books this week
Oct. 16th, 2003 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleJohn Barnes The Duke of Uranium and The Hall of
The Mountain King. Not what I was expecting, based on
a few not-terribly-detailed references on various livejournals.
Not bad books, but not suitable for the purposes I bought them.
Gina Kolata Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About
Exercise and Health. I checked this out of the library
because I was impressed by Kolata's account of flu epidemics.
But such deep and casual dishonesty as I see here is deadly
to science journalism. I want to slap her and say, "You're
deluded, junior!"
Thomas Disch The Prisoner. I could never watch the tv
show. In the late 1980s, someone dear to me watched reruns,
and tried to share part of the experience with me. Visually,
it was just too hard on my head. I can't say if this is like
fanfic, or more like closed-captioning ... but it brings back
the fall of 1987 like a knife.
Sarah Caudwell The Sibyl in Her Grave Someone on LJ
suggested Caudwell. I don't remember who you are, but
thank you. I love the style. I am utterly at a loss to
describe it.
Details below. I really didn't intend for this week's reading
to be so bdsm focused and rant-inspiring. It just sort of turned
out that way. Not everyone will want to read more.
Several years ago, a colleage lent me John Barnes' collection,
Apostrophes and Apocalypses, saying, "This seemed like
your kind of book." I was walking home reading, "Gentleman
Pervert, Out on A Spree," when I stopped in the middle of the
path in stark terror of what that mild mannered fellow in the
next cubicle must THINK of me. (As it happened, he only thought
I'd like the essays about world-building. *whew* There are
things I don't want to share with colleagues. But an interest
in world-building minutia, or just attention to detail, is cool.)
I've read other books by John Barnes, and had various buttons
pushed with various levels of intensity and skill.
When Jo mentioned that there was "icky sex" in this series, I
thought I knew what she was talking about. Yesss, preciousss,
I did...hence, my attempt to acquire the series as a birthday
present for an adult who appreciates both YA adventures and the
pushing of certain buttons. (Aside: when you buy books as
gifts, how do you feel about reading them first?) Duke of
Uranium has no icky sex, nothing disturbing or provocative.
I wondered if I was remembering the reference correctly. It
reminded me of Godspeed or Higher Education, Charles
Sheffield's attempts to take Robert Louis Stevenson off planet,
and Inspire The Youth of Today To Reject All This Liberal Nonsense.
I'd rather have my Stevenson straight. (Or manly, even.) Maybe
Kipling. With the original soft-hearted liberal nonsense mixed
in, thank you very much.
Going on to read Hall of the Martian King, it quickly became
clear to me that the ickiness is both too icky and too subtle to push
my buttons or those of my friend. And I really am thinking of it as
simply "icky," now. Not disturbing and fascinating and scary. It
seems to have been designed as propaganda. It creeps up on you the way
really good propaganda does, where you're a couple of pages past
something before you flip back and mutter "what the [obscenity] was
THAT?" I have occasionally lamented how difficult it is to teach
empathy or compassion. There's a sort of role-reversal trick that
some people expect to teach compassion. (Consider how much it would
hurt if someone like you were victimized...nasty, isn't it? You'll
never want to victimize anyone now, will you? As if abuse came from
the delusion that pain did not hurt, more than from fear or hatred.)
I suspect Barnes was trying to teach something worthwhile, and just
botched it catastrophically. I don't plan to seek out the middle
book. And I need to find a more appropriate birthday present.
I'm not one of those people who pays lots of attention to the
ongoing controversies about "fitness." Especially because it
is so often interpreted used to mean "weight loss." Kolata
doesn't exactly use it that way. She starts off by talking
about some egregious frauds who inserted themselves in the middle
of the controversy. Then she goes back a few hundred years to
describe great feats of athleticism and endurance, and wonders
what happened. Were these exercise extremists freaks of nature?
Were they doing good or harm to themselves? She argues very
convincingly that intense exercise is usually not a huge risk
factor for heart attacks, in the sense that it will not cause
people to drop dead on the spot.
