Shakespeare Recommendations

I've been doing a lot of reading, listening to and watching Shakespeare the last few months. I've finished the so-called Henriad (Richard II, Henry IV (pts. 1, 2), Henry V), King John and Richard III, and I'm preparing to tackle Henry VI (pts. 1, 2, 3). I've also caught (or recaught) Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Othello and As You Like It.

In terms of listening to the Bard, I can't recommend enough the Arkangel series of audio CDs which have been uniformly excellent so far. I'm in the midst of Henry IV right now and the actor reading Falstaff is brilliant.

In terms of visual delight, I'd recommend without reservation the Ambrose Video series of adaptations. David Gwillim and Jon Finch are marvelous as Henry V and Henry IV, respectively, and Anthony Quayle is wonderful as Falstaff. I also particularly enjoyed the actor who portrayed Richard III. The casts are always good, regardless.

The only drawback to all this good literature is that it's ruined me for my job as a copy editor - I just can't take a press release about Carls Jr's new crispy burrito or the Santa Monica Pier's centennial seriously or I'll rail about the utter lack of writing ability :-)

Book Review: Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

Just wanted to strongly recommend John McWhorter's latest book, a slim volume for the general reader interested in language called Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

In five chapters, McWhorter looks at some of the more interesting aspects of English -

Chapter 1 - Explains why English has the "meaningless do" and uses the present participle (-ing) as a marker for the present tense (it's the Celts' fault).

Chapter 2 - Looks at the arbitrariness of grammar and how English's evolved.

Chapter 3 - Explains the reason why English is astonishingly lacking in case endings (compared to its Indo-European cousins) (blame the Vikings for this one).

Chapter 4 - Demolishes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that grammar significantly shapes a speaker's view of reality.

Chapter 5 - Discusses the exciting hypothesis that proto-German's sound shift from "p", "t" and "k" to "f", "th" and "h" is the result of Semitic influence from the mid-first millennium BC (the Phoenicians can claim this one).

Overall, a very satisfying and quick (c. 200 pages) read.

Evolution: 1, Intelligent Design: 0

Having taken last week off from work, I was lounging around the apartment Tuesday night providing a comfortable cushion for the cats when I stumbled across a Nova episode recounting the Dover, PA, case where a school district tried to get Intelligent Design taught as a scientific theory. Based solely on the trial's transcripts, the episode utterly demolished ID's claim to scientific validity. The case was so obvious, even the conservative, Bush-era-appointee judge recognized ID's worthlessness as an explanatory theory.

The most telling comment came when one of the scientists interviewed said that, ultimately, Intelligent Design is a science killer. It stops inquiry dead in its tracks since it says that if you find an "irreducibly complex" organ the only possible explanation is a "designer." (And, as IDers can't claim it's God, they're willing to contemplate aliens from Xenu or annunaki from Nabiru, which makes the theory's explanatory power even weaker.)

But, of course, you can trace the elements that go to make up so-called irreducibly complex organs: Vision has independently evolved several times, for example, and even the bacterium's flagellum (one of ID's prime examples of irreducible complexity) has been parsed into its constituent elements. (Richard Dawkins in The Ancestor's Tale points out that if the flagellum is such a wonder of motive power and efficiency, why is it only present in bacteria. You would think an intelligent designer would want to put such a marvelous engine in all its creations.)

At any rate, if you can find it on the Internet, see it on a Nova rerun, or purchase it from PBS, I recommend it highly.

Book Review: The 2008 Year-End Roundup

All of the books below have received some sort of review on my GoodReads site so I'll confine myself to a few brief notes. Note, too, that this certainly doesn't exhaust the list of stuff I read between June and December 2008, this is the cream of the crop:

The Fiction Roll -
The January Dancer, Michael Flynn. Probably the best new SF I've read all year.
The Nature of Monsters and The Great Stink, Clare Clark.
Toll the Hounds, Steven Erikson. Book 8 in The Malazan Book of the Fallen.
Dark Sleeper and The House in the High Wood, Jeffrey Barlough. A mixture of Dickens and Lovecraft; the former predominates in Sleeper, the latter in House (whose ending is one of the most profoundly creepy I've ever read).
The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill. A mystery series that follows the adventures of a Laotian coroner under the Communist regime. I can also recommend the second in the series, 33 Teeth.
Un Lun Dun, China Mieville's stab at young-adult fiction. Very good.

The Nonfiction Roll -
The Horse, the Wheel & Language, David Anthony
Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?, Brett Kahr. A look at "normal" people's sexual fantasies.
The Geese of Beaver Bog, Bernd Henrich. One of the best nature books I've ever read.
The Singing Neanderthals (Steve Mithen) and Inside the Neolithic Mind (David Lewis-Williams). I put these two together because they're complementary texts in my mind: The first looks at the origins of music and language; the second looks at the origins of spirituality and religion in modern homo sapiens.
The Ruin of the Roman Empire, James O'Donnell
How Fiction Works, James Wood
Barbarian Tides, Walter Goffart. A dense book, not for the faint hearted but well worth the effort.
The Suspicions of Mister Whicher, Kate Summerscale
Young Stalin, Simon Montefiore. Stalin's life before he became Stalin.

Happy Holidays

From top to bottom:
Meggie, Irene, Puck, Oberon (top) and Malcolm (bottom), Calvin (top) and Miss Grey (bottom), the Monkey (left) and Emma (right), and Terence

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Sharing the wealth

Considering the latest hysteria from the Right about Obama's diabolic plot to "share the wealth" and steal hard-earned dollars from hard-working Americans and give it to lazy, shiftless, no-good welfare queens, I thought it'd be an appropriate time to remind them what Jesus had to say about the matter (especially as so many Rightists claim to be "Christians"):

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." Matthew 19:21 (NKJV)

"Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.... Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles' feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need." Acts 4:32, 34-35 (NKJV)

And you remember what happened to Ananias and Sapphira - they held back and God struck them dead (Acts 5:1-11 [NKJV]).

Just sayin'

Risking the wrath of God

I can't discuss the company I work for because they're quite the fascists when it comes to the First Amendment, and in this economic climate I'd prefer not to risk my job. But I will say that we process and distribute press releases, and it is in that context that I wanted to share the following:

Last night, a release came in for a game called Blasphemy. Two to four players play wannabe Messiahs in the Holy Land. The first one to convince enough people that he or she is the Chosen One gets crucified.

Check it out here.