Arcane Gazebo

Paris Notes

• Technologies: One would think that at this late stage of globalization, all developed countries would be at the same technology level. But as in a game of Civ, France is behind America in some areas and ahead in others. For example, Europe has switched over to chip-and-PIN credit cards, forcing Americans with obsolete magstripe cards to buy their Métro tickets from a surly clerk at the ticket booth instead of the vending machines. On the other hand, automatic subway door-opening technology lags behind America, with most lines requiring the rider to pull a latch to open the door when he wants to get off. (I assumed this was an energy conservation measure for the climate-controlled trains, until I noticed that they weren't actually air-conditioned and the windows were open. Maybe it's just for the winter, but then why is it that newer lines do have automatic doors?) Finally, Europeans still have yet to figure out that if they mount the shower head on the wall, they can have both hands free when showering.
• Speaking French: My 1.5 levels of Rosetta Stone turned out not to be so useful; they usually spoke too fast for me to decipher it, and when I tried to speak it they looked at me as if the sounds I made didn't even resemble human language. (Which is entirely plausible.) There was one place it was very useful, though: the opera. I've been spoiled a bit by the Met, which has individual subtitling screens on the back of each seat with a selection of languages. The Opéra Bastille has the more common setup of a single supertitling screen above the stage, in French only. Fortunately, through a combination of my meager French, my dimly-remembered Latin, knowledge of the story, and contextual clues, I was able to figure out a lot of what was going on. Otherwise I would have been very confused at the end of the opera when the female lead starts passionately kissing a severed head. Really.
• The French health care system: I have a trick for translating technical terms and proper names that don't appear in normal language dictionaries: go to the English Wikipedia page for the thing you're trying to translate, then click the link on the side for the target language and use the title of the page it links to. I normally use this to get the standard katakana spellings of Western names for my Japanese homework, but I was also able to use it in France to tell the triage nurse that I had a kidney stone: calcul rénal. I found that French hospitals were not the socialist, dystopian nightmare that I've been warned about by Fox News, but calculs are pretty annoying in any country or language. On the other hand, I definitely recommend seeing Versailles while buzzed on painkillers.
• Stairs: My friend Caroline (who lives in Paris, and whom I saw for the first time in years on Wednesday) related to me one of her rules for sightseeing: if it can be climbed, she has to climb it. I wasn't quite so thorough, and was content to enjoy the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame cathedral from the ground level. I did, though, climb to the second platform of the Eiffel Tower (the stairs don't go all the way to the top) and to the dome of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur. The latter doesn't have as many steps as the Eiffel Tower, but they more than made up for it by putting it at the top of a giant hill, then putting the Métro station at the foot of the hill, then burying the train platform itself deep beneath the Earth's crust at the bottom of a long spiral staircase. Sure, there's an elevator in the station, but that would be cheating. By Friday night, after I had also traversed a number of the many, many staircases in the Louvre, my legs were informing me that they were not going to climb any more steps, and I was to pick an altitude and stick with it.
• Art: An anonymous American tourist I overheard in the Louvre expressed it more poetically than I ever could when he said, "These are some awesome-ass pictures, man!" There are too many masterpieces to properly appreciate without weeks to spend in the museum, and so I just wandered the halls slack-jawed with amazement, trying to take in as much as I could before the guards threw me out at closing time. I went to the Louvre on Friday, when it stays open until 9:30 at night, and the evening was a great time to be there: it's very quiet and peaceful and not at all crowded. I also wanted to see some modern art, but the Palais de Tokyo (which houses the modern and contemporary exhibits) was under renovation: only three rooms were open on the modern side (but admission was free) and only one room on the contemporary side. The former did have some great Picassos on view, and the latter earned its 3€ admission with a fascinating installation called The Tragedy of the Commons, basically a gigantic ant farm with various food and scent stimuli supplied to the ants to direct their trails.
• Food and drink: Excellent of course, with one exception: the andouillette. On the one hand, it's just a sausage; on the other hand, it's made entirely of coarsely ground tripe, and no amount of delicious mustard sauce is sufficient to hide this fact. I did however eat many tasty pork dishes that weren't derived from the gastrointestinal tract, and never needed to resort to that other French delicacy, the Royale with Cheese.
• Traveling solo: I picked Paris for my vacation because I expected it to be a good place to visit on my own; this worked out in practice as well as in theory. Some people did ask me if this was a romantic trip, but that's certainly not the only aspect of the city. Exploring the museums in solitude allows the visitor to set his own pace and focus on his particular interests. And the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés are ideal for taking a table for one and watching the passers-by. Since I was traveling by myself, without a backpack or giant camera, I apparently looked like a local: the hawkers of souvenirs left me alone, but attractive Parisian women would ask me in French for directions. Of course, those women moved on quickly once I revealed my true nature as a tourist, but the disguise was nice while it lasted.
• Photos: Photoset on Flickr