She interviews exercise physiologists, and finds how little
exercise it takes to benefit health. Apparently, about 20%
of the population gets almost no exercise, and they have most
of the problems related to not exercising. The other 80% are
ok, whether they get a little exercise, or a lot. The exercise
physiologists complain how difficult it is to convince most of
their patients to get *more* exercise, when the patients
don't see a benefit. Nobody asks what the point is, once you
get past that minimal threshold. They all just take it as
received truth that exercise *must* be good, so everyone should
do more of it.
You see, Kolata is one of those people who derives intense
physical pleasure from pushing her body through vigorous
exercise. A few lines mention that this effect is observed
in about 40% of randomly chosen test subjects. And about
100% of devoted athletes, and people who choose careers in
exercise physiology. I'm sure there are interesting questions,
that could be addressed honestly, about what makes that 40%
different. Or about what different people feel that makes
them enjoy pushing themselves, or makes them willing to do
it when they don't enjoy it. (Or when they're injured. The
book is SILENT about sports injuries, while attempting to
argue that more exercise should, somehow, improve health in
ways that are not understood and are not usually observed.)
Instead, Kolata spends about half the book rhapsodizing about
very intense exercise. How wonderful it is when she does it.
Why won't more people appreciate the benefits for body and
soul? Why won't more people just DO it, until someday the
benefits will become apparent? I have some experience with
unusual physical and emotional responses to extreme sensations.
So do a fair number of you. It's not just a matter of doing SM,
though that's the context where I'm accustomed to seeing this
tone of glowing enthusiasm for forcing oneself through
activites the speakers find satisfying or thrilling and the
listeners find no better than uncomfortable.
Kolata interviewed a bunch of exercise physiologists, and she
found their conclusive data (when they had it) did not agree
with what they wanted to believe in their hearts. What they
want to believe supports the argument Kolata makes...which I
see as boiling down to something akin to, "Mommy's cold, put
on a sweater." Only it's much nastier, because of the way
fitness controversies prey on body-image insecurities. I won't
get into the insidious messages of trying to deny what a person
feels, whether it's pain or fatigue or anything. I won't lay that
at Kolata's door, particularly, though I'm hypersensitive about
it, thanks in part to doctors.
The Mountain King. Not what I was expecting, based on
a few not-terribly-detailed references on various livejournals.
Not bad books, but not suitable for the purposes I bought them.
Gina Kolata Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About
Exercise and Health. I checked this out of the library
because I was impressed by Kolata's account of flu epidemics.
But such deep and casual dishonesty as I see here is deadly
to science journalism. I want to slap her and say, "You're
deluded, junior!"
Thomas Disch The Prisoner. I could never watch the tv
show. In the late 1980s, someone dear to me watched reruns,
and tried to share part of the experience with me. Visually,
it was just too hard on my head. I can't say if this is like
fanfic, or more like closed-captioning ... but it brings back
the fall of 1987 like a knife.
Sarah Caudwell The Sibyl in Her Grave Someone on LJ
suggested Caudwell. I don't remember who you are, but
thank you. I love the style. I am utterly at a loss to
describe it.
Details below. I really didn't intend for this week's reading
to be so bdsm focused and rant-inspiring. It just sort of turned
out that way. Not everyone will want to read more.
Several years ago, a colleage lent me John Barnes' collection,
Apostrophes and Apocalypses, saying, "This seemed like
your kind of book." I was walking home reading, "Gentleman
Pervert, Out on A Spree," when I stopped in the middle of the
path in stark terror of what that mild mannered fellow in the
next cubicle must THINK of me. (As it happened, he only thought
I'd like the essays about world-building. *whew* There are
things I don't want to share with colleagues. But an interest
in world-building minutia, or just attention to detail, is cool.)
I've read other books by John Barnes, and had various buttons
pushed with various levels of intensity and skill.
When Jo mentioned that there was "icky sex" in this series, I
thought I knew what she was talking about. Yesss, preciousss,
I did...hence, my attempt to acquire the series as a birthday
present for an adult who appreciates both YA adventures and the
pushing of certain buttons. (Aside: when you buy books as
gifts, how do you feel about reading them first?) Duke of
Uranium has no icky sex, nothing disturbing or provocative.
