Blogs, Books, and Music

Welcome Again, Ego Readers!

I see that Martin Lindeskog over at Ego has added me to his blogroll and quoted me at length in a post about new blogs! I'm still fairly new to blogging in general and, partly owing to time constraints, to Objectivist blogging in particular, but Martin's blog is the first blog by another Objectivist I found. Aside from Cox and Forkum (who are also syndicated cartoonists), Ego is the best-known Objectivist blog as far as I can tell. It's because of him that the Charlotte Capitalist, home of the Reason Roundup, first learned about my blog. I'd like to thank him for promoting my blog, for his encouragement, and for his correspondence.

And this reminds me. There are many measures out there of how a blog is doing. These are all attempts to gauge the value others put on your blog by such measures as hyperlinks or traffic. While these provide a first approximation of one part of the success of a blog, they fail by nature in one very important respect: Of what value is the blog to the blogger himself? I've found that I immensely enjoy writing, even on days (like today) that confront me with a blank page and my personal imperative to write something. There's no way for anyone to measure this but the blogger himself. And something else I didn't consider when I began was this: the people I've met in the process. So what if Glenn Reynolds or Michelle Malkin generate small cities in traffic every day? I bet that damn near everyone who emails them is hoping for some kind of a 'lanche. One of the joys of starting out at this enterprise has been the people I've met as a result, through email or comments. I've met more than a dozen people so far, most of them fellow Objectivists. Being solitary by nature, I never thought of that when I decided to blog, so it has been a very pleasant surprise. Perhaps "Mortal Humans" and above on the TTLB Ecosystem should try this: blog anonymously from scratch to see how the other half lives. It's not too bad! Last but not least, several good friends have followed this blog from its start, including the one who gave me the idea of blogging in the first place. So the blog has turned out to be a good way to keep in touch with these friends.

A Trio of Books

I'm going to comment much more briefly on two books -- and more at length on a third -- than I want.

The Evolution of Useful Things

About a month ago, I read a delightful book I received for Christmas from my father-in-law: The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are, by Henry Petroski. If you like technology in general or are merely curious about such questions as, "Why does a fork have four tines -- and not three, or five?" or "How did the paper clip arrive at its current shape?" this is the book for you. This book, written by the man Kirkus Reviews fittingly calls "America's poet laureate of technology," brings back the wonderment of childhood. In engaging prose, Petroski offers lucid explanations for the many design considerations that must go into the many artifacts around us, from the mundane paper clip to the apparently superfluous fish fork. After reading this book, you will realize that you don't live in a mundane world occupied by ordinary things, but in a wonderland of creativity.

Petroski tends to make much of three ideas that I find thought-provoking, if at least somewhat debatable. First, he claims that "form does not follow function," based on the fact that more than one form can serve a given purpose. For a example, forks and chopsticks both are used to pick up food. But this point is somewhat mooted by his second idea: that forms "evolve" to overcome imperfections. (How would they evolve, if not for their forms to follow their functions better?) This second idea has merit in that many daily things have in fact been shaped by countless individuals over time. This idea is well worth considering, especially in today's intellectual environment where many hands -- communicating instantaneously -- make quick work. Just look at such internet-based phenomena as the blogs vs. the established news media, or open source software vs. Microsoft. But lest we discount the role of the individual mind in invention, we can consider Petroski's own example of how the zipper was perfected through the tireless efforts of one man: Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback.

In Sundback's own words, he became fully saturated with the problems of the fastener and he often lay awake half the night "trying to find a way out." He first tackled the C-curity fastener's "trick of popping open" and developed an extension of the eye to enclose the hook completely. (p. 104)

And this was just the beginning of a long road of tinkering, insomnia, and improvement. So, when the works of countless individuals over time (or nearly instantaneously over space with the internet) are considered in aggregate, the process looks like evolution and behaves like it in certain ways. (And something might be gained from studying it in this light.) But we are still observing the fruits of the efforts of numerous individuals making greater or lesser amounts of difference.

