Friday in the Wild: January 20, 2012

Welcome to the inaugural FitW of 2012! You may have noticed that my blogging output has increased somewhat over the last couple of weeks. Here's hoping that's permanent. Bringing back my weekly compendium of stuff frm the rest of the blogosphere is, I hope, a symptom of this "second wind." Since it's been awhile, this post goes back two weeks instead of the usual one.

Phil Johnston takes on Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, and the never-ending fad of risqué evangelical sex teaching:

[E]vangelicals have been complaining for decades that we don't talk enough or hear enough teaching about sex. From the point of view of many non-evangelicals, sex is about the only thing evangelicals have demonstrated a serious and sustained interest in for the past 40 years. As early as 1977, Martin Marty, a liberal religious scholar, referred to the trend as "Fundies in their Undies."

So the premise that evangelical churches are in desperate need of more and more explicit instruction on sex techniques is a risible falsehood.

But evangelical leaders who aspire to be at the vanguard in this trend have to keep looking for even kinkier ways to contextualize their Kama Sutras and spice up their "sexperimentation."

[Read Evangelical Exhibitionists]

I almost never know what to make of Mark Driscoll. He seems to alternate between periods of brilliance and stupidity. These days, he's more the latter than the former.

And now . . . this - Jan. 20/12

So it's come to this

Students in Utah may have voted to urge on their sports teams with the battle cry "Go Cougars!"

But the school district has overruled the popular choice because it claims it would be insensitive to women. . . .

While cougars—the large mountain cats—are prevalent in Utah, the principal Mary Bailey worried people would also be reminded of the popular culture use of the word to describe sexually aggressive middle-aged women who attract younger men.

[Full Story]

Good grief. Political correctness has gotten to the point where we're actually worried we'll offend 40-year-old Twimoms and Beliebers.

Despite the humour of the situation, the story does have its less-obvious darker side:

Ballots were sent out to 4,300 kindergarten through eighth grade students in Draper communities that will feed into the school. Two hundred seventy-three wanted Cougars, 180 wanted Diamondback, 171 wanted Falcons and 141 wanted Raptors. . . .

While student input was taken into consideration and appreciated, she added that it was always the board's intent to make the final decision.

The moral of the story? Voting makes no difference. Hope these kids don't take that to heart 10-15 years down the road.

Yay, SOPA strike!

This just in:

One of the world's largest file-sharing sites was shut down Thursday, and its founder and several company executives were charged with violating piracy laws, federal prosecutors said.

An indictment accuses Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to thwart online piracy.

[Full Story]

Interesting that this should happen only a day after Wikipedia don black to protest a pair of American anti-piracy legislation proposals. Neither the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) nor the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are anywhere close to being law—indeed, it appears that the strike managed to persuade many federal lawmakers against it. I share the ambivalence about SOPA that Scott Adams posted a few days ago (though for different reasons, obviously).

But seeing SOPA's effective defeat on the same day that the Feds bring down a major site enabling online piracy makes me ask: Just what did we need SOPA for, again?

Predictably, retaliation was swift from the torches-and-pitchforks faction of the Net, as Anonymous reacted by hacking the Web sites of the Department of Justice, RIAA, MPAA, and other government and media corporations. Most of them don't look very hacked at the moment, though. Pretty effective, guys. I'm reminded of this xkcd comic.

Sigh. Anyone else remember when Anonymous were masked anti-Scientology™ protesters instead of anarchic cyber-terrorists?

I don't remember, I don't recall, I've got no memory of anything at all

A lightning review of The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (New York: Marek, 1980). Hardcover, 523 pp.

An English doctor living in southern France nurses a man back to health after he is fished out of the water. He has been in a serious fight, suffering multiple injuries including gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, he also has amnesia: he cannot remember who he is, nor how he came to be floating in the Mediterranean. The only clues to his identity are his fluency in multiple languages and skill with firearms, as well as a card surgically implanted under his skin with the number of a Swiss bank account.