I wondered if I was remembering the reference correctly. It
reminded me of Godspeed or Higher Education, Charles
Sheffield's attempts to take Robert Louis Stevenson off planet,
and Inspire The Youth of Today To Reject All This Liberal Nonsense.
I'd rather have my Stevenson straight. (Or manly, even.) Maybe
Kipling. With the original soft-hearted liberal nonsense mixed
in, thank you very much.
Going on to read Hall of the Martian King, it quickly became
clear to me that the ickiness is both too icky and too subtle to push
my buttons or those of my friend. And I really am thinking of it as
simply "icky," now. Not disturbing and fascinating and scary. It
seems to have been designed as propaganda. It creeps up on you the way
really good propaganda does, where you're a couple of pages past
something before you flip back and mutter "what the [obscenity] was
THAT?" I have occasionally lamented how difficult it is to teach
empathy or compassion. There's a sort of role-reversal trick that
some people expect to teach compassion. (Consider how much it would
hurt if someone like you were victimized...nasty, isn't it? You'll
never want to victimize anyone now, will you? As if abuse came from
the delusion that pain did not hurt, more than from fear or hatred.)
I suspect Barnes was trying to teach something worthwhile, and just
botched it catastrophically. I don't plan to seek out the middle
book. And I need to find a more appropriate birthday present.
I'm not one of those people who pays lots of attention to the
ongoing controversies about "fitness." Especially because it
is so often interpreted used to mean "weight loss." Kolata
doesn't exactly use it that way. She starts off by talking
about some egregious frauds who inserted themselves in the middle
of the controversy. Then she goes back a few hundred years to
describe great feats of athleticism and endurance, and wonders
what happened. Were these exercise extremists freaks of nature?
Were they doing good or harm to themselves? She argues very
convincingly that intense exercise is usually not a huge risk
factor for heart attacks, in the sense that it will not cause
people to drop dead on the spot.
She interviews exercise physiologists, and finds how little
exercise it takes to benefit health. Apparently, about 20%
of the population gets almost no exercise, and they have most
of the problems related to not exercising. The other 80% are
ok, whether they get a little exercise, or a lot. The exercise
physiologists complain how difficult it is to convince most of
their patients to get *more* exercise, when the patients
don't see a benefit. Nobody asks what the point is, once you
get past that minimal threshold. They all just take it as
received truth that exercise *must* be good, so everyone should
do more of it.
You see, Kolata is one of those people who derives intense
physical pleasure from pushing her body through vigorous
exercise. A few lines mention that this effect is observed
in about 40% of randomly chosen test subjects. And about
100% of devoted athletes, and people who choose careers in
exercise physiology. I'm sure there are interesting questions,
that could be addressed honestly, about what makes that 40%
different. Or about what different people feel that makes
them enjoy pushing themselves, or makes them willing to do
it when they don't enjoy it. (Or when they're injured. The
book is SILENT about sports injuries, while attempting to
argue that more exercise should, somehow, improve health in
ways that are not understood and are not usually observed.)
Instead, Kolata spends about half the book rhapsodizing about
very intense exercise. How wonderful it is when she does it.
Why won't more people appreciate the benefits for body and
soul? Why won't more people just DO it, until someday the
benefits will become apparent? I have some experience with
unusual physical and emotional responses to extreme sensations.
So do a fair number of you. It's not just a matter of doing SM,
though that's the context where I'm accustomed to seeing this
tone of glowing enthusiasm for forcing oneself through
activites the speakers find satisfying or thrilling and the
listeners find no better than uncomfortable.
Kolata interviewed a bunch of exercise physiologists, and she
found their conclusive data (when they had it) did not agree
with what they wanted to believe in their hearts. What they
want to believe supports the argument Kolata makes...which I
see as boiling down to something akin to, "Mommy's cold, put
on a sweater." Only it's much nastier, because of the way
fitness controversies prey on body-image insecurities. I won't
get into the insidious messages of trying to deny what a person
feels, whether it's pain or fatigue or anything. I won't lay that
at Kolata's door, particularly, though I'm hypersensitive about
it, thanks in part to doctors.
