Clara and the Doctor

Clara and the 13th Doctor

Just started watching Season 8 of Doctor Who with the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi.  At first I wasn't quite sure but the episode grows on me the more times I rewatch it.  I think Capaldi will be a good doctor, a good change from the recent past.

I wasn't really into the Matt Smith era all that much.  The whole Amy Pond era was just too much mind-fecking, who-begat-who, turning on your own self and eating your own Canon, ongoing non-stopping story arcs for me.  Turned me right off.  I thought things picked up though with Clara Oswald joining and getting rid of the Ponds.   

I've been watching Doctor Who since the mid 1970s when Tom Baker was the Doctor, so I've been with this show for some time.

There are rumors that Jenna Coleman, who plays Clara, wanted to leave the show.  These rumors are now being downplayed.  But I think this might be a good thing.  Yes, Clara is very attractive and very good as a companion, but she just isn't a fit with the grizzled grumpy old man that the Doctor has become.  She was a great fit with the preppy Matt Smith and the near-romance between them was almost understandable.  Clara is a happy shiny person and so was Matt Smith's doctor.  Capaldi is back to some good old 1st/4th Doctor complaining, snarky, in your face action. 

That sort of thing just isn't a good fit with a happy shiny preppy type.  Its like Peri and the antisocial 6th Doctor.  It will just make you feel bad for the pretty Clara always getting snarked at and make the 13th Doctor look like an asshole being mean to a lovely preppy chirpy young girl.  Capaldi's doctor needs someone more snarky, someone who will push back in more of an aggressive way.  

The perfect companion for him would be someone like Sara Jane Smith, or even Leela or Ace.  Not necessarily a warrior maiden blowing things up, but a scrapper.  Someone who takes it on the cuff and isn't afraid of mixing it up with friends and enemies then can laugh about it afterwards.  

Diagnosis over Skype

I just saw an article on the news about a new service being investigated on diagnosing illnesses over Skype or other video services; just decided to add my worthless two cent opinion on it.

This service would be good in situations where its clear what the person has.  The flu, a sinus infection, a cold, or something simple.  You see, the main problem is that people often have illnesses that any well trained Allied Health Professional can identify, but no one (underline that a billion times) nobody at all is allowed to diagnose but a licensed medical doctor (well some nurse practitioners but see below).

And I have no problem with that.  A nurse practitioner misdiagnosed gall bladder disease and pancreitis as GERD (bad heartburn) with my girlfriend.  She ended up in the emergency ward and was rushed into emergency surgery soon after.  So, really, we all have gripes with doctors sometimes but you really really want to see a doctor for a diagnosis.  That MD (or equivalent medical degree) does mean that they know a thing or two!

So, back to this diagnosis by video.  If a medical doctor can diagnose an illness from a remote location (to her/his satisfaction), then the nurses/medical professionals on site can begin instant treatment and the pharmacy can dispense medication.   It would be a good idea except in situations where diagnosis would involve more than observation or basic medical health signs (pulse, blood pressure, etc).  

Book Review - Nazi Wireless Propaganda by M.A. Doherty

Fascinating history of something that should be more widely known.

I wasn't sure what to expect upon receiving this book but this account of Lord Haw Haw, Goebbels, and their associated goons was a very good read. Doherty writes well and, although he does run on at times, makes for a very good account of German propaganda. Not long ago I had learned of the existence of a New British Broadcasting Company NBBC ran by the Germans but found very little about it. This book covers great detail about it and other projects upon which the Nazis pretended to be illegal British radio stations protesting the war. This tactic would be marvelously spun around by Sefton Delmer and played on the Germans even better.

For WWII "buffs", armchair historians, and people interested in the history of propaganda, I highly recommend this book. It is not dry nor is it bogged down with minutiae of detail. Doherty focuses on the people involved in the history and the effect that the events had on them (and the effect they had on the events). So many histories and historians focus on events and ignore people. Doherty does not.

If I have any complaints about this book, it is too short! Barely weighing in at 200 pages, it seems to me that this book could have been easily twice the size without losing any of its interest or readability. Get this book while it is still available if anything WWII or propaganda interests you at all!

Insensitive or just stupid?

I've been reading of the tragic deaths of Robin Williams and a local woman named Jennifer Hudson who also ended her own life seemingly when she had so much to live for.

So many of the comments to the stories express disbelief, but there are so many that say things like "we don't know all the details, so how can they say suicide..." or "asphyxiation does not mean suicide, we need to know more!" Comments along those lines.

People, when the reports mention "asphyxiation", "ligature," and law enforcement saying, after one or the other (or both) of those words, that they're pretty sure its suicide, it means they found them hanging by their neck from a line!  Its just indelicate to say that!

Of course, it usually comes out in the end exactly what they found, like David Carridine, who was found hanging from his neck in a closet. 

It just makes me wonder about people sometimes.  Are they really just daft?  Are they like the people that Wierd Al Yankovich makes fun of in one of his parodies that just have to know everything? 

And no, YOU don't need to know how they died in gory detail.  Family members, yes, but not YOU. 

It'll all come out for Robin Williams anyway since we seem to have this obsession with celebrity deaths.  Personally, I think its a form of vicarious enjoyment because people are secretly jealous of their success and now get to read of their final horrifying moments and what state they were left in.

For the ghouls out there that need their death porn, just go read an account on the effects of strangulation and hanging.  There's lots of those stories out there and you can read all about it.  

