Random Thoughts Y2011M10D14

ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

• Google "margaret atwood moon landing" (without the quotes) and you'll find references to an interview she did where she regurgitated many of the moon-landing skeptic (moron's) talking-points. I don't know if she does, necessarily, actually doubt it, but the fact she thinks those nitwits should have their nonsense quoted says a lot.
  
  But then again, she's not exactly interested in intellectual rigor, or she'd have bothered to read up on Evangelical Christianity before writing Handmaid's Tale. I mean shit, I bet the guys who wrote Elders of Zion at least owned Hebrew dictionaries and bothered to crack the Talmud. Is there any evidence Atwood knows even that much about Evangelicals?


• I think the "dropships/shuttles/starfighters=attack chopper/plane" thing is due to Star Wars, and probably the Expanded Universe. I mean, Empire and Jedi both have two actual aircraft, the snowspeeders and the bikes on Endor('s moon, yeah, yeah). X-Wings et al are only every used as landers.
  
  But the EU has YT-1400s and X-Wings and Headhunters and probably Star Destroyers being used for, I don't actually think I'm exaggerating, crop-dusting; there are, I seem to recall, whole books where the damned things never leave an atmosphere. Leaving to one side that they wouldn't be able to do SSTO, not with their (lack of) fuel tanks (or with ion engines), you'd still be using planes for most of those things, spaceships are for space. As the name implies.


• Been reading a bit on the debate about "literary" fiction vs. genre fiction, and science fiction, and all the jackasses who don't understand that SF is romance, not novels, therefore the literary standards are different, and if you don't like it, you can go write a kabuki according to the standards of an American soap-opera.
  
  But even so, there is a word to be said in favor of merely-entertaining fiction; see Chesterton's "In Defense of Penny Dreadfuls". Also, his Ballade of a Book-Reviewer:

  I have not read a rotten page
  Of "Sex-Hate" or "The Social Test,"
  And here comes "Husks" and "Heritage"....
  O Moses, give us all a rest!
  "Ethics of Empire"!... I protest
  I will not even cut the strings,
  I'll read "Jack Redskin on the Quest"
  And feed my brain with better things.
  
  Somebody wants a Wiser Age
  (He also wants me to invest);
  Somebody likes the Finnish Stage
  Because the Jesters do not jest;
  And grey with dust is Dante's crest,
  The bell of Rabelais soundless swings;
  And the winds come out of the west
  And feed my brain with better things.
  
  Lord of our laughter and our rage.
  Look on us with our sins oppressed!
  I, too, have trodden mine heritage,
  Wickedly wearying of the best.
  Burn from my brain and from my breast
  Sloth, and the cowardice that clings,
  And stiffness and the soul's arrest:
  And feed my brain with better things.
  
  ENVOI
  
  Prince, you are host and I am guest,
  Therefore I shrink from cavillings....
  But I should have that fizz suppressed
  And feed my brain with better things.

• Again, SF is romances, not novels—it were as true to say that it is vernacular literature, not classical. Understand, "romance" comes from "romanicia", which was the term for what had been Vulgate Latin (the Romance languages, hence the name). The popular literature was, of course, in the vernacular; only scholarly writing was in Latin (the exception was the liturgy: it was written in Vulgate Latin when, and because, that was the vernacular language, but, being written down, it didn't change the way the spoken language did).
  
  And yes, novels are classical. Though the novel occasionally incorporates an element from Romanticism, fundamentally it's the same set of ideas—realism, harmony, and so on—that informs every other field of 18th and 19th Century classicism. To scoff at genre literature is simply to announce that you prefer the canons of the Academy. Only your Academy couldn't produce a David or an Ingres if its life depended on it.


• Turns out "otaku" is the military-Japanese 2nd-person-pronoun. (I knew it was a pronoun, but not its context.) They're called that because that's the pronoun they use.
  
  And why, you ask, do anime nerds use a military pronoun? What, seriously? Gundam, dear boy. Yamato. Ghost in the Shell. I could go on, really. Pretty much till real recently, the stuff with the real otaku followings (that weren't magical girl) were science fiction shows about soldiers, cops, or spaceship crews.


• I would just like to say that I totally called it: "bought the farm", referring to a crash, probably does come from insurance payments. See, e.g., here.
  
  Maybe it's just that I come from the same state as the most psycho-ass daredevil aviator of all time, Frank Luke.


• This quote, from a review of Dollhouse, made me happy:

  Whedon calls himself a feminist, but he’s really more a fetishist, with his particular thing being strong-but-vulnerable babes.

  Yeah, I'm gonna have to take it one further, and actually say Whedon is a full-blown closet S.


• Also, let us all agree that it is entirely appropriate that Disney owns Marvel, and Warner owns DC. Mickey Mouse and the X-Men, Bugs Bunny and the Justice League: perfect matches.
  
  More to the point, excessively condescending children's fare that ends up turning into smut: Ultimate Marvel, meet Miley Cyrus. Perfect matches.


• I wonder, if you made a scifi show with a realistic ship—I'll allow artificial gravity, but with a tower floorplan and unable to land—would it freak people out? Apparently the viewing public is so benightedly ignorant that a ship that can do both SSTO and orbit-to-orbit can be described as a clunker or a piece of junk, and nobody bats an eye. Again, it's doubtful any ship will be able to do both, ever—unless we come up with a reactionless drive—and it is absolutely a certainty that such capability would be very rare (again, apart from reactionless drives).
  
  Hell, what if you actually designed your ships with fuel tanks? Probably blow the little nitwits' minds. I mean, look how they vote, and the fact any of them buy Transhumanist SF (in either the "purchase" or "set store by" senses of the word "buy"). The fact ships need propellant (which is not, necessarily, identical with their fuel) is probably a hurtful idea to the creatures, given the things they believe about economics.