Petroski's third idea is that failure drives innovation. This is true if we look only at the immediate steps preceding an invention. Sure. The two-tined fork held meat to be cut better than did a simple knife, which can be said to have failed in certain respects at the task to which it was set (holding meat for cutting). And we can certainly say that a pen drive overcomes many failures of the humble floppy disc. But can't we also say that the floppy disc was a great success in its day? I'm sure that Petroski would hold (and I'd agree) that its weight and size economies addressed the failures of books as media of information storage, and that its ability to be accessed from any point addressed a big failure of magnetic tape. This seems partly a matter of semantics and partly a gripe that there is no "perfect tool" to me. On that second score, there are -- as Petroski points out in a discussion of the "mill economy" and elsewhere -- many design considerations (e.g., cost and aesthetics) besides the explicit purpose of the tool being manufactured. These may make the tool less-than-ideal in the hands of the user. However, if we consider all of this in the context of a capitalist economy, the tool might just be as "perfect" as it can get when such factors as fashion and the willingness of a customer to pay for it are considered. In short, it has many intersecting purposes. A hammer for nails is also a "tool" for making money to its manufacturer and "tool" for saving money for its purchaser. While Petroski does address such concerns, he doesn't take this final step to consider how these concerns are also collateral purposes for the tool. (And thus his first and third points become less compelling.)

This is an incomplete discussion, but should give you an idea of just how richly thought-provoking this book is. Fascinating!

What Went Wrong?

What Went Wrong? : The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis is a must-read in today's world, and maybe not merely in the West. I was given this book by my wife from a list of suggestions I culled from the TIA Daily site. The book provides a fascinating look at the history and culture of the Islamic world as well as its centuries-long decline and the various reactions of the Moslems to that decline. Lewis is a cultural and historical authority, but I found him infuriatingly short on analysis at times. He makes a big point that the Moslem world differs from the West in such things as the status of women, interest in the humanities, and appreciation for Western music, but doesn't go further to explore why this might be. In fact, the book at times seems to be guilty of a bit of cultural relativism. Much of this cultural relativism seems to be a byproduct of an effort to appeal to Moslem readers concerned about their own civilization. But this failure, also partly a symptom of the limited depth of philosophical analysis, leaves it to the reader to come up with his own answer (beyond proximate causes) to the question posed by the book's title!

I still very highly recommend this book.

Shut Up and Sing

Shut up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America, by Laura Ingraham, was to be my next bit of light reading. Great title, lousy book! I thought about getting this over Thanksgiving, but ended up receiving it for Christmas.

You know those contests where people write garbage in imitation of the style of a famous author, as in a "bad Hemingway contest?" This is a sort of "bad Rush Limbaugh." Think of a book with some of the same material that you'd expect out of El Rushbo, but with a lot less of the incisive analysis, a lot more of the package-dealing of religion with valid American values, and a lot less of Rush's way with words (such as it could carry over into a written medium). Here are some samples: (1: analysis) "Elitism is a state of mind, not a way of life. It is first and foremost a cult of the self." (p. 4), (2: package dealing) [The "elite's"] real problem with religion is that it teaches objective truth -- that God exists. (p. 5), and (3: not have way with words) [T]hey are superior to We [sic] the People [sic]. ... They are way ahead of us in the evolutionary scheme of things -- not mere earthlings, but more like the inhabitants of some super-enlightened planet discovered by the crew of the Starship Enterprise. (p. 1)

In fairness, and in the hope that I don't own a wholly worthless book, I plan to scan ahead to see whether there might be some actual reporting on what these mysterious "elites" are up to. (It looks like there is.) I've found other disappointing books by conservative authors to have this redeeming value. But I just can't read this! The prose alone is nearly impossible for me to read, being a smelly compound of blatant populism and poor style. Or maybe I'll read just about anything else from this list....

As Laura Ingraham says on the first page, "And without a doubt, they will think this book is stupid." I am they, unless I get back to you later to report otherwise. And I hope our nation is not so far gone that simple literacy marks one as a member of the "elite."

Music

My musical explorations have been badly curtailed for quite some time until my birthday recently, when I got a CD player installed in my car. So far, I've been listening to some old favorites, mostly ska and reggae, but have also been listening to some blues compilation albums. I have quite the backlog of CDs that, thanks to my thesis and then my current job, I've either not listened to very much, or at all. A few are gifts from my wife and many are from my good friend (and occasional comment-bomber) Adrian Hester, whose musical taste is impeccable. (As is his satire.) I'm looking forward to spinning these CDs in the next few weeks. It's late, so I'll name just a few of the artists I'm looking forward to enjoying: James Brown, Lightnin' Hopkins , The Toasters, Fats Waller, Yeska, Patricia Barber, Duke Ellington (with Charles Mingus and Max Roach), and Abbey Lincoln.

-- CAV

Updates

2-17-05: Corrected two typos.

2-19-05: Added link to later comments on Ingraham's book.

6-21-06: Added hypertext anchor.