World of Wordcraft

In a week I'm headed to Paris for a sightseeing trip. When I originally planned the trip, I didn't know any French beyond what I have picked up in pop culture, which consists of:

1. Fetchez la vache!
   
2. Garçon means "boy".
   
3. You're a good guy, mon frère. That means "brother" in French. I don't know why I know that. I took four years of Spanish!

Something I don't have a good sense for is just how much study of a language is required before it starts being useful. On the one hand, if I know nothing (as is the case here), learning just a few words has almost no value because almost all sentences I encounter will still be unintelligible. And on the other end of the spectrum, if I'd been studying French for years, there'd be diminishing returns where learning a little extra on the margin wouldn't affect the quality of my experience any. So the utility as a function of time spent studying must have an S-shape where it starts out nearly flat, takes off at some point, and ultimately levels off again. The important question for this project is how long it takes to get to that first knee in the curve: the point at which I start to understand some of what I hear in the new language. I don't really know the answer to that, so this is something of an experiment.

It's interesting to see that Rosetta Stone is basically a video game: the user proceeds through a series of levels, each of which is further subdivided down to the level of individual screens, and on each screen the user needs to click in the right places (or speak the correct sentence) to advance to the next one. At the end of each section the user gets a percentage score based on how many errors they made. You could call it "Language Hero". At the end of each level there's a speaking test called a "milestone" which is basically a boss battle. There are even achievements! (The program calls them "stamps".) It's a direct application of the Reality is Broken thesis to language learning. (I haven't actually read that book, so hopefully I'm not misstating it here.)

The only problem is that language learning takes a lot longer than mastering most video games, so that I feel as if I'm playing some game that requires a lot of grinding for each minor advancement. On top of that, it's an inherently social game in which I'll get much more out of it if I seek out partners to practice with. Fortunately, I can meet such people through the online component of the course, for which I pay a periodic subscription fee. Wait a minute, all this sounds strangely familiar: Rosetta Stone isn't just a video game, it's a MMORPG! And I thought I swore off that whole genre years ago...

You spin my head right round

Labyrinth is, of course, the 1986 fantasy film with David Bowie:

However, labyrinth also refers to the balance organ of the inner ear. The structure contains three orthogonal fluid-filled canals (hence "labyrinth") that sense rotations, along with additional organs that sense linear accelerations. This combines with visual inputs to give us our sense of balance.

So while the word labyrinthitis could refer to an uncontrollable nostalgia-driven desire to revisit the aforementioned David Bowie flick, it is actually the name for a viral infection of the balance organ. The symptoms of this infection bring to mind another movie entirely:

The experience of labyrinthitis can be easily simulated by a healthy individual. First, get your alcoholic drink of choice. Then, consume it until it feels like the room is spinning. Now imagine that this sensation persists continuously for a week. I've been describing it as "like being drunk without the fun part." Naturally it's tempting to grab some booze and add the fun back in, but I suspect that this approach is contraindicated.

At one point this week I thought the vertigo had become so severe that it felt like I was in an earthquake. Then I realized it was an actual earthquake. The various natural disasters striking the East Coast this week are not helping my condition any, but maybe if Hurricane Irene is spinning in the same direction as my head I won't even notice it.

Years ago, in an eerie bit of foreshadowing, I contemplated in dinosaur comic form the possibility of being stuck with a constant spinning sensation. At the time I thought it merely a theological hypothesis, but now I know that labyrinthitis truly is... rotating hell.

