Obama's 'independent group' of 'outside experts'

I've been trying to resist blogging too often about the NSA scandal, but this is just unbelievable.

On Friday, I took time to watch President Barack Obama's press conference. It's the one in which he promised to bring in a "high level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies." The president said he would ask the "independent group" to give an interim report in 60 days and a final report at the end of the year. Wow, I thought. Who is he going to name to run this thing?

So who did the president name to head the "independent group" of "outside experts"? Bruce Schneier, maybe? Julian Sanchez? Cory Doctorow?  Sen. Ron Wyden? Jimmy Carter?  The head of the ACLU?

Give up? It's James Clapper!

Details here.

This sort of thing is bipartisan, of course.

"As Hannah Arendt noted, during the Vietnam War 'the policy of lying was hardly ever aimed at the enemy but chiefly if not exclusively destined for domestic consumption, for propaganda at home and especially for the purpose of deceiving Congress'.”

That's from an excellent James Bovard piece about lying as an essential tool of government policy. 

More links

Interview with John Higgs about First Church on the Moon. The ebook version remains free on Amazon another few days.

Lost early Orson Welles film found in Italy. 

Former NSA director doesn't expect operational changes.

New Lovecraft exhibit at Brown University Library.

Two encrypted email services shut down. Related: Fund raising campaign for Mailpile, which aims to provide free webmail along the lines of Hotmail or Gmail but which will be encrypted. (Hat tip, Gary Acord). If you donate $23, you are a "prime member."

Suggestions for listening to Beethoven's string quartets. (Hat tip, Roman Tsivkin.)

Nice Distinctions 24 released

Science fiction fan, RAW expert and blogger Arthur Hlavaty has released  Nice Distinctions 24, the latest issue of his fanzine. Physical copies are being mailed out the the traditional fashion, but in modern way, you can also get the online version here. I get mine via email. 

New Falcon puts 'Coincidance' on sale

I mentioned in a recent post that I'd like to host an online discussion of Robert Anton Wilson's Coincidance, probably in mid-September. (Sometime soon, we ought to have a discussion of what kind of reading schedule to follow, how to handle those little chapters, etc.)

Well, by coincidence, or "coincidance," New Falcon Press has announced a summer sale of Coincidance, cutting the price to $10.53. The list price is $22.95. The new $10.53 sale price is cheaper than the $15.62 price that's listen on Amazon.

A complete price comparison, however, has to include shipping and handling. Amazon's shipping price is $3.99, bringing to the total up to $19.61. New Falcon charges $8.50 for shipping one paperback book, bringing the total price to $18.83. Good, but not the biggest sale of the year.

Could this be the opening salvo in a vicious online price war over Robert Anton Wilson's books? We can only hope!

REMINDER: First Church on the Moon is free today as a Amazon Kindle. It may only be free for one week, so grab it now.

'Science fiction fandom reminds me of the IRA'

My Tuesday posting on writers who are consistently good inspired a back-and-forth in the comments between Eric Wagner and myself. I like to think all of that was interesting, but I particularly liked Eric's last comment:

I started reading Robert Anton Wilson in 1982 and read all of his books I could get a hold of. When I attended the World Con in Baltimore in 1983 I felt disconnected from the science fiction world, and that feeling increased at the few conventions I attended after that. Bob Wilson replaced Robert Heinlein as my favorite author, and my worldview changed. The worldviews I encountered in the sf world didn't appeal to me as much. Wilson got me heavily into Pound, and that led me to change my college major from math to English. However, science fiction fandom reminds me of the IRA: Once in, never out. I have never fully entered the university English department worldviews because they tend to look down on the Heinlein/SF worldviews which have shaped me and still seem to me to have some validity.

I have think my tastes have evolved. I like to revisit science fiction worldviews from time to time.

I hope Eric can be coaxed into explaining what he means when he writes, "The worldviews I encountered in the sf world didn't appeal to me as much." I never noticed much of a contradiction between Robert Anton Wilson's technological optimism and the science fiction worldview, so perhaps Eric is referring to something else. I never felt disconnected going to SF conventions back in Oklahoma, because I always saw a bunch of old friends, but it can be an odd experience going to a convention if you don't know the attendees. I went to Penguicon in Michigan last year and didn't run into a single person I knew.

It's interesting that RAW replaced Robert Heinlein as Eric's favorite author. Arthur Hlavaty has written many times that his worldview was shaped by RAW and Heinlein. I read plenty of Heinlein as a teenager (my favorite was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) but he was never my favorite, as he was for so many fans. (If I had to pick a favorite in those days, it probably would have been Isaac Asimov.)

Bonus bit: For anyone who is interested, Iain Banks' Culture novel, Surface Tension, is $1.99 today only as an Amazon Kindle. I liked it very much.