Jason Bourne (as he learns his name is) tries to access the account, unwittingly setting wheels in motion. Someone wants Bourne dead. A lot of poeple, actually, and most of them seem to work for the same international hit man. Allied with a female Canadian economist he originally held hostage before they fall for each other, Bourne must solve the mystery of his own identity so he can figure out why the assassin Carlos wants to kill him.

I have wanted to read The Bourne Identity for a few years, ever since seeing the 2002 Matt Damon movie. Unfortunately, Ludlum's novel has been on constant reserve for years. Fortunately, this was not the case in my hometown (where, with a population of 6,000 people and 31 years since publication, everyone who wanted to read it has had ample opportunity). So it became part of my annual holiday reading blitz.

It would be easy to dismiss The Bourne Identity as derivative: a superspy with the initials "J.B." battles a larger-than-life villain as the bodies start to pile up. H even introduces himself as "Bourne, Jason Bourne" once. Ludlum certainly characterizes Bourne more as a JamesBond than, say, a Jack Ryan or George Smiley. Bond himself is even struck with amnesia in one novel. However, for Ian Fleming's famed secret agent, it's not the books major plot device. (Bourne resembles Bond in one other way: apart from a few surface details, the movie bears little resemblance to the novel of the same name.)

The Bourne Identity's main prolem is that it is overlong and repetitive. If it were a quarter or a third shorter, it would have the potential to be a real nail-biter. As it is, it runs out of steam somewhere in the middle. So instead of being great, it's just OK. But I'd try reading Ludlum again.

Open for business

Chew it, SOPA Strike.

It started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship

A lighting review of The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (New York: Doubleday, 1951). Paperback, 498 pp.

Rebelling against his over-ambitious and overprotective parents, Willie Keith joins the Navy during World War II. After a rocky start at officer's school, in which he gets a reputation as an immature underachiever, he receives a commission aboard the USS Caine, a WWI-era destroyer converted into a minesweeper. Conditions aboard are hellish, morale is low, and in Keith's estimation, the captain is negligent. For Captain de Vriess' part, he thinks the same of Keith after he mislays an important coded message for three days.

De Vriess is soon transferred to another post. His replacement is Commander Philip F. Queeg, whose strict, by-the-book command style is just what Keith thinks the Caine and its crew need. However, the ship's officers and crew soon become disillusioned with Queeg, who deals out harsh discipline even for minor infractions, blames the crew for his own ineptitude, and obsesses over tiny details while neglecting more important matters. For example, while dressing down a crewman, the officer of the deck and morale officer Keith for the crewman's untucked shirt, he neglects to order the helmsman to correct course, resulting in the Caine steaming full circle and cutting its own tow cable. Queeg had previously blasted the same helmsman for making needed course changes without express orders.

The ship's executive officer, Steve Maryk, learns of an obscure naval regulation that allows for a captain to be removed from his post if he is mentally ill and incapable of command. With Queeg becoming increasingly irrational and paranoid, Maryk begins logging his actions. It's only a matter of time before he or the other officers of the Caine withstand Queeg to his face.

Herman Wouk based this classic novel on his own experiences on a similar minesweeper-destroyer during WWII. He notes, in a disclaimer, that the captains he served with were honorable men and the mutiny aboard the fictitious Caine is not based on any real-life events. It's less a war novel than a coming-of-age novel, as Willie Keith matures—as a naval officer, a lover, and a man. I could find no fault with The Caine Mutiny of consequence. Read it!

The 1954 movie starring Humphrey Bogart as Queeg is also worth noting. It is generally true to the novel, though abridged. It also makes Queeg into a more morally ambiguous character—in Wouk's novel, it's clear that Queeg is paranoid, incompetent, and manipulative. In the movie, by the time of Maryk's court martial, you start to feel sympathy for Queeg, as though he is more sinned against than sinning.

I'm a cowboy, and on a steel horse I ride

A lightning review of Dead or Alive by Tom Clancy (New York: Putnam, 2010). Hardcover, 848 pp.

The Emir is the mastermind behind the Umayyad Revolutionary Council (the terrorist organization responsible for 9/11 in Clancy's fictional timeline). He is on the most-wanted list of the Campus, the clandestine intelligence organization