The future for America's broken government

Longtime readers will recall that this used to be primarily a political blog. Eventually, though, I fell victim to outrage fatigue and turned to other subjects. These days we have a different administration, but one reason I've been escaping into pop culture (for the first few posts since I started updating again) has been that my reaction to the current political situation can only be properly expressed by this Uncyclopedia page.

I'm very, very pessimistic about the political outlook for the next few years. The traditional norms that allowed Congress to function in the past have totally broken down: the Senate now requires a 60-vote supermajority for anything due to routine use of the filibuster, and as we've recently seen the Republican congress is willing to put a gun to the head of the national economy by demanding concessions before raising the debt ceiling.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is willing to use its executive authority to launch a new war in Libya, but not to unilaterally take action on the economy. Since the only stimulus the Republicans will accept is more tax cuts for the rich, we can expect that unemployment will continue to remain sky-high through 2012.

Then, Obama will lose re-election to whomever the Republicans nominate. It might be Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann. If we're lucky (!) we'll get Mitt Romney, who might be unprincipled but at least appears to be sane. The economy is by far the strongest predictor of presidential election results, and with unemployment as high as it is, the independent voters will go for the Republicans in droves. A very harmful political dynamic has taken hold whereby a minority can wholly obstruct the legislative agenda in the Senate, use this to prevent any measures that might help the economy, and take advantage of anti-incumbent sentiment to regain the majority.

So, basically, we're doomed. At the very least the next Congress needs to change the rules of the Senate to eliminate the filibuster. It could be one upside of a Republican Senate: it would not be out of character for them to remove the obstructionist tools they relied on when they were in the minority. Maybe they'd get rid of the debt ceiling as well once they were the ones spending (or more likely, cutting taxes). It would result in a lot of policies I don't like, but in the long run getting rid of both of those things would be good for the country.

If I had the power to rewrite the Constitution I'd get rid of the Senate entirely, and maybe just institute a parliamentary system, but obviously neither of those things are going to happen. Instead I'll just watch old episodes of The West Wing and imagine what it would be like to have a functional government.

The most violent video game is rated E

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
—Attributed to Joseph Stalin

It's been a while since I've seen any uproar over violent video games. I'm sure there's some background level of complaint about it, but I guess with three actual wars going on and a terrible economy, most people have other things on their minds.

Nevertheless, I'd been thinking lately about one of the (many) ways in which objections to such games are misplaced. The most socially objectionable games are generally taken to be those in the Grand Theft Auto vein that allow players to run around committing heinous crimes against innocent people. (Of course, even in the GTA games one is more typically attacking "bad guys", i.e. other criminals, but the sandbox game style gives the player the free will to go on random killing sprees.) However, if the immorality of the in-game acts of violence is the measure by which they are judged, it seems to me that there's a category of game that's literally orders of magnitude worse.

After all, when we think of history's greatest monsters, we don't think of gangsters or even serial killers. No, we think of Jimmy Carter, because of The Simpsons. But after that we think of guys like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who killed millions and caused the suffering of millions more. What if there were a video game that put the player in a role like that, allowing them to institute a fascist police state, launch wars of aggression, and even wipe out entire nations of people?

Indeed there is such a game, and the ESRB rated it "E for Everyone". I refer, of course, to the Civilization series. In Civ IV it was even literally possible to play as Stalin or Mao; the bounds of good taste (and the German video game market) kept Hitler himself off the roster. So why is it that we never hear about Civ from the video game moralists? Why is it bad to let children play with a single simulated machine gun, but not an entire army of machine gunners? Why restrict access to virtual rocket launchers, but not virtual ICBMs?

It's clear that the issue is somehow graphic violence. But again, why is that? It's certainly true that violence in Civ is depicted in a manner closer to pieces moving on a chessboard than the gorefests of Mortal Kombat. But this must be if anything even worse. What is more desensitizing than viewing millions of people's lives as a number on a screen to be erased at the push of a button? That ESRB badge hilariously lists only "mild violence" for a game in which entire cities are routinely sacked, pillaged, and burned to the ground with no survivors.

