostly tourists who appreciate the spectacular bridges and scenery.
     Westcott gives us a history of Allen’s layouts, an overview of the final version, information about rolling stock and operations, and a glimpse of Allen himself. Allen was friendly and enjoyed showing off his work, but he was an intensely private man. His work must represent the person.
     Allen died in 1973, and his house burnt down a few days later. Little of his work was salvageable. It lives on in his photographs and a short film. Westcott himself died in 1980 while editing the final version of his book. Bob Hayden led the editing team that put Westcott’s manuscript into print.
     The production standard is very high. Westcott’s style is clear and conversational. The book is out of print, but is worth a search. ****
    There are several websites devoted to John Allen and the Gorre and Daphetid. A search will find texts, pictures and the short video. George Sellios's Franklin and South Manchester was inspired by John Allen's work. Through his Fine Scale Miniatures company, Sellios offfered several kits based on the GD, beginning with a wood water tank. 

Reaility: It is what it is.

Do We See Reality? By Donald Hoffman
(New Scientist, Vol 243, Number 3241, pp. 34-17)

Of course not. As Hoffman is at pains to point out, we see an image constructed by our brains. But in his discussion, I think he mistakes image for object.

“Reality is virtual” reads a subhead. No, it’s not. Reality is what it is. Our image of it is virtual. More precisely, our experience of reality is virtual. And what exactly is this virtual image? It’s patterns abstracted from the flood of data we take in with our senses.

Abstraction begins with the senses, which filter the data. We sense a very narrow band of electromagnetic radiation as light. We sense an even narrower band as heat. We sense a small fraction of the compounds that impinge on our noses and tongues. We sense our bodily movements with varying degrees of precision. And so on. More tellingly, we do not consciously perceive most of the sensory data transmitted to our brains. Hoffmman is right: our images of the world were and are constructed to foster survival. But that doesn’t mean the images are false. They are merely differently incomplete, and abbreviated. They consist as much of tokens as of representations, maybe more. They are simplified versions.

In attempts to understand “what reality really is” (what an odd collocation of words!), we use the methods of science. And here, something strange happens. We take our built-in facilty of abstracting patterns from the data as a method of arriving at “deeper truths.” Physicists claim that the most abstract patterns, the ones describable only in mathematics, are more true than any others. It’s obvious, I think, that what we perceive of the world is a highly edited, multi-level collection of not too carefully constructed represenations of reality. The notion that the most highly abstracted ones are the most true is, to my mind, exceedingly strange.

The fact is that abstraction occurs at many levels. It begins with sensation, which becomes perception, which becomes data. Data are organised into information. We combine information into knowledge, and knowledge affords insight. Insight permits understanding, which enables theory. Abstract the patterns of theory, and you may gain wisdom.

That chain of abstraction levels is what make our grasp of reality human. It’s what has enabled us to alter and exploit the environment to suit ourselves. That none of us achieve more than a modest level of wisdom may be our undoing: it’s difficult to accept that we must deny ourselves so many of our achievements if we wish our species to survive.

A haiku

Haiku
Words float on the air
like smoke and dry leaves.
Memory fails me.

Also posted on the Poems page.

Trump the Real Estate Guy Part 2

The Guardian reports that Trump cancelled his Denmark trip after Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, said Greenland was not for sale. And after all the nice things Trump said about them, too

Update:
The Danes aren't happy about Trump's actions.

Stalingrad: The Pity and the Terror

     Antony Beevor.  Stalingrad (1998) One of my uncles went missing at Stalingrad, so my reading of this book was coloured by that knowledge. What stands out most to me is the appalling mistakes made by Hitler, and the toadying of the careerist generals who put their careers ahead of their loyalty to the Nation. And of course there were generals who believed the Nazi race theories. They were Prussians; the Prussian military caste was supposedly raised to put the Nation first.

     The other take-aways simply make that military betrayal all the more poignant. The siege was a battle of attrition. The Russians won because they could support their supply lines better than the Germans could; because they produced more materiel (a fact that the Nazi-imbued command couldn’t believe); because they were willing to sacrifice their men; and because Hitler and his general staff understood neither the sheer size of Russia, nor the violence of the Russian winter. Like Napoleon’s, their conception of the battle field was limited by their circumscribed European experience.
     In the end, the battle cost about one million lives, most of them soldiers. The city was reduced to rubble. And Hitler, supported by a general staff and  Nazi hierarchy that would not disobey his increasingly crazy commands, prolonged the war and the slaughter for another two years.
     Beevor tells his story clearly, but it helps to have the maps at hand while reading. It would also help to have coloured maps, and more of them. Still, the shape of the battle and siege are clear enough on a first reading.  I won’t read this book again, though. Beevor includes many verbatim reports gleaned from written records and interviews. These, even more than the accounts of the troop movements, bring the waste of Stalingrad to vivid life, and death.
     I don’t want to think about what happened to my uncle. He was a Lutheran pastor, who volunteered as a private because he didn’t want the officer rank of chaplain to come between him and the men he expected to serve. Less than 10% of the 5th Army eventually returned. These men brought what news they could, but much of it was garbled, or incomplete, or little more than a name. My uncle may have survived the siege. If he did, he did not survive Siberia.
     Recommended. ****

Rumpole's Creator

   John Mortimer.   Clinging to the Wreckage (1982) A re-read, and just as exhilarating and moving as the first time. Mortimer’s style is anecdotal: he’s a story teller, but an artful one, who knows how to bring the story to a point, a punch-line, or a twist that recasts the whole meaning of what he has told. The ambience is wry amusement at the follies of being human, and melancholy regret for the losses that make up our lives.

     The reminiscences about his father were made into a TV show, Voyage Round My Father, which I’ve seen, and recommend. Available on Youtube.
     Mortimer was apparently a good lawyer. His practice clearly informed Rumpole of the Bailey, which has the same combination of amusement and regret as this book. He was married twice, and had four children. He’s reticent about the details of his private life; the impression is of the same mix of joy and frustration that most of us know. Wikipedia gives more information.
     This book is worth reading in part because it’s a witness to England as it was between the world wars and after the second one. For Rumpole fans, it’s worth reading in any case. ****