Book Review: The Occult Reich by J.H. Brennan

The Charles Berlitz of World War II

To preface this review, I have read Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's books on the Nazis and the Occult as well as Dusty Skylar's "The Nazis and the Occult." Goodrick-Clarke comes from the point of view that, of course, the occult is just a bunch of hokum but certain Nazis believed it and acted on some of the weird and twisted beliefs they found there. Goodrick-Clarke is very skeptical, as other Historians are, that Hitler took the occult truly seriously other than the effect it had to bolster his own claims to power.

Skylar takes a middle road and writes that the Nazis exploited the occult and maybe there is something in it. However, Skylar is quite clear that if there is "something in it", it is psychological magic instead of paranormal magick. Indeed, Skylar compares Hitler's movement and persona to recent evil cult leaders and the mesmeric effect they had on their followers.

Brennen, a prolific writer on occult matters, is far to the other side. For Brennen, Hitler was an experienced Satanist who focused his magical energies for his own evil ends. Himmler was not the master occultist of the Third Reich, it was Hitler. And to Brennen, this occult stuff is very, very real. His book, small and short and looking like one of the Charles Berlitz books about the Bermuda Triangle is written in a fantastical tabloid style with long digressions to show where Hitler may have got his evil satanic teachings. Crowley and Gurdjieff are mentioned although not directly linked to Hitler. As, in Brennen's world view, Crowley and Gurdjieff were mages with genuine powers, they are just compared to how Hitler himself had powers of precognition and reality bending with his will.

While this book expects the reader to approach from the point of view that all occult and paranormal phenomena are real, it is very well written. It is actually quite an enjoyable read. Written in 1974, it is quite dated but is often still quoted to this day by other authors. I even saw Brennen himself interviewed in a documentary on Hitler and the Occult (alongside Skylar and Goodrick-Clarke).

I recommend this book (if you can get a copy) more for the entertainment value. Its written well and is a fascinating read. Making Hitler into a Voldemort superman is, in my opinion, much more credit than the little twerp deserves, but who knows? (insert twilight zone musical cue here :-)

Book Review - Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars

More of an in depth history of Britain between the wars.

Pugh's book is very thorough and well written. At times, his prose is very thick and somewhat hard going to read as he is a historian and writes in a dense scholarly matter. However, the writing is lively and active and it is not boring.

"Hurrah for the Blackshirts" is less of a story of Oswald Mosley, William Joyce, and others of that ilk and more of a socio-political history of Britain between World War I and World War II. Pugh goes into depth on various economic matters, political matters, bringing up hundreds of names and people in passing. Large sections of the book discuss current events of the time with little to no reference to any fascists at all. In fact, there is a chapter of the book that details British policy in India at this time which seems totally out of place. Pugh seems to realize this as well, seeing that he's thread-jacking his own book, he kept putting in throwaway references to Mosley through this particular chapter with such phrases like "Mosley disapproved of this" or "Mosley agreed with that."

Luckily, the book gets back on track in the final chapters (the best) which really focus on the fascists. William Joyce (the Infamous "Lord Haw-Haw" is only mentioned in passing with other fascists but Pugh really focuses on Oswald Mosley and much can be learned about him here. While making no conclusions, Pugh portrays him as a self-absorbed playboy more concerned with building up his personal legend than actually trying to make fascism happen in Britain.

A personal observation of mine though is that, like most 'mainstream' historians, Pugh totally ignores the pseudo-religious background to most of the fascist movements of Europe. This has been written about by such writers as Dusty Skylar and historians such as Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke. Even art historians such as Johnathan Meades talk of it. The Nazis especially were highly influenced by their strange own occult beliefs that convinced them of the demonic in-humanness of their victims and allowed them to slaughter them all the more because of it. 

 Pugh sidesteps these beginnings although refers in a number of occasions to the "romantic nationalist ideas" of National Socialism and fascism in general. While Pugh and others may see the idea of the Aryan descending directly from heaven and inhabiting Atlantis among the "beast-men" as ridiculous (which it is), these ideas did in fact make these fascists do what they did. 

Himmler and Hess were fundamentalist believers in their occult view of the world, a view which, while ludicrous, made them do the crimes against humanity which they did. Simply pretending that the pseudo-occult motivations of the Nazis and other fascists didn't happen because its too weird is just Pugh being careful among his fellow mainstream historians.

In Search of Aliens: The Mystery of Loch Ness

Giorgio interviews Nessie to get her opinion on the ancient astronaut question!

Giorgio Tsoukalos' latest adventure is another old tale, like his Atlantis expedition.  However, this time, I really liked it.  Just like Atlantis, I have been reading about Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster, for well near forty years.  I've also seen numerous television shows about it.  Unlike Atlantis though, Nessie has been and remains one of my favorite topics!

Giorgio arrives at the shore of Loch Ness and meets Steve Feltham, one of the monster hunters who used to infest the shores of Loch Ness back in the 1960s and 1970s.  Feltham's own vigil began in 1991, long after Rhines, Holliday, and the other monster hunters had all gone.  In a way, Feltham, living out of a tiny trailer on the shore, made Giorgio seem quite normal and totally sensible while he sat on the edge of the loch and made replicas of Nessie to pay for his expedition. 

Sonar evidence is considered although nothing is mentioned of Operation Deepscan back in the 1980s.  

