Rabbit Valley Road

Philip Pullman on Tolkien:

The Lord of the Rings is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He’s interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.

Having recently completed the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, I was struck time and time again (in fact, beaten over the head) by the massive chip on Pullman’s shoulder. The books themselves are entertaining enough, but ultimately, I finished the 900+ page trilogy disappointed and a bit let down.

Here’s the gist of the story: Pullman hates God, or at least organized religion, painting the Catholic Church - the Magisterium in his world - as an institution whose sole aim is to smother out all human desire. The notion is at times reasonable, but Pullman’s relentless criticism takes no prisoners, willingly sacrificing story, plot, and character development to make the argument ad nauseum inside a Tolkien-lite fantasy/polemic.

(Spoilers after the jump.) (more…)

A co-worker sent me to the documentary, The Boy with the Incredible Brain, this morning. The film centers around Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant who can perform long calculations in his mind. Tammet can recite pi from memory up to 22,514 digits and learn a language in a week, among other impressive gifts.

I happened to picked up a copy of Daniel’s first book, Born on a Blue Day, over the weekend as well.

• Areas of My Expertise: John Hodgman’s blog. He’s also on Twitter.
• The Black Ghosts: one of my favorite records of the year that I only recently discovered.
• Everything is Terrible: I don’t understand it at all, but the videos here are hilarious in a bizarre kind of way. Example.
• The Subtle Knife: Having just completed The Golden Compass, I’m on to Part II of His Dark Materials Trilogy.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran “The Age of Mass Innovation”

There is a culture [in America] that celebrates the achievements of individuals—and it is too often forgotten in history that it is individuals, not governments or economic systems, that are responsible for extraordinary breakthroughs…

In an age of mass innovation the world may even find profitable ways to deliver solutions to the 21st century’s greatest needs, including sustainable clean energy, affordable and universal healthcare for ageing populations and quite possibly entirely new industries. The one natural resource that the world has left in infinite quantity is human ingenuity.

via Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

Thomas L. Friedman:

We don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

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John Holdren from Hot, Flat, and Crowded:

A charlatan can tell a lie in one sentence that a scientist needs three paragraphs to rebut.

Jim Carroll, Forced Entries:

If you haven’t died by an age thought predetermined through the timing or your abuse and excesses, then what else is left but to begin another diary?

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