Latest John Higgs news

The new John Higgs novel, First Church on the Moon, will be released on Saturday. A paperback will be available, but the electronic version will be free on Amazon Kindle for one week. I got to read an advance copy and liked it a lot.

His Timothy Leary biography, I Have America Surrounded, is available again in the U.S. as a paperback. I read it a few months ago and can recommend it; it seemed carefully researched and seemed to strike the right balance between respect for Leary's ideas and unwillingness to uncritically accept anything Leary ever said. There's no news yet on an ebook version.

John also reports that interest in Robert Anton Wilson in England apparently remains strong: "The London RAW talk me and Daisy are doing in October has sold out already, which has given me a real buzz and shows a healthy level of affection for Ol' Bob bubbling away under the surface."

Pardon Edward Snowden

A petition has been started at White House website, asking the Obama administration to pardon Edward Snowden. I have signed it, and invite the rest of you to sign, too. There are more than 132,000 signatures so far; the White House is supposed to respond to every petition that can gather 100,000 signatures.

In a column for Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo explains why the petition is worth supporting:

On June 9th, someone from Rochester, New York, with the initials "T.R.," started a White House petition demanding a presidential pardon for Snowden. Within a few days – and with minimal publicity – it garnered tens of thousands of signatures. Within a few weeks it had passed 100,000 signatures, the threshold requiring a presidential response. The total now stands at over 132,000, and the White House has yet to respond. I called the White House press office to ask whether some kind of acknowledgment is forthcoming. I was told to email my query to the White House press officer. I’m sure no one is shocked to learn that, to date, my query has gone unanswered.

Well, then, you say, so what? The White House petition program was always a farce, and we shouldn’t take it seriously. But if you said that you’d be dead wrong: we can turn this administration’s unmitigated arrogance against it, and expose their hypocrisy by insisting on an answer. The majority of Americans say Snowden isn’t a "traitor," he’s a legitimate whistleblower: so this is an issue on which we have the support of the American people. And it is certainly an issue of process that should be of great concern to progressives, including the majority who supported the election of President Obama partly on the basis of his commitment to democracy and "transparency."

The cliché we’ve heard endlessly repeated is that we have to ignore what’s happening to Snowden and focus on "the real issue." Yet the question of Snowden’s personal fate is inextricably bound up with the fate of the Constitution and the future of freedom in America. The key to winning this debate over the rule of law in America is demanding a full pardon for Snowden so he can come back to America and testify as to what our government has been doing in the dark. Aside from that, however, the relentless pursuit of Snowden and his forced exile is a gross injustice that must be protested and rectified.

Bonus link: Want to know who the U.S. is at war with? It's a secret!

Writers with consistency

Tyler Cowen answers the question: "Whose entire body of work is worth reading?"

You can read his list at the link, here is mine:

1. Vladimir Nabokov. I have still not read all of his novels, but I've read many of them over a period of decades. All of them have been good.

2. Robert Anton Wilson. You saw that one coming, didn't you? But I think all of the novels are worth reading -- in fact, all are very good except for Nature's God. The collections are also consistently good. Chaos and Beyond has been out of print for years but it's quite good.

3. Neal Stephenson.

4. Tom Perrotta.

5. Jack Vance.

6. Jane Austen.

It's surprisingly hard to come up with a long list; most major writers, after they have succeeded, manage to get lesser works into print. Also, many of the writers I am familiar with are science fiction writers, and most of those guys have to write quickly to keep the wolf at the door and inevitably turn out some minor works (e.g., Roger Zelazny.) I considered Gene Wolfe, but The Book of the New Sun seems much better to me than most of his other work.

More links

NJWeedman announces jury nullification tour. (Hat tip, Nick Helweg-Larsen.)

Michael Johnson reviews (and recommends) a novel called Pot Farm.

Jesse Walker has an idea for a blog.

Abandoned Walmart is now America's largest library.

"My best sources are the ones who secretly have a crush on me." A related Tweet is here.

PQ on Adam Harvey performing part of Finnegans Wake (with RAW tie-in).

Meeting the author

I recently finished a collection of short pieces by Neal Stephenson, who is maybe my favorite living author. (The other possible candidate, Iain M. Banks, recently died.)

Stephenson's Some Remarks includes a piece, "Why I Am a Bad Correspondent," which explains why he is unlikely to answer an email from a stranger or accept a speaking engagement (he needs to be able to concentrate his time and attention on writing novels.)

While is isn't really germane to the main point of the essays, the article includes this passage:

Likewise, a novel represents years of hard work distilled into a few hundred pages, with all (or at least most) of the bad ideas cut out and thrown away, and the good ones polished and refined as much as possible. Interacting with an author in person is nothing like reading his novels. Just about everyone who gets an opportunity to meet with an author in person ends up feeling mildly let done, and  in some cases, grievously disappointed.