Adrian Shine is still around and Giorgio actually met him.  Shine was once a monster hunter but long ago turned disbeliever and has been a Nessie debunker ever since.   Shine didn't get a chance to debate with Giorgio or anyone else about the veracity of the monster but I know that Shine has argued that there isn't enough fish to support a breeding population of aquatic monster the size of what Nessie is supposed to be.

The surgeon's photograph came up and Giorgio was forced to admit that it was a hoax.  This was a terrible blow to me as well.  Not only because it was a hoax but this one incident was enough to make the whole subject a laughing stalk, not to be taken seriously again.

In fact, very little of the show occurs at Loch Ness, as Giorgio soon returns to the United States and spends the rest of the show talking about Champ, the creature of Lake Champlain.  He views a picture that supposedly has not been debunked or revealed as a fake and interviews a few people.

Trying to tie it all back to hunting aliens, Giorgio supposes that people in olden times might have been mistaking UFOs (or USOs) hiding under lakes as water creatures or monsters.  Also, he interviews a scientist who speculates that the quartz in the earth, present at Lake Champlain and Loch Ness, may in some way make a time tunnel or distortion, allowing visions or actual creatures of the distant past through for a moment, to be seen and vanish.   This is actually not a new idea and is what Rev. Donald Omand thought was going on at Loch Ness; that people were seeing psychical "recordings" of ancient things and that seeing these things was spiritually dangerous.  He tried to exorcise the Loch back in 1973.

Tsoukalos keeps mentioning cryptids and cryptozoology during this episode and I think that's what this is really about.  He does not say anything about the monsters being brought here by aliens or anything like that.  Seems that if something is going on in Loch Ness or Lake Champlain, Giorgio thinks it is time distortions.

All in all, a very good episode which I enjoyed, mainly because it was about one of my all time favorite topics from when I was a kid: The Loch Ness Monster.  Hopefully, Giorgio finds more original and current things to go after though.  As much as Atlantis and Loch Ness are part of our folklore and mythology, they've really been covered hundreds of times in books and television shows.  Getting Tsoukalos' take on these things is interesting, but he needs to branch off on his own, to really go... In Search of Aliens!

Book Review: The Irish War of Independence by Michael Hopkinson

A good history but a dull read.

Very precise history but very dry reading.  The author does not make the subject very exciting to read; however it is very thorough and knowledgeable. Interestingly, the author warns the reader at the start that his writing style is "different" and might take some getting used to. Instead of a linear approach, Hopkinson talks about one area or one thread through a period of time and then goes back to begin another thread at a different time.  While this cuts down on the confusing re-occurrence of names and places at different times, which can be confusing, it can also be jarring to go through the entire event sequence of a period and then be shifted all the way back to the start to go through it again.

This style in itself isn't the problem, its just that Hopkinson does not write very interesting prose.   I know its a history and not a novel but I have read some histories by acclaimed historians which have kept me awake nights turning the next page, drew me into the events, and made me care or fear for people they were talking about. Hopkinson is not one of those authors.

On the "Pro" side though, the book does do what is advertised. You will be informed about The Irish War for Independence. Hopkinson portrays both sides of the struggle truthfully, exposing their strengths and failings. He is very harsh about the British response to Irish aspirations and he is also critical of the Irish in some of the ways they went about confronting the British. In this way, he is about as fair and balanced as you're going to get about a topic which many people still feel very strongly about, with strong feelings on both sides.

What is left behind...

I mentioned previously, regarding antediluvian/ice-age/post-ice-age civilizations that if they did exist, they most probably did not get as technically advanced as many seem to believe.  That is, they probably didn't have electric lights, plastic, stainless steel, and snacks like the ice-cream sandwiches from Wal-Mart.

I say this mainly because those things do not decay, ever.  Styrofoam will break up, but never deteriorate.  At least not in the time frame (10-15 thousand years) we're talking about.  I saw one of those "After Man" shows recently that said that while iron would rust and deteriorate, stainless steel would not (they showed a kitchen sink in a stream bed).  The Eiffel Tower, if not kept up, would be gone in a few hundred years as its mostly iron.  However, stainless steel would still be around.

An argument that the prior civilization(s) had to be industrial or even post-industrial (using our terminology) is that there seem to have been world wide trading networks.  Goods have seemed to get shunted around all over the place in the ancient world.

However, as a show about the Anglo-Saxons that I watched recently revealed, such trading networks can occur with non-literate agricultural groups.  The Anglo-Saxons had ivory and amber in some of their ornamentation.  But this does not mean that ships were going direct from Africa to Britain in 400AD (at least not Roman ones).  The trading networks were point to point.  The ivory found in pre-literate Anglo-Saxon digs would have been passed merchant to merchant, hand to hand, until finally getting to Britain. 

On the other hand, this shows that pretty complex and centralized civilizations can exist without being literate, an argument against such antediluvian civilizations as people assume they would have to have writing to be complex.

I'm bringing this all up because there's an argument that industrial or even post-industrial evidence could have been lost by a world-wide flood or catastrophe.  Of course, anything is possible, something like this could have happened.  We have to remember that at the end of the last ice age, the sea levels rose something like 300 feet.  If that happened today, most of the world's largest cities would be gone and under hundreds of feet of water.   If the waters rose higher, and then receded, perhaps this past culture's plastic and steel got covered under hundreds of feet of mud and rock.

I know of an instance where this happened in living memory.  The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1981 buried Spirit Lake under hundreds of feet of ash and mud, along with a recluse named Harry Truman, his cats, vehicles, and modern equipment.  A huge world wide disaster could have done this to a technological civilization.  Some finds have claimed to find metal screws and nails embedded in ancient lava and rock formations, anomalous finds in ancient mines. 

