Conservative Book Talk

About a month ago I joined Team Cringely, a group of volunteers looking to put a rover on the moon as a part of the Google Lunar X Prize. This group is a loose organization of volunteers who want to participate in space but haven’t the opportunity to do so. Growing up, only two careers interested me. One was to be an astronaut. I loved to see pictures of space and wistfully dreamed of space travel to see those sights in person.

I remember disappointment upon discovering that I would need to have multiple doctorates and being lucky to get a place on a NASA shuttle.

Talk about a depressing day.

Now I can live my dream vicariously through this mission. But those of us consisting of Team Cringely (and our opponents) weren’t the first to desire the opportunity to go to the moon. NASA wasn’t the first organization either. For more than a century, men like Jules Verne looked at the mistress of the night and wondered what men would find on the moon.

In this classic pair of stories, Barbicane, Ardan, and Nicholl overcome cultural and personal grievances to join forces as emissaries to the moon. It all began with the bored members of the Baltimore Gun Club. The Baltimore Gun Club consisted of men who had studied (invented and experimented) gunnery during the Civil War; now, bored, they sought a new challenge. This new challenge was to launch a cannonball at the moon. Eventually, the Frenchman, Michelle Ardan, decided that he wanted to fly to the moon and sailed to Florida to enter the projectile.

This action of Ardan, led to a prolonged discussion about the habitability of the moon and the precautions necessary for a man to travel in space. Much of the story lies in discussions about the nature of the moon, it’s past and present state of habitability, and the nature of space travel. Much of this will probably be a tad bit tedious for some, but I found it somewhat interesting. Given that hindsight is 20-20, it is easy to see the errors being made. But, when one tries to look at it from the perspective of an author writing in 1865, the science and reasoning is much less comical and far more impressive. Verne had many facts correct or at least close to correct.

As an aside, one flaw that I have noticed with the reasonings of this generation of authors is this: They made many assumptions that appeared reasonable at first blush, and never challenged them. In this work, the assumption of the three was that Selenites must exists. Ardan was very typical of the thinking. He wanted it to be so and so it was.

But, that was typical Verne. He lived in a world decades or centuries ahead of his time. Verne obviously had great respect for the Americans. Though often in a backhanded manner, Verne continuously praised the American people for their ingenuity, skillfulness and bravery. It was his opinion (as seen in this work) that only Americans would be brave and foolhardy enough to pull off an endeavor of this magnitude.

And that brings me back to the present: Can a disparate team of men and women put a rover on the moon for less than $4 million? Normal people say no. Team Cringely begs to differ.
This is not one of Verne’s better stories, but worth reading if for no other reason than that it is Verne.

Here are the links:
Amazon: From Earth to the Moon; Round the Moon
Gutenberg: From Earth to the Moon (text)
Librivox: From Earth to the Moon (audio)
Gutenberg: Round the Moon (text)
Librivox: Round the Moon (audio)

Tags: books, fiction, Google, Google Lunar X Prize, Jules Verne, Matt Gardenghi, moon, review, Science, Team Cringely

Have you ever tried to lose weight? More than a few pounds? It takes more than a special diet as Irvin Cobb discovered. Cobb thought that he was just “big boned” and that his size was genetic. His family always filled out in their thirties….

Cobb recounts the true and humorous story of his attempts to reign in his weight. Cobb wasn’t a lazy glutton. He just had a sedentary lifestyle and a special relationship with his food. He and his food had a special bond he told himself. (The bond was more obvious to everyone else.) Interestingly, Cobb describes the various self-delusions that he went through to convince himself that he wasn’t overweight.

• The suit didn’t fit anymore cause it was cheap and shrunk.
• The weight gain was a family trait.
• He wasn’t fat, just well developed.

But, lest you think that this short work was boring, it was anything but that. Cobb eventually went to several doctors who were apparently quacks. Only a quack would call him obese. Cobb went to the gym and the steam room. He tried running. He tried everything but changing his eating habits.

His mealtimes were sacred.

It wasn’t until an obviously obese friend and he both got on scales together that his self-delusion started to crack. When Cobb realized that he was only a couple of pounds shy of the man he always viewed as obese, reality struck.