One could argue that children can more easily pick up a gun and emulate the antisocial behavior of a GTA installment than they can seize control of a country and try for world domination. But clearly some children do grow up to be crazed dictators. And even if only one kid in ten million is a potential Hitler, isn't it important to keep him from turning out that way?

Now, anyone who's looked at my Steam stats knows that I'm actually a big Civ fan. And if I had kids, I'd totally let them play too. So all I'm arguing here is that there's something strange about a moral intuition which says we need to prevent kids from playing GTA, but that playing Civ is fine. As for the potential Hitlers out there, I'm just hoping they develop a crippling addiction to "one more turn" and stay away from the actual levers of power.

Revelation Space, and how not to write the big reveal

I've been working my way through Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series lately. He has an astronomy background and his novels tend to be all the way at the diamond end of the Mohs Scale of Sci-Fi Hardness. I'm impressed that thus far in the series (I'm almost done with book 4) there's been no faster-than-light travel whatsoever: I take the extreme view that hard sci-fi should never include any form of FTL, because of the consequences for causality. Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky is probably the best slower-than-light space opera I've read, but the Revelation Space novels are in second place.

More generally, Reynolds often gives technical and plausible-sounding justifications for the various advanced technologies that appear in the books, which is a nice bonus for the reader who knows enough physics to make sense of it (but probably impenetrable to others). The problem with this is when I have enough expertise to know why it doesn't work in reality (i.e. the few references to condensed matter physics), I can see behind the curtain and the illusion is ruined. But most of the time it works, and it's a nice way of extending the sense of wonder that can be found in physics.

Unfortunately, this attention to plausible justification in the scientific realm isn't matched in Reynolds' characterization. I'm finding that the biggest flaw in his writing is that his characters' actions often seem insufficiently motivated. Certainly reasons are provided, but they often just don't ring true.

It's appropriate that both his strengths and his weaknesses are in the realm of explanation and justification, because most of his books center around some grand mystery, and much of the urge to keep reading derives from the desire for an explanation. The real climax of the book tends to be the big reveal, although there's usually a nice space battle afterwards. Reynolds has used various devices across his novels to keep the mystery under wraps, some more successful than others. In particular, what he does in the first book in the series (itself called Revelation Space) is so frustrating it feels like being cheated.

Revelation Space alternates between three viewpoint characters who start out in separate places but come together over the course of the novel. And the big mystery (the titular revelation) is actually explained to one of those characters early on. But to keep the reader in the dark, the narrative cuts away right as the explanation starts. Later on, this character's thoughts on this topic are only related in vague terms to keep the secret (and at the same time remind the reader that there is a big secret). Then, when she finally tells the second viewpoint character about it, the story cuts away again! Only when the third character finds out, late in the novel, does the reader get to learn the secret as well.

So why do I say this feels like cheating? There are similar devices that seem legitimate: for instance if a mystery novel briefly takes the viewpoint of the killer during the murder without revealing his identity. I think the problem here, though, is that these are persistent viewpoint characters throughout the book. That gives them a special status, where the reader's immersion in the fictional world is directly connected to the reader's immersion in those characters' minds. To keep the reader out at these critical moments in the story sets up a distance between the character and the reader, and sets the author up as censor rather than storyteller.

That said, I think one could do something interesting with this device in a first-person narration in which the narrator was deliberately keeping secrets from the reader, but in third-person limited mode it was jarring and frustrating. Luckily, Reynolds must have seen the error of his ways, because after his first novel this particular trick hasn't shown up again.

13 Assassins: An anti-samurai movie

Recently I watched the Takashi Miike film 13 Assassins. I definitely recommend it for those of you who are fans of samurai movies. It's structured something like a heist movie, where the first half consists of assembling a team (the eponymous assassins) for a big job, and the second half is one big action set piece. (It occurs to me that Seven Samurai had a similar structure. This is actually a remake of a much older film, and it makes me wonder if the original was actually a shameless knockoff of Seven Samurai that Miike decided to rescue from the dustbin of history. I can't find much information on the original though, maybe it was actually a great movie in its own right.)