But I'm still not totally convinced.  I just think that if they were industrial or more advanced, we'd find more anomalous remains than we have so far.

However, I do think that something was going on before us.  For decades, mainstream archaeology and anthropology have told us, as a matter of rock-hard fact, that the Sumerians were the first culture and that nothing and nobody was around before them.   Earlier sites in Jordan and Turkey kept cropping up irritatingly but then Gobeckli Tepe happened.   This site is 12,000 years old!  That's like 10,000 years before Sumer, 7,000 years before the pyramids.   And no, it wasn't a one-off isolated site which is how the mainstream scientists are trying to fob it off as. 

Oh sure, those carvings at Gobeckli Tepe look crude but you go out right now and try to chisel a bas-relief alligator out of a big block of stone.  The stonemasons that did that had experience and teaching, and that came from somewhere.  They just didn't haul off one day and make that site then bury it.

I just wish that this prior civilization had buried a library of theirs like they did to Gobeckli Tepe to show more of what they were up to.  Of course, maybe they did.  One day some shepherd might fall through a hole and find himself in a vault of stone tablets from 12,000 years ago.  That will be enough of a find!  No need for pictures of aliens or electric light bulbs handing from the ceiling to spice it up... although I must admit that would be a cool touch!

Book Review - To Die For Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon by Jay W. Baird

A book with a split personality.

This book is well written and is an easy and good read. It seems to actually be two books in one though. The first part of the book is indeed about Nazi "heros" who were killed early on in the Nazi Movement in Germany such as Horst Wessel the Ur-Skinhead (I think he is who Elton John's song about Saturday night is alright for fighting is written about) and the sixteen "immortals" who were gunned down during the abortive attempt to overthrow the Government of Bravaria in 1923.

Each chapter contains an account of a different subject, however, after a few chapters, the book suddenly changes content and tone. The middle and final chapters are no longer about Nazi's who died but goes over to talking about Nazi aesthetics, poetry, and propaganda. Indeed, there are pages and pages of Nazi poetry about death and mother's loss until you start getting weepy-eyed for the fallen German SS soldiers. It snaps me back to reality though when I realize these SS soldiers that Baird's presentation of poetry are getting me weepy about would have gladly and happily killed me as an untermench had they come across me in their conquests.

All in all a very good book. Baird's emotional portrayal of the Nazi cult's embracement of death in all their arts (with pages and pages of tear-jerking Nazi poetry) will make you reconsider and think. And that's the best thing a book like this can do, break you down, make you consider once again: Was this period of history really that bad? Were we right in resisting the "noble" and "mother loving" Nazis? Did they have a point sending their einsatzgreuppen against the Jews and Slavs and everyone else they didn't like? Some say its dangerous to think those thoughts. I personally do not because I always come down on the side that the Nazis were pure evil if for no other reason that I personally would have been the first they shot or threw in their ovens had they come across me.

Atlantis calling! Atlantis calling!

Just sit right back and hear a tale...

I totally forgot to say something about Giorgio Tsoukalos's first episode of "In Search of Aliens."  It was called "The Hunt for Atlantis."  There's probably a good reason for this.  As much as I love to watch Giorgio, I was probably trying hard to stay awake.

I've been reading about Atlantis for very nearly forty years, either in books or articles in books.  I've also watched countless documentaries and television programs about it.   For me, Atlantis is a very old, very dead, and very well beaten horse.  I guess that's my problem for being an ancient! :-)

Still, when I saw the title of the first ever program starring Giorgio, I rolled my eyes.  Atlantis?!?  Really?!?  But that's just because, for me, its a topic more overplayed than a Phil Collins song. 

Still, the episode itself is very good.  Giorgio has a lot of energy and seems to really believe in what he's doing.  Hey, if I could be paid to travel the world and babble about aliens and 'ancient mysteries', I'd probably be pretty happy too!  Giorgio's take on Atlantis is that it was in the southwestern Iberian peninsula.  A variant on the 'Tartessos' theory that Atlantis was one of the ancient kingdoms in the region that would later be Spain and Portugal.   

Well, Giorgio ends up thinking that Atlantis itself may have been some sort of alien base on Earth.   It wasn't destroyed so much as left (cue MIB scene "No, Elvis is not dead, he just went home!)  

I enjoyed the program although I probably know as much, if not more, of the various how/who/where/when/what theories of Atlantis than even Tsoukalos himself.   I think that, if Atlantis did exist, it was an ice-age or post-ice age civilization contemporaneous with the builders of Gobeckli Tepe.  If it was anything more than a pure invention of Plato, it could be a distant memory of a prior civilization, probably totally built up by Plato in the telling.  

Ancient Aliens: The Tesla Experiment

Last week's Ancient Aliens program focused totally on the life and character of Nikola Tesla, the famous inventor of the late 19th and early 20th century.  

It was rather a good show.  They did not stray too far into the realms of fantasy and really did not even say that Tesla was given his information by aliens; although he could have been influenced by them in some way.  They didn't even mention the usual theory that Tesla could have been an 'avatar' or 'plant' put upon the world by the aliens to advance human knowledge.  Well, maybe one guy mentioned that, but this week, Ancient Aliens pretty much stuck to the book.