Eventually, Cobb owned up to his obesity and decided to solve the problem. He read every book on the subject and found that each generation of doctors and dieticians had a different philosophy. Some said that meat was evil. Other that you should avoid starch. Still others said to eat starch and meat to excess. In the end, they only agreed on one point: boiled spinach was acceptable.

You will empathize with Cobb, well I did anyway. Let’s just be perfectly clear: I have never EVER had to take One Third Off, but I have to be careful. I have also found that Cobb’s solution is correct. The only solution to drop 10lbs or 1/3 your body weight is the same regardless of who you are: eat less, eat healthy and exercise. Gag. None of it is fun, but then life isn’t about having fun.

You can hit the above picture and buy it from Amazon (and support the site) or you can do like me: free audio or free text.

Tags: book, diets, fat, Irvin Cobb, Matt Gardenghi, obese, Personal Development, weight, weight loss

Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky is at once trivial and epic, mundane and surreal. Originally published in 1941 in two-parts in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction, it is (so I learned through internet research) a “godfather” of the SF genre. By this, I mean that it introduced plot elements that were later used by dozens of SF authors. Actually, I had never heard of Heinlein before reading this book, but I have since learned that he is an “old master” of science fiction literature. His work has been emulated and many of his books seem to have been re-printed in the last decade for new generations of readers.

But, is he really as great as all that? In Orphans of the Sky I found stuff to be loved and hated. It is cleanly written in a tight style that I really admired. However, the Biblical references, in the history of the fictional civilization, could be taken as positive or negative. The most disturbing thing in the book (at least for me) was the violence. The main weapons used by these space-age natives are knives, and throwing is the best way to launch them at their target—being animal, people or “Muties” (mutants). As you can imagine, this leads to some painful results and Heinlein gives just enough gory details to make one squirm. (I would not say he is ever over-grotesque, but it is definitely not for the weak of stomach.) Even more alarming is the way women are treated in the fictional civilization. Female abuse is hinted at at least two times, and the male-chauvinist attitude of the main characters (who all happen to be men) is clearly seen. (From what I understand, Heinlein was trying to create a civilization complete with its own history, beliefs and social structure, so perhaps this treatment of women—and the other negatives—can be excused on these terms. Regardless, they made me feel uncomfortable enough to mention them.)

The plot is too layered and twisted to lay it all out here, but I think an introduction is at least needed. The storyline follows a certain Hugh Hoyland and his adventures aboard “The Ship”—a place that at first seems to be a strange planet, but then is slowly revealed to be an actual space ship. The socio-structure is made up of Commoners, Scientists and the Captain. There are similarities between this book and Lois Lowry’s The Giver (in case you have ever read that modern classic). Also living on the Ship are the outcast Muties, supposedly deformed because of sin (though the scientific explanation is shown to be radiation.) The humans superstitiously fear the Muties (and any children born with deformities—who are done away with in the “Converter”), and hunt them for sport as well as for necessity. The Muties are even more “native” then the humans and live a semi-united, yet cannibalistic, existence. (I theorize that their social ills might have sprung from the way they were forced to live by the more domineering humans.)

Hugh becomes a slave to a powerful, two-headed “gangster lord” Mutie named Jim-Joe, and is forced to look at the world through different eyes. In fact, his whole world is turned upside-down as he gains new knowledge about the world around him (thanks to the amusing Joe-Jim, who decides to instruct the young man). Reading and learning are celebrated as a means to overcome racism, and important lessons are shown on overcoming differences to achieve a common a goal.

I need to add a warning about language and a stray mention of sex to my content list. These two things and the violence make this a book suitable for mature audiences only. Taken with a grain of salt, you may be able to enjoy this book, but then again, it may just leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. I do not think I would read it again, but it did give me some food for thought. It would definitely be an interesting book for a literary discussion!

Robert Heinlein was an excellent author and his earlier works are “generally” acceptable, but his later works were not. At some point, Heinlein began to add explicit material and prolific language. Just be aware of this before you read Heinlein. – Matt Gardenghi