Most of my encounters with authors, whether in person at a science fiction convention or sitting in an audience at a speaking engagement, have been pretty pleasant. I particularly enjoyed meeting Robert  Shea many years ago at a worldcon in Boston; he was very nice and answered all of my questions. I did think that Jo Walton lacked charm and didn't seem particularly interested in being nice to her readers. (At a convention, I showed up for a "meet the author" event that was limited to a small group of people sitting around a table. Walton announced that there wasn't room, inviting me to leave. Another person said he was just leaving and got up, so I got to stay. Wouldn't a normal author, or a normal person, say "Pull up a chair, there's plenty of room?").

But I think I probably agree with what I take to be Stephenson's main point: In most cases, listening to an author talk is not as interesting as reading their best books. I think Robert Anton Wilson may be a possible exception, at least on his good days, as his interviews are often very interesting.  But in most cases, I've formed my opinion of authors by reading their books, not by listening to what they had to say at science fiction conventions or speaking appearances.

(I never met RAW. He occasionally went to SF conventions but wasn't the kind of guy  who turned up at worldcon every year.)

More on the basic income scheme

The idea of replacing the welfare system with a guaranteed basic income from the government, pushed for years by Robert Anton Wilson and other luminaries, continues to generate chatter on the Internet.

Jesse Walker, writing for Reason's Hit and Run blog, points out that Alaska's system of giving out dividends from petroleum revenues to all of the state's citizens resembles a basic income scheme. (Jesse also points out that there is a new book on basic incomes. I'm not clear why the Kindle version of the book is more than $25, but perhaps the publisher is eager to discourage sales.) I was hoping Jesse would embrace my pet scheme to get rid of all existing social welfare programs and replace them with (1) Some form of health insurance for all and (2) A basic income for all, thereby inspiring an irresistible liberaltarian groundswell, but Jesse says, "Some of these ideas would be an improvement over the current system and some would not. But I don't want to get into the weeds of weighing the competing proposals right now."

A previous blog post on basic incomes is here.

James Frenkel out at Tor Books

Editor James Frenkel, a prominent science fiction editor, played a large role in the career of Robert Anton Wilson. As an editor at Dell, he pushed to have Illuminatus! reprinted as a one volume omnibus, a move Frenkel believes has helped keep the trilogy in print. Frenkel also was RAW's editor for the "Historical Illuminatus" series. You know about all this if you've read my interview with Frenkel. 

Ansible and other science fiction news outlets have reported that Frenkel no longer works as an editor at Tor Books (a big deal SF publisher). Here is Ansible's version:

"JAMES FRENKEL is no longer an editor at Tor Books (see also _A312_). Patrick Nielsen Hayden announced the departure in a succession of tweets: 'James Frenkel is no longer associated with Tor Books. We wish him the best. / We'll be contacting the authors and agents Mr. Frenkel worked with to discuss which editor here they'll be working with going forward. / This process will take some days or even weeks, so please be patient if you don't hear from us instantly. / Finally, if you had something on submission to Tor via Mr. Frenkel, you'll need to resubmit it via some other Tor editor. / If you don't have a particular editor in mind, you can re-submit it via Diana Pho (diana.pho [at] tor.com) who will route it appropriately.' (all 11 July)"

This departure may be related to allegations that Frenkel sexually harassed a woman at Wiscon, a U.S. science fiction convention. Ansible again: "Elise Matthesen wrote about being sexually harassed at Wiscon this year, describing how she reported this to the convention and confirmed her report to the employers of the offender. He was later named as Tor editor James Frenkel. (www.jimchines.com, 28 June) Lawyers should please imagine the above as sprinkled with 'allegedly'."

There's been commentary about all of this on various blogs, but I could not find any accounts of what Frenkel allegedly actually said or did. So I offer no comment.

'Kill Anything That Moves'

Chase Madar has written an interesting review of a book by Nick Turse that I blogged about before. Kill Anything That Moves tells the story, still largely unknown, about just how brutal the Vietnam War was.

Excerpt:

Of the 33,000 books about the Vietnam War, all but a few eagerly sidestep the atrocious carnage inflicted on hundreds of thousands of civilians. Nick Turse’s scholarly mission is to haul it into the center of historical inquiry and public memory, where it belongs. Kill Anything That Moves offers neither argument nor a new narrative—it simply aims to make violence against civilians “the essence of what we should think of when we say ‘the Vietnam War’.”

The war was “a system of suffering.” Turse is sick of hearing about My Lai—the programmatic slaughter of over 500 Vietnamese women, children, and elderly men carried out on March 16, 1969 by Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry—not because it wasn’t an appalling war crime but because the event, now fashioned as a horrific one-off anomaly, has perversely absolved the rest of the war, obscuring for instance the massacre of 118 civilians at Dien Nien or of 68 civilians at Phuoc Binh; of 200 civilians at An Phuoc; of 86 killed at Nhon Hoa; 155 killed at the My Khe (4) hamlet.

Madar goes into considerable detail about how the real essence of the war has been covered up.