There's a clear parallel between samurai movies in Japan and Western movies in the U.S. So clear, in fact, that some of the most famous Westerns are adaptations of jidaigeki films: e.g. The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars. Beyond that, in both genres you have a romanticization of an earlier period in history. And in response there are films which push back against the romantic view, whether it's Unforgiven taking apart the myth of the heroic gunfighter, or Blazing Saddles foregrounding the racism of the period.

13 Assassins is clearly in the latter tradition, using the format of the samurai movie to reject nostalgia for the samurai era. The plot follows an attempt to assassinate a corrupt samurai lord, but metaphorically represents an attack on the corruption inherent in the feudal social order. (Alternate title: "Now you see the violence inherent in the system!") Although the main characters are (almost) all samurai themselves, it's clear that they represent different aspects:

• Lord Naritsugu is the sadistic villain of the piece, who tortures and kills for pleasure and with impunity (since he's the shogun's brother). Not coincidentally, he's also the movie's advocate for the samurai way of life, explicitly justifying his random violence as necessary to maintain order. He expresses nostalgia for the "age of war" (presumably the Sengoku period, a popular setting for samurai movies), and vows to bring it back.
  
• Hanbei is Naritsugu's lieutenant, and a model samurai: he sees Naritsugu's evil for what it is, but is nevertheless completely loyal. His adherence to the bushido code applies in combat as well, where he's shown to play by the rules. Hanbei's role is to show how a flawed system can lead good men astray.
  
• Shinzaemon is the hero, the leader of the team of assassins, and a former classmate of Hanbei. The clear difference between him and Hanbei is that Shinzaemon is willing to go outside the system when moral principles demand it. Early in the film he is reluctant to carry out the assassination plot, until he hears testimony of Naritsugu's atrocities. Like Hanbei, his attitude is reflected in his combat tactics: he instructs his team that there are no rules in a fight to the death.

The rise and fall of the chain bookstore

I walked down to Columbus Circle today to shop at Borders for the last time; their going-out-of-business sale was in full swing. This is the second chain bookstore to close in my neighborhood this year, following the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble in January. I went to that liquidation sale, too.

But I didn't buy much at either sale. These days if I'm going to read a book I buy an electronic copy, because I always have it with me and it doesn't take up any space. I saw a hardcover copy of A Dance with Dragons at Borders and almost laughed. Why carry around such an inconveniently huge tome? I imagined struggling to hold it in one hand on a rush hour subway while hanging on to a pole. (I'll probably see someone doing this before the summer is over, but still...) If I buy physical books it's because they have diagrams or maps that won't render well on a Kindle, or because I'll want to page through them quickly. At Borders today I bought a travel guide for an upcoming vacation, and a kanji dictionary.

I suspect that e-reader adoption isn't widespread enough nationwide to account for the collapse of the chain bookstores. (The Upper West Side may be a different story--I see a lot of Kindles on the 1 train.) There's the fact that books have a lot more competition for attention in the age of DVR, Netflix Instant, MMORPGs, and endless other digital diversions. And when people do buy physical books, they can still go to Amazon and save the sales tax.

I have fond memories of the Borders I used to frequent in Connecticut growing up. When I was young "the bookstore" often just meant the crappy Waldenbooks at the mall, so the huge, well-stocked Borders was a definite improvement. It wasn't until I got to Berkeley that I gained an appreciation for the kind of expertly-curated specialty bookstore whose loss people lamented with the arrival of the chains. The Barnes and Noble in Berkeley closed while I was there; I'd like to say it was because of the vibrant independent bookstore culture, but several of the indie shops were closing too. (Anyone know if The Other Change of Hobbit is still open?)

Meanwhile, here on the Upper West Side we still have the 82nd St Barnes and Noble. If it closes too, I'll definitely miss it, but that's mostly nostalgia. I still shop there on occasion, but even if I find something I might want to read, I usually won't take it to the checkout line. Instead I just pull up the title in the Kindle Store using my phone and send myself the sample chapter. The big bookstores might be going away, but I feel like I've already left them behind.

A Feast of Crow

Previously, on Arcane Gazebo... Almost two years ago, I took a strong position against buying George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons until the entire series is complete. Then, I inadvertently made my commitment even stronger by leaving the post at the top of this blog since then.

