Bill Nye vs. Mr. Akin (Scientist vs. Creationist)

So, yesterday there was a very funny and very profane piece posted online about Bill Nye, the Science Guy, totally losing it when being told by an interviewer that Todd Akin, would-be senator from Missouri (the guy who doesn't think women can get pregnant by being raped), blamed Nye for Hurricane Isaac. Much to the horror of his hosts, interviewers from the Smithsonian, Nye let loose with an expletive-filled rejoinder to Akin. The piece went viral and was so popular that the website hosting the story crashed.

Except it never happened.

The set-up seems true enough: that a week ago Nye made a public appeal for people not to teach their children creationism. As one wd expect from Nye, it's a well-reasoned, impassioned, yet polite call:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/bill-nye-science-guy-creationism-evolution_n_1835208.html

Unsurprisingly, this provoked some outcry from the people who disagree with him, but Nye stuck to his guns and remained polite in his rejoiner:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/31/bill-nye-on-creationism-its-like-teaching-the-earth-is-flat/

I think at this point the hoaxers decided to have fun writing up what they imagined Nye must really be thinking beneath the polite, mild mannered facade. In any case, they clearly tapped a vein. I suspect their profanity-laced rant corresponds all too well to what the great majority of people think but, like Nye himself, are too polite to say.

Here's the link to the original 'scoop'. Be warned that the original contained a lot of foul language (somewhat censored here), if such things offend you, and also that it's merciless towards Akin and those who share his belief in 'creation science' (which is after all an oxymoron, like 'dry water').

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=225665

I think my favorite part of the whole dust-up was that it spawned one online image of Nye wearing a t-shirt with the great slogan:

"You and Me.

Any Time. Any Place.

Debating Science. Mano-a-Mano.

I'll Bring the Facts."

I think "I'll Bring the Facts" might be a new tag-line of mine.

--JDR

hrolf kraki, con't

[con't from previous post]

Until now, I mainly knew the saga through Jesse Byock's translation fr. Penguin books [1998], which is nicely readable as well as having a useful introduction and helpful notes. I'd also read Poul Anderson's novelization, done long ago for Ballantine's famous Adult Fantasy Series [1973], but don't recommend it: a truly unpleasant piece of work. THE BROKEN SWORD [1971] has a well-deserved reputation for being bleak and depressing, but Poul A.'s HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA revealed a truly nasty side of P.A. I hadn't expected to find there.

The Tolkien connection with this particular translation is that Stella Mills, the translator, was one of Tolkien's students at Leeds who became a lifetime family friend;* the book is dedicated

To

E. V. G.

J. R. R. T.

and

C. T. O.

--i.e., E. V. Gordon, who contributed a short Introduction; J. R. R. Tolkien (her old professor, who later helped her get a job at the O.E.D.), and C. T. Onions, one of the 'Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford' immortalized in FARMER GILES OF HAM, the fourth and final editor of the original OED who finally brought that massive project to completion.

Mills' book being extremely rare (I've been hunting for a copy for years, unsuccessfully till now), it's a real boon to have it available at last.

And it's an extra added bonus for this Nodens Books edition that Priscilla Tolkien has contributed a new Foreword about Mills and her friendship with the Tolkiens; a short piece that would have gone wonderfully in THE TOLKIEN FAMILY ALBUM and adds a lot to what little we know about the Stella Mills/JRRT connection. (It's particularly timely to me, since I'm just starting to sketch out an article on JRRT and his lifelong support for women's higher education).

So, if you're interested in sagas, in Tolkien's medieval sources, or in works by those closely associated with JRRT, I highly recommend picking this up.

Here's a link to a description of the book on the Nodens Books website; it can be ordered at amazon et al.

http://www.nodensbooks.com/2012/07/new-release-stella-m-millss-translation.html

--JDR

*she is one of the people to whom Tolkien gave one of his original author's copies of THE HOBBIT when it was first published (cf. Appendix V in THE HISTORY OF 'THE HOBBIT')

The New Arrival: Stella Mills' HROLF KRAKI

So, the deadline's now past, the piece done and sent off (to await the inevitable 'needs this, needs that' wh. always follows the completion of a project).

Which means it's time to straighten up the office (books pulled off shelves tend to stack up in the final stages), answer some e-mail, deal with various little tasks that have been put on hold, nail down some details for the upcoming trip, and get going on the next few projects, one (small) one due this week and four (larger) ones all due in the two-week period from the last week of September through the first week of October (announcements on those soon).