I suppose too much is known about Nikola Tesla and too much of what did happen is wild enough (truth stranger than fiction) without the necessity for grey aliens doing morally shaky and ethically unsound things with Tesla or his mother (before his birth). 

The Tesla Experiment didn't even mention the theory that Tesla could have inadvertently caused the Tunguska Explosion (something he's been accused of).  Supposedly he did get his transmission of power through the air working though, although the way that AA made it sound, it was more transmission through the ground to light bulbs put into the earth along a path.  Other bizarre and strange Tesla stories that I have heard were absent; AA kept to the books and mainly just talked about his actual achievements. 

Tesla's later years were only lightly touched on when, like Howard Hughes, Tesla spend his final years a virtual recluse and seemingly mad as a hatter.

All in all, a very interesting outing for Ancient Aliens.  A good episode to watch if you are new to Nikola Tesla.  Its practically a documentary of his life with only a few 'out there' frills thrown in at the edges.

Book Review: Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult by Peter Levenda

More like "The Occult's Involvement with the Nazis"

This is an interesting book but it must be said that the cover and the title are a little misleading. Levenda does talk quite a bit about the Nazis and their occult movement. However, great swaths of the book recount general occult societies' history through the 20th century. Levenda lavishes chapters on Aleister Crowley (who Lavenda seems to think influenced almost every event in the first part of the century).

One further thing must be said about this book. Levenda approaches his subject from a number of assumptions. Assumptions that many people would call conspiracy theories. For instance, to Levenda, Martin Boremann's survival and escape to South America is not a theory but a fact. Levenda reminds the reader on several occasions that Boremann escaped to South America in the guise of a Catholic priest and with the help of the Catholic church. The fact that DNA testing in the early 1990s has pretty much overwhelmingly proved that Boremann died in Berlin in 1945 never comes into play.

The Catholic church does not come off well with Lavenda and he adds the fact that they were allied to the Nazis from the start (another "fact" Levanda accepts as gospel) to the many recent charges against them. Another "fact" is that Crowley was a British MI5 agent from WW1 and through WW2, actively working with the British government. These and other "facts", some just not well documented to others which are pretty much the territory of Conspiracy Theorists, really increase the "grain of salt" factor of the book.

Levenda, not a historian but some manner of journalist who spend most of his life investigating the occult, really knows his stuff though. Much of the text are obscure and phantasmagorical occult references to societies and personalities long forgotten and dead. Charles Manson gets a good airing as does LeVay, founder of Satanism. He does try to tie it all back to Nazi Germany in the first part of the book. Helena Blavatsky is fingered as one of the founding influences for Naziism, which she probably was.

Even for all the wild VonDaniken-esque ramblings and heapings of "facts", this book is a really good read. Lavenda's story of how he tried to penetrate a secret "Nazi" compound in Chile (which indeed is there and in which the Chilean dictatorship of the time did carry out very gruesome acts) is very gripping. Whether or not Martin Boreman and every other unaccounted for Nazi was hiding there at the time is really up for debate though. Its also good if you are up on your occult knowledge to know some of what Levenda is talking about. I recommend this book but go into it as a book written by an occultist with an axe to grind, not as a history written by an academic.

The Lathe of Harry Potter

I saw an article lately about Ursula Le Guin called "Ursula K. Le Guin pressured to make books 'more like Harry Potter' "

I really can't think of a good analogy to this.  Its like asking Michelangelo to paint pictures of McDonald's characters for advertisements.  I have to admit that I haven't read as much Le Guin as most science fiction readers but I know enough that she is one of the giants of real science fiction, up there with Heinlein and Frank Herbert in my book.  Her book, The Lathe of Heaven, has haunted my mind for forty years since I first read it.  The 70s movie was okay, although it changed stuff a lot.

In fact, I wonder if Ms. Le Guin thought of her 1971 book when her publishers made this ludicrous suggestion, demand even.  The Lathe of Heaven is about all sorts of things; power corrupting absolutely, the abuse of power, the possibility that our problems will get solved in ways that we didn't intend and that are very bad.   Like the characters in the book, magic users in Harry Potter are able to remake their world, delete and edit memories, call things into existence that weren't there before.  But in Harry's world, this is all cool (and having almost no negative long range consequences).  

I just find this whole idea amusing.  I enjoyed the first couple of Potter books until author-bloat set in and JK Rowling showed her true stripes and lack of talent by doing the opposite of what usually happens with new successful writers: Her books became more bloated, less focused, less carefully plotted as she threw in more and more stuff, more and more wizbang and less thoughtfulness.  The final books, in which she portrays magical battles as mere gun battles with wands instead of attack rifles, was just disappointing.  These people are supposed to have strange magical powers but there was none of the idea of high magic and warfare in a whole different plane.

In the end, wanting a great science fiction writer to write JK Rowling stories is just silly anyway, its a whole other genre.  I suppose its understandable, the desire to admixture something you love with something else you love is a common theme I see in everyday life.  Gamers who want a computer game which combines two other games they love, but would suck if it was actually done.  You can't mix Harry Potter and the Earthsea Chronicles.  No matter how much you might love both of them, if you mixed them, you can almost be guaranteed a bad result. 

Stealing from myself!

I've been feeling sort of depressed and down the last couple of days so I haven't had much to say, or to post to a blog.  I'm a sort of person who clams up when they get "blue" and don't say much.  However, I still want to post content on my blog here.  They say that trying to keep blogging and stuff like this is good for depression.  