Last week, the book finally came out. The reviews are reporting that it's terrific, and (importantly) gets the story going again after the narrative sprawl of A Feast for Crows. And so I find myself wanting to read it after all! But how can I repudiate my earlier position without looking like a Romney-esque unprincipled flip-flopper?

The answer will be revealed... below the fold:

Why I'm not buying A Dance With Dragons (immediately, anyway)

Jo Walton at Tor has been blogging about George R. R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. The blog posts start with this one, which is a pretty good description of the series for those of you who haven't read it. I recommend the books, but I also recommend waiting until he actually finishes the series (which could be far in the future, when we're all reading it on our retinal implants while waiting for the mechanic to finish changing the oil in our jetpacks).

Indeed, these were the books that led me to adopt a general policy of not reading any fantasy (or sci-fi) series which had yet to conclude. I had already given up on Robert Jordan, but that's because his books were getting progressively worse. In Martin's case, that wasn't the problem (although A Feast for Crows was a bit disappointing), but the lack of closure at the end of each one, followed by a multi-year wait during which I'd forget important details of the complicated plot, was getting annoying. It became clear that the series would be a much better experience if I could read it all the way to completion in one go. So I'm waiting until I can do that.

Series bloat seems to be endemic in fantasy, for which I mainly blame Tolkien: everyone seems to think they need to write at least a trilogy. But some of my favorite fantasy novels are standalone: Perdido Street Station, The Lies of Locke Lamora. Lately I've been seeking out more like those and avoiding epic series unless I know it's finished. (Which has led me to read less fantasy and more sci-fi, where I tend to find less of a serial tendency.)

Again, it's not that I don't like epic series, it's just that they're more satisfying when I don't have to wait for the next volume. Books of this type, at least the good ones, compel the reader to keep turning the pages and devouring the storyline, and because there's no resolution at the end of each volume, that desire to keep reading persists but is frustrated. Jo Walton talks a bit about this quality:

Firstly, they have a very high "I-want-to-read-it" quotient. This "IWantToReadItosity" is hard to explain, is utterly subjective and is entirely separate from whether a book is actually good. Who can say why Robert Heinlein and Georgette Heyer and Zenna Henderson have it for me and Herman Hesse and Aldous Huxley don't, despite the fact that Hesse and Huxley are major world writers? I'll happily acknowledge that The Glass Bead Game is a better book than Job: A Comedy of Justice, but nevertheless, Job has that IWantToReadItosity, and if you left me in a room with both books and nothing else, it would be Job I'd start first.

Now even within genre this is something that varies a lot between people. The Wheel of Time books don't have it for me, I've read Eye of the World and I didn't care enough to pick up the others. Ditto Harry Potter, where I've read the first three. These are books that have IWantToReadItosity for millions of people, but not for me. The Song of Ice and Fire books do, though, they grab me by the throat. This isn't to say they're gripping in the conventional sense--though they are--because IWantToReadItosity isn't necessarily to do with plot or characters or any of the ways we conventionally divide up literature. It's got to do with whether and how much you want to read it. You know the question "Would you rather read your book or go out with your friends?" Books have IWantToReadItosity if you'd rather read them. There are books I enjoy that I can still happily put down to do something else. A Game of Thrones is eight hundred pages long, and I've read it six times, but even so, every time I put the bookmark in, I put it in reluctantly.

I was thinking a bit about her comment that IWantToReadItosity (we need a better name for this) is separate from whether a book is actually good. And certainly it's easy to think of really terrible books that have it (The Da Vinci Code, for example), and great books that don't (much of what we were assigned in high school). In fact, there's a strain of thought that Great Literature should be difficult and challenging, and therefore shouldn't have IWantToReadItosity. I don't think that's true, though. It's not that the two qualities are anticorrelated, they are just orthogonal. I even came up with a diagram to illustrate this:

Which is not to say that Haruki Murakami is a better writer than Melville, just that reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a different experience from reading Moby-Dick. (And Wind-Up Bird really is difficult, just not because of entire chapters dedicated to the details of the whaling industry.) However, it is to say that these guys are both better writers than Ayn Rand, because she's pretty bad.

Discussion is open: what books in the literary canon have IWantToReadItosity? And what are some standalone fantasy novels or completed series I should read?