Speaking of books piling up, it's been more than a week now since the latest release from Doug Anderson's new publishing imprint, NODEN BOOKS, arrived, making it high time I got around to it. THE SAGA OF HROLF KRAKI is one of the more interesting surviving sagas for any Tolkienist, since it was almost certainly the source for the figure of Beorn/Medwed in THE HOBBIT. It also is of particular interest to Old England and Old Norse scholars because its story overlaps with the first half of BEOWULF, but with the events told from an entirely different point of view. In BEOWULF, wise old King Hrothgar reigns in Heorot, a kind of Danish King Arthur, honored throughout the land, though there are some foreshadowing of trouble to come from his nephew, who it's hinted might usurp the kingship from Hrothgar's young sons. In HROLF KRAKI, the point of view is reverse: here it's the member of the younger generation ("Hrothulf" in BEOWULF, Hrolf in the saga*) who's the hero, with the main emphasis being divided between his spectacularly dysfunctional family (incest and murdering each other being family traditions) and his champions, of whom Bothvar (the Beorn-figure) is the chief.

[continued]

*or, as we wd say it today, Ralph. 'Kraki' is a nickname meaning 'beanpole', the king being tall and thin.

Too many topics

So, I'd been planning to post some CALL OF CTHULHU characters I created for an adventure I ran at the last GwenCon, thinking pregens are always welcome and that it'd be something appropriate to post at the rate of one per day during GenCon (which started yesterday).

But then Janice showed me the trailer for the Gygx documentary

Which wd go nicely with a bit about the recent Scooby Doo D&D episode

Not to mention having just discovered that there's a 'tone poem' based on JURGEN

Or the news story about a whistleblower menaced by English police

But I think the post I most want to make is the kitten at the Guantanamo gulag (Gitmo Kitmo?)

Once the deadline pressure lets up, and I get that final section finished and can go back and make a final pass (the piece currently being in the unenviable position of being slightly too long and yet not quite finished).

So, for now they'll have to wait a bit.

--John R.

"Modern America has virtually no use for the modern British children's book" (What Hath Harry Wrought?)

So, yesterday I was looking up something in Humphrey Carpenter's SECRET GARDENS, his book on the classic writers of the Golden Age of children's books (Kingsley, Carroll, Alcott, MacDonald, Grahame, Nesbit, Potter, Milne, Barrie) and came across a rather strikingly dated statement.

Writing in his Epilogue, about Tolkien and Lewis, Carpenter concludes

"Both writers [T & L] became hugely popular

in America; but they were the last English authors

for children to do so." (p. 214, emphasis mine)

The reason, as Carpenter sees it, is that after Catcher in the Rye American and British writers diverged, with the former following J. D. Salinger's lead in writing realistic novels about children's attempts to cope with the adult world,* while British writers like Garner opted instead for a return to roots, incorporating bits of old folklore into their tales. He concludes:

"Modern America has virtually no use

for the modern British children's book." (p.216)

This was written in 1985. Even then, I would have protested that McKillip and McKinley and Alexander et al. had built up a body of work to match the Garners and Coopers and Wynne Jones: the transAtlantic dichotomy he describes just doesn't seem to have been that much of a factor, to the writers at least.

As for his lament that Americans just don't read children's books by British authors, it's ironic how much the landscape had changed, just a decade later. 1995 saw the publication of Pullman's THE GOLDEN COMPASS (a.k.a. NORTHERN LIGHTS), which certainly made a splash over here, if not as big a one as it made in the UK.** And just two years later came the first of Rowling's HARRY POTTER novels, which were as hugely popular over here as they were over there, uniting both countries in a decade of Pottermania.

It's not Carpenter's fault, of course, that things changed: it's just that his statement is so emphatic that it emphasizes just how much things HAVE changed, and in such a short time. In retrospect, a better case could probably be made that Tolkien and Lewis's popularity in America turned out to be indicators of a mainstream tradition, not outliers.

* * * * * * *

By contrast, sometimes a predictor gets lucky. Thus C. S. Lewis, in the first book review of THE HOBBIT ever published (and thus the piece that inaugurated 'Tolkien studies' back on Oct. 2nd, 1937) wrote "Prediction is dangerous, but THE HOBBIT may well prove a classic."

--How right he was!

--JDR

.......................................