So, all these book reviews that I've been posting are actually mine, I just wrote them previously.  They are actually book reviews that I wrote for Amazon.com, but I thought I would repost them here.  

I'm sure that if I was a famous blogger or online personality, I'd have someone email me telling me that someone was stealing my stuff from Amazon.com (or visa versa).  That gives me a good giggle, because its just me, stealing from myself.  Oh well, I'll sort it out with myself later!

Book Review: Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts

I bought this book in a batch with several others and didn't read it right away. From the title I was expecting something very dry, very boring, very thick.

Boy, was I wrong!

First off, in the introduction, Spotts starts off strong, talking about how his book has been required reading in universities AND neo-nazi forums and websites. He talks about how he has been accused of being a Nazi apologist, or maybe even more... His work has been misunderstood and even used to show people how aesthetic opinions and value can change once the provenience of a work is known (he mentions someone shown a Hitler painting saying that its okay and a good quaint try by a beginner recoiling in horror when told who drew it!). But most of all, Spotts writes with incredible humor, tongue and cheek, spearing Hitler, the Nazis, and even art critics with barbs and jabs through the text which frequently made me laugh out loud! And that's just the introduction...

The book is very long, I warn you. It is "thickly" written... Spotts is an academic and will expect you to digest difficult ideas with sometimes convoluted sentences. He writes from the assumption that you already have a nodding familiarity with aesthetics, art history, art criticism, and WW2. Oh, he does explain things and gives some background but he does not spend much time on it. This is something I personally like because it bores me to death when a historian feels the need to digress for ten pages to explain something s/he just introduced until I have forgotten what the original point is!

Pictures! There are pictures on almost every page! This is something I totally love about this book. Even in the paperback copy, there was practically a picture on every page about something being talked about in the text. For this alone, I highly recommend this book.

Everything is covered in this book. Architecture, paintings, movies, even how Hitler got involved with the creation of the Volkswagen. The looting of valuable art by the Nazis is given in such detail that I had to skip through lengthy lists of artworks stolen by the Nazis (the overwhelming amount of data probably included by Spotts just to give an idea of the enormity of the deed).

And through it all Spotts will remind you of who's side he's on as he wryly snipes at the Nazis with entertaining quips and comments. Other armchair generals and historians have launched offensives against the Nazis in the areas of Nazi military stupidity, propaganda and their horrible war of extermination against the Jews and everyone else they didn't like. Many historians and documentaries try to make a meal of Hitler's initial failings in Vienna trying to get into the art school with many a wispy "what if..." Spotts will have none of that. I don't have the direct quote at hand but you'll know it when you read it because it made me guffaw... words to the effect that Hitler just sucked! This book truly is an art historian's offensive against the Nazis in support.

In all, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in art history, World War 2, and the Nazis. It took me a long time to get through it, its lengthy and densely written at times, but its entertaining and even uplifting. Spotts holds back no punches in showing you not only in what the world lost but also the horror of what almost came to pass... and that's when its uplifting because you close the covers of the book and realize, even just in the art world alone, how lucky we all are that the Nazis failed.

Book Review - The Secret Army: The IRA by J. Bowyer Bell

A Definitive Work!

This is, or was, the definitive history of the IRA. Begun in 1974, this book had been constantly revised and updated by the author up until his death in 2002. Unfortunately for us, this means that this book was no longer updated with the most recent events such as the ongoing peace process and activities of breakaway groups such as the "New IRA" are not covered.

Its well written, although there are a number of bizarre run-on sentences and fragments which seem to be mistakes in editing. There are no pictures at all, at least in this edition. Not even a central photo section. The text itself is very informative and this book really is cited by almost every other history or book written about the IRA. It is really a necessary basic source for anyone wanting to really dig into the subject.

While Bell is not Irish himself, he seems to approach the subject fairly, portraying all sides in the conflict objectively. Or at least as much as possible. When the text gets to the modern era, he is critical of everyone, including the British Army, for all the pointless killing and bombings which occurred. Since the text ends with the Good Friday Agreement of 1997, Bell ends his work in a hopeful "we'll see" for the future of Ireland. As Bell passed away soon after, he could give no further analysis of the situation and for that, the student or reader will have to find more current histories. One thing for certain though, those histories will cite this work as a source.

I started reading books focused on one area or another of recent Irish History, the Civil War, the Anglo-Irish War, even a book on the Border Campaign of the late 50s early 60s. However, looking back at it, I would go so far as to say that anyone who wants to get into the history of the Troubles or recent Irish history, should start with this book first. The overview is invaluable.

Book Review: Irish Secrets by Mark M. Hull

 

Mostly about espionage, avoids too much concentration on the IRA-Germany connection.

This was a really good book! Well written, packed with information, its main focus is on the activities of the Abwehr in Ireland from just before World War 2 through the entire conflict. I wanted to read this book as I had seen a documentary on TV about the collusion between the IRA and the Germans during WW2 (plan Kathleen). 

While the book does talk about Plan Kathleen and does mention the IRA, the author avoids too much discussion about the IRA itself. Most of the attention is on the individual German agents who are drawn colorfully and showing all their failings. It seems Ireland wasn't very high on Canaris' list and he didn't send very good agents there. The fact that he was probably trying to sabotage his own plans (some say Canaris was working against the Nazis or at least ambivalent about them) explains why he sent out such obviously poor agents.

