Neil Fein's Blog

Bob the Angry Flower: The Bombs of Love

Excerpted from today's Telegraph:

Most women - if columnists are representative - are more interested in haircuts than most men. I exempt from this generalisation footballers and Lord Bragg.

The problem is that, when you go for a haircut, you are expected to say, first, what you want done - something for which most of us lack the vocabulary. What on earth is "choppy"? Then you might be asked: "Well, how long is it since you last had a trim?" This, you can't remember even to within a month. Finally, and worst, you are detained in a chair for half an hour, beset with anxiety about whether, or how, to make conversation.

My MEP says there is a barber in Cordoba who has solved this last problem. When you sit down, he hands you a menu: you can choose whether you would like to talk about football, ladies, politics, or nothing at all. He will then argue vigorously with you on the topic of your choice for the duration of the haircut. Sadly, Cordoba is quite a long way to go, and I do not speak Spanish.

By Sam Leith
(Filed: 30/04/2004)

CBS2/AP: Secret Service questions Washington state student about anti-war drawings

PROSSER, WASH. ...The 15-year-old boy's art teacher at Prosser High School turned the drawings over to school administrators, who notified police, who called the Secret Service.

``We involve the police anytime we have a concern,'' Prosser Superintendent Ray Tolcacher told the Tri-City Herald newspaper.

Secret Service agents interviewed the boy last Friday. The student, who was not arrested, has not been identified.

The school district disciplined him, but district officials refused to say what the punishment was...

Quicksilver
by Neal Stephenson

In my review of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (29 September 2004) I mentioned that Cryptonomicon, Stephenson's book of the rise of cryptography in World War II and its effect on the present day, is but the first book in a projected series. ^[1]

Quicksilver takes place entirely in the 17th and 18th centuries. The main characters are Daniel Waterhouse, a natural philosopher wannabe and son of an infamous apocalyptic Puritan preacher; Jack Shaftoe, the "King of the Vagabonds", and his companion Eliza, a Turkish spoil of war and ambitious enough for several generations of Shaftoes, and then some; and others such as Newton, Leibniz, William of Orange, and their contemporaries are effective characters as well. The rise of the scientific method within the Royal Society is the overwhelming concern behind the first book, and it is highlighted by conflict within the Royal Society itself between Alchemy and what we would consider more "conventional" science, such as Newton's treatises on optics and gravity.

Similar parallels are made in other plots, such as Eliza's investments managing career, showing the codification of primitive stock markets and the details of princely debt. (Someone's got to pay for all those wars.) The concepts that Stephenson is exploring are timeless, even the subplot planted about Cryptology, something we view through letters.

Oddly enough, barring the second act of the book, it's safe to say that most of the action happens offstage, and much of the book is conversations and letters. However, Eliza's superiority, Daniel's self-loathing, Jack's confident yet introspective manner are all so well drawn that this is an entertaining and fascinating book nonetheless. Stephenson, as usual, has a knack for making even the everyday seem profound. Quicksilver is over 900 pages long, almost none of it is superfluous. I greatly enjoyed the novel, and found it to have a satisfyign ending, despite what other reviews have said. If you're a science and history junkie, (and interested in reading a three-book saga, of which this is but the first^[2]) this book will speak to you. Highly recommended.

^[1] Cryptonomicon uses characters descended from those in the Baroque Cycle, but it is not necessary to read it in order to understand Quicksilver.

^[2] The Confusion has just come out, and The System of the World is to be released later in 2004.

Mollie Fein, my grandmother on my Father's side, died in Brooklyn at 3:21pm on 26 April 2003. The funeral will be at 11AM, at a graveside service in Beth-El cemetery on Forest Avenue in Paramus, NJ. The funeral home can be reached at (201) 262-1100.

Driving directions:

• Garden State Parkway to the exit for Route 208. (It's exit one-sixty-something.) Take a left at the light after the exit, and follow the signs to get onto Route 4 East.


• Route 4 East to Forest Avenue headed north (use the cloverleaf to make a "left" turn).


• The cemetery will be on the left side in a bit, after Soldier Hill Road.

Last updated/confirmed on 29 Apr 2003.

New York Times: Huge Crowds in Washington for Abortion-Rights Rally

WASHINGTON, APRIL 25-- Hundreds of thousands of abortion rights supporters rallied Sunday in the nation's capital, protesting the policies of the Bush administration and its conservative allies and vowing to fight back in the November election.

The huge crowd marched slowly past the White House, chanting and waving signs like "My Body Is Not Public Property!" and "It's Your Choice, Not Theirs!," then filled the Mall, turning it into a sea of women, men and children for the first large-scale abortion rights demonstration here in 12 years...

Los Angeles Times:Thousands March in Support of Abortion Rights

WASHINGTON--Abortion-rights supporters marched in the hundreds of thousands Sunday, galvanized by what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President Bush and foreign policies that hurt women worldwide...

...feminist Gloria Steinem accused Bush of squandering international good will and taking positions so socially conservative that he seems -- according to Steinem -- to be in league with the likes of Muslim extremists or the Vatican...

Washington Post: Abortion Rights Advocates Flood D.C.

WASHINGTON-- ...organizers said they had more than a million marchers. Although police do not issue formal crowd counts, some officers familiar with past rallies suggested this event attracted more than half a million people...

...[Sen. Hillary Clinton] told the crowd that she had attended the march in 1992. That year, she said, "We elected a pro-choice president. This year we've got to do it again." She urged the marchers, "I want you to turn to the person next to you . . . in front of you . . . behind you and ask them, 'Are you registered to vote and do you vote?' "

Behind the stage actress Candace Bergen stood with her daughter, not quite sure what to do. "Everyone's in shock that we actually have to fight for this," she said. "But there's a certain sense that things that were hard won are in jeopardy."...

Just realized I forgot to post this: The March for Women's Lives, a reproductive freedom march, will be happening tomorrow in DC. Even though I'm not able to go tomorrow, Martha's still going to be there.

This event is organized by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, and with many other organizations I should probably know more about. (A fuller list is here.)

Martha's up in Boston, presenting a paper. So I've been on my own here in NJ.

Spent Friday night at Craig and Paula's. Helped Barbara and Cathy move today; they now have a nice house just a few blocks away from the old one.

From the Baltimore Sun: Here cicada, there cicada, everywhere cicada cicada

Your whole yard is swarming with cicadas, cicadas that are laughing, cracking beers, cranking the stereo, throwing each other in the pool, doing cannonballs off the high dive...

Another link: The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology--Insect Division--Periodical Cicada Page
Includes sounds and pictures of the creepy fellas.

Hey, all you big-car fetishists: I came across this article, Big and Bad by Malcolm Gladwell, that looks like it was written just for you. It may not change your mind, but it will make you think. (It also justifies my iitty biity plastic Saturn.)

"...It's amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cupholders it has." During the design of Chrysler's PT Cruiser, one of the things Rapaille learned was that car buyers felt unsafe when they thought that an outsider could easily see inside their vehicles. So Chrysler made the back window of the PT Cruiser smaller. Of course, making windows smaller--and thereby reducing visibility--makes driving more dangerous, not less so. But that's the puzzle of what has happened to the automobile world: feeling safe has become more important than actually being safe.

Malcolm Gladwell is the guy who wrote The Tipping Point, a wonderful book that Judith lent me about contagious ideas and change. His writing always brings in unexpected elements; unfortunately, he's not written books since 2002's Tipping Point.

The new Actors Studio Drama School building in lower Manhattan has a really nice courtyard, even if the wind there does blow sand in your eyes.

After we met Amy in Brooklyn, we had lunch in Manhattan at a pretend-British restaurant in the Village. (Sorry, I forget the name.) Not bad food, but the coffee was very thin, although Martha liked it. Amy liked the tea, though.

We've been driving into the city habitually and yesterday was the first time we've hit serious traffic. Might have been because there was a walk-for-charity event going on.

Michael A. Burstein's story Paying it Forward, published in the September 2003 Analog, has been nominated for a Hugo. I personally feel that this story belongs with Kaddish for the Last Survivor and TeleAbsence as his best work yet. Although if he ever finished the Broken Symmetry series... arrgh. On the other hand, I see the wisdom in moving on to something new; it's easy to get caught in the trap of polishing an old thing rather than make a new one up out of whole cloth.

Anyway, Paying it Forward should be available for free download at Fictionwise fairly soon, as Michael has pointed out on his LiveJournal. (They've always posted award nominees for free download in the past.) The full listing of nominees has been posted on the Noreascon site. And look at the other nominees; he's been nominated alongside Neil Gaiman and Joe Haldeman.

Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yesterday, the latest from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). Eternal Sunshine deals with love and our perception of it; emotional baggage and subsequent expectations in relationships.

The film handles this through the lens of a couple, Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), who break up; Joel shortly finds out that Clementine has had memories of their relationship deleted from her brain. He decides to undergo the procedure as well, mostly to strike blindly back at Clementine, and the film is a framed as a journey through his memories.

The film is excellent, nearly as good as Being John Malkovich, although the non-linear narration may be off-putting or distracting to some. I found it highly engaging and thought-provoking.

Links:

Being Charlie Kaufman, a fan site
Lacuna, Inc. will erase painful memories for you. Looks like a real medical site.
Stephen Notley's review

Let's see... recorded a new performance demo of Eyes Up Front today. This is the first of 3-4 songs I'll be putting on a demo disc for gigs.

After the open mic yesterday, Grazina mentioned that I could use a few voice lessons, to smooth off the rough edges of my voice, and I think I can hear what she's talking about in this new demo. Nevertheless, for the first time, I like how my voice sounds on a recording.

Good show. Set list:

Eyes Up Front
She Told It To Me Twice
There's That Song
Never Had A Brother

Added on 13 April 2003:
Grazina suggested I could benefit from a few voice lessons. I think she meant this less in the sense of, hey Neil your voice sucks like Passover layer cake, and more in the sense that ya know, there's a decent voice there, you should polish it with a few lessons.

This is not a bad idea, and it could only help; does anyone know a good voice teacher in the Edison area?

Update, 11 May 2004: This was at Cleo's Internet Cafe in Highland Park.