*He does note that during this period "American writers were also starting to create (for the first time) a large body of fantasy writing for children. Admittedly much of it has consisted of inferior imitations of Tolkien" (p. 215), but doesn't seem to feel this counters the main point he is making. (he does exempt Le Guin & Hoban from that criticism)

**probably because of a fundamentalist Catholic/Evangelical backlash in this country

Lynyrd Skynyrd and the ship of Theseus

So, I was surprised to see an advertisement on the big flashing billboard next to the ShoWare center in downtown Kent that Lynyrd Skynyrd are performing there on Sept. 27th. I'm old enough to remember the night their plane crashed (we were spending hours in a bus on a band trip, as I recall) back in '77, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and putting an end to the group (several of whom were badly injured and years in healing). They were already fading as a group at the time, but the tragedy bestowed a 'legendary' status on them, as it so often does (cf. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jim Croce, et al.)

I knew about the Rossington-Collins band the survivors had briefly formed (circa '79-80), which was pleasant enough but not memorable: their instrumental version of "Freebird", for example, felt meandering and unfocused. It turned out, as is so often the case, that the singer/songwriter lead vocalist is the one member a band can't do without.* And I was vaguely aware that more recently some (not all) of the survivors had re-formed years later for some special event, with Van Zant's little brother standing in as their vocalist. But I guess I hadn't realized they'd stayed together after the tribute was over.** A little checking online revealed that of the six band members who'd been alive after the crash (guitarists Rossington, Collins, and King; pianist extraordinaire Powell, drummer Pyle, and bassist Wilkeson), only three are living now (it has been thirty-five years ago, after all, and the southern rock lifestyle does not encourage longevity): Rossington, King, and Pyle. And of those three, only one is still in the group (Rossington).

Which raises the question: is a band with only one original member still the same band? At what point does it become "those people touring the local casinos as 'Lynyrd Skynyrd' " rather than the real thing?*** How big a role does continuity play (e.g., the Rolling Stones only has three of its original members; the newly reformed Beach Boys only two, Pink Floyd only one****)?

It turns out there's a classical precedent for this, the so-called paradox of 'the Ship of Theseus', which goes something like this:

Plutarch writes that even in his day (1st century AD) the Athenians still had on display the original ship Theseus used (presumably in his famous voyage to and from Crete some twelve hundred years before, the one that ended badly when he forgot to swap-out his black sails). But it'd needed maintenance over the centuries, with rotting timbers replaced by new ones as needed, until there was actually no piece left of the original ship. The question: is it still the same ship, or not?

In the philosophical conundrum, it depends on whether you value the whole or the parts, the ideal or the material, the continuity or a particular moment in time (and, if so, which).

In the case of the band, I think the announcement that Lynyrd Skynyrd is scheduled to play the Republican national convention later this month answers that question: I don't think the band that wrote and recorded "Things Going On", not to mention the denunciation of Wallace and Nixon in "Sweet Home Alabama", their most famous song, wd be a good fit for the gathering in Tampa. Which leads me to think, in this case at least, the answer is No: Not the Same.

--John R.

P.S.: Thanks to my sister, who gave me a copy of Skynyrd's SECOND HELPING just before I moved to Fayetteville, telling me it was so I'd listen to something else besides the music I usually listened to (Captain & Tennille, the Beatles). I still have that album, and still listen to it once in a while (though more often to the version on Itunes). At Fayetteville I added SILVER AND GOLD (which I think had been recommended by my friend Franklin; I know I got it at the Record Exchange, where he was working at the time) and a cassette of their first album (which also, amazingly enough, still plays just fine, over thirty years later). Music and Memories: how well they go together.

* cd. INXS for a more recent example.

**which apparently violated an agreement they'd all made with the widows of two members killed in the crash, that the survivors wdn't use, and thus cheapen, the name 'Lynyrd Skynyrd'.

***a question people used to ask about Jefferson Starship, with its endless shifting line-up.

****although in the later two cases one of the 'replacements' has been with the group since very early on (mid-to-late sixties)

I Talk to a Reporter

So, this morning I had a phone conversation with a reporter who's writing a piece on JRRT and THE HOBBIT and said she'd been told I knew a lot about that topic. It was a good talk; she had clearly done her due diligence, reading several books on JRRT (e.g., Carpenter, Shippey, Letters) to get a solid footing. I hope I was able to provide her with information she can use, and look forward to eventual publication of her piece. More about this down the line, when her article appears.

--JDR