The book gives a lot of information on espionage itself, the use of codes, signals, the "book code" and background such as that so it is a more of a history of espionage in the 20th century than about Irish internal politics.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Irish History of this period, espionage, propaganda, or World War II history. Its well and lively written with plenty of photographs throughout.

Something totally off the wall! The Neo-Nazis and the Daleks!

Just a day or two ago, I was surfing the net as you do and I came across a neo-nazi site (which will remain nameless) that babbled on and on about 'true human origin' as they do.  Aryan white man came from heaven and non-whites were made by Satan to destroy them, that sort of thing.  Anyway, there was an interesting comment there in their FAQ section:

-----------------------------------

Do you deny the Holocaust?

We do not need to deny the ‘Holocaust’ any more than we need to deny that Daleks fought in WWII. However, we ask why there are no laws requiring people to believe that Daleks fought in WWII.

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Au Contraire Mein Fuhrer, but they did!  No seriously, if you're going to compare real word events to fiction, then we can hold that fiction as real as the events you purport to deny.  And indeed, in Doctor Who canon, Victory of the Daleks, the Daleks were indeed involved directly in events of WWII, even appearing with Winston Churchill!  It was all a ruse, of course, but I won't spoil the episode, it was a good one!  Go watch it!

I also find common ground here with these Neo-Nazis.  There should be laws requiring people to watch and support Doctor Who and know that Daleks were involved in WWII!

Book Review: The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin

Is he playing pool with planets?

 Sitchin's theory reminds me of an episode of the British comedy "Red Dwarf" where Dave Lister (the main character) causes one planet to hit another to fill in a white hole (using the interface of a pool table shot to do it). Only, Marduk/Nibiru's shot was a glancing shot that shot Earth into orbit, caused the asteroid belt and (to borrow again from Red Dwarf) "shot Marduk off the table and into someone's pint of beer."

I love reading about phenomenology, the occult, the paranormal, ancient astronauts, etc. However Sitchin is just a little bit too far for my tastes. And I think I know why. Born in the early part of the 20th century, Sitchin's "scientific" terminology and knowledge is just too dated for modern readers. Anyone with even a nodding education in physics or astronomy knows that his theories are ludicrous. But its not so much that Sitchin is an idiot but that he is a product of his times. Its like the 19th century physicists or modern occults use of the term "magnetism." It doesn't mean what the modern scientific definition of magnetism is. This is how Sitchin is with terminology like "radiation." I do not think Sitchin means the same thing that we, in the post-atomic age, know as radiation (visible light, gamma radiation, microwaves, the spectrum, etc etc).

Indeed, Sitchin has that quaint early 20th century idea that all radiation is good radiation. Nibiru didn't need the sun in the depths of space because it had its own "radiation" to keep it warm (kind of like a microwave!). I guess Sitchin never heard that, except for a very narrow band, most radiation is very very bad for organic life.

Wrapping your head around Sitchin's cosmology isn't just a stretch, its a rip. But if I was going to try, I'd say the closest anyone else has ever got to Sitchin's idea for Nibiru was Brian Aldiss' "Helliconia" series which postulates a planet with extreme climactic eras because of being in a double sun system. Could Nibiru's radiation keep something warm for 2,000 years of deep space? Oh sure, I can imagine silicon based lifeforms that could be bathed in microwave radiation like we sunbathe... make a good episode of Doctor Who, I bet!

The Sammich: I'm so old, I can see language change!

When I was young, I was very interested in languages and linguistics.  I wanted to study linguistics but I had some medical problems in my youth which I'll probably bore all of you with one of these days.

I learned smatterings of lots of languages, the most I've ever learned of any one language is French.  My favorites are Welsh and Latin.  And of course, I'm a huge Tolkien fan and have practically memorized his essay "A Secret Vice" in which he discusses language creation as a hobby.

A while ago, I noticed people starting to use the word sammich for sandwich.  More and more its turning up, mostly on the internet.  Supposedly, sammich is not just any sandwich but is applied only to the best and most delicious of sandwiches.  

This is quickly falling by the wayside as my girlfriend these days uses the terms interchangeably and mostly favors sammich these days as the primary way of referring to sandwich.  This effect is actually how come we refer to dogs as dogs while in almost every other Germanic language they use some variant of hund, hond.  Our original word for dog, hound, still survives but is not as widely used. 

Now, coining new words, neologisms, neoglossia, these things happen every day.  Either through borrowing or some radical word change.  The recent appearance of the term cray, or craycray "crazy" is one example.  (Duplication of the word root to indicate emphasis is very widely used, especially in SE Asian languages and elsewhere). 

But sammich is, I think, a genuine example of sound change through time.  The sound law ND > M is a common one in Indo-European linguistics and is actually used by Tolkien in 'evolving' is Elvish languages from a root original to the 'modern' forms.  

Also, the leveling of the w to m afterwards is very common in language change.  There's a term for it, but I can't remember right now.  This is why the m in sammich is 'long', that is its sam-mich, not just sam-ich.  The 'w' has been absorbed into the m for agreement and because its easier to say.  No really, sometimes language change and the human mind work like that!

Why is this occurring now and why hasn't this happened in the few hundred years that the term has been around, ever since John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, couldn't be bothered to take a break from his card games?  I don't know, I just like this stuff, go ask Noam Chomsky!

Seriously though, its a real eye-opener when you can see actual language change in progress.  Not just coining or borrowing, or changing meaning, but honest to goodness processes like this.  It will be a long time though before sandwich vanishes and sammich is our only word for it.  The two words might exist in parallel for some time.  Perhaps sammich will only be applied in certain situations.  Or like the word dog, sammich could quickly eclipse its elder in usage altogether.

Book Review: The Ancient Alien Question by Philip Coppens

The Ancient Goblin Universe

Unfortunately, Philip Coppens passed away last year. I always enjoyed seeing him on "Ancient Aliens" as he seemed to be well spoken and rather level-headed. His book really bares that out as well. While writing about the "Ancient Alien Question" which many might find nonsensical, the realms of fantasy, Coppens approaches his subject very calmly. He does not rant and rave but builds up his case, talking about Carl Sagan's book "Contact" proves to be a 'Chekhov's gun' for his conclusions in the end.

His conclusions are equally as surprising and interesting. There have been many writers I have read that feel that any phenomenology around us is caused by invisible intelligences that have always been around. John Michael Greer writes of magickal or occult intelligences from different levels of being (that we mistake as UFO aliens). For John Keel and Ted Holliday, monsters such as the Loch Ness Monster are either spiritual remnants or evil demonic beings who wish us harm.

Coppens comes down in a similar belief in his conclusion. While it is possible that aliens have physically been here on planet earth, he is skeptical of it. Of all the thousands of reports, he feels it could have happened only about four times and only then accidentally. Coopens does not think any aliens came here to mine our planet or genetically engineer us. However, Coppens theory is that there have been frequent non-physical contacts with "alien" intelligences throughout time. Either through shamans or ceremonies or accidentally through the use of various ceremonies and drugs, people have contacted extra-dimensional beings, or perhaps just aliens on their own worlds. This is where any "ancient alien" influences on ancient civilizations occurred. Its a theory I have seen in UFO and Cryptological literature frequently but this is the first time I have encountered it in regards to the Ancient Alien Theory.

Raiders of the Lost Nazis

Giorgio Tsoukalos' second venture "In Search of Aliens" takes an unfortunate turn into Nazi-UFO mythology in his second episode "Nazi Time Travelers."  The stories and theories presented are old hat and regurgitated old stories which interested parties such as myself have heard before.   Presented as truth now is Jan Van Helsing's story of the Bavaria UFO crash in the mid 1930s, a Nazi Roswell.  Van Helsing, either a neo-nazi anti-Semite, or just a crazy but harmless conspiracy theorist, depending on who you listen to, is hardly a trusted granite source of information.

I say again that this venture into Nazism is unfortunate.  Now, I seriously doubt Tsoukalos is a crypto-nazi or that the people he interviews are neo-nazis of some stripe.  I very much doubt that the History Channel would broadcast neo-nazi revisionism.  And I do not want to believe Giorgio has any sympathy with them.

It has now been many decades since the Nazi era.  Over seventy years!  Most of the people alive to witness the events are dead now.  So it is only understandable, I guess, to begin to drift into story, fable, and the recreation of history, mythologizing many of the events.  This is a standard historical effect.  For many people, including some very deluded people, the Nazi era is a time of cool uniforms, awesome panzers, big armies conquering certain hated enemies, awesome technological wizz-bangs, and a time when one man 'stood up bravely' against the people he hated and despised (Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill depending on your side).   World War II was as historically complex as any other time but for many, pro-Nazi and pro-Allies, it was seemingly a very cut and dried, black and white time.  A time when it was easy to take sides, a battle of good versus evil (and that is relative to which side you were on of course).

As Jacques Peretti said in Hitler: The Comedy Years, all the movies about world war II in the post-war period wanted to record all the nostalgia that people had about the war sans the "horrible bit we found out about at the end" (the death camps and the holocaust). 

However, I have read widely on Nazism and their connection to the occult, and on the current Neo-Nazi movements.  One particular author that directly addresses the problems arising from something like this show's enshrining of Nazi science is the late Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.  Other authors I have read on Nazi fringe matters include Dusty Skylar and Peter Levenda, among others.

The danger of shows like this, is that it mystifies and romanticizes the Nazis.  These tales of vimanas and Die Glockes and secret Nazi achievements.  Talking so much about Nazis like this, divorced of the fact of their terror and oppression, their genocide, dehistoricizes them.  It makes them into a caricature that, while scary or even desired, is not really all that bad.  Just some tough guys in cool black uniforms that tried to invent anti-gravity drive, after all.   The effect of a show like this is to attempt to erase the evil legacy and bad memory of the Third Reich and all they stood for.

For instance, during Giorgio's interviews, even he mentions that prisoners of war would have been used to create "The Henge" and the supposed secret bases, but no mention of how many thousands died doing projects like this around Germany.  He mentions that hundreds of tons of coal had been brought into a certain area of Poland without mentioning who would have been doing the transporting and at what horrible human cost. 


Another danger of making shows mystifying the Nazis is that it does indeed recreate Nazism for a new generation of Neo-Nazis.  Neo-Nazi intellectual sources such as Savatri Devi and Julis Evola did quite a bit of work in this area after the war, rewriting the Nazi 'narrative' to try and make them more heroic, more honorable, and more of what all white people should have joined with.   Such people do not need the help of UFO mythology to further remake Nazism into something that it was not, and make it into a springboard for further murder, destruction, and terror. 

I would heartily recommend that UFO researchers read Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as a beginning point to learn how dangerous it is to make heroes of the Nazis based on mythology and false history.  Unless of course, that's the effect the creators of this program were looking for, then I have a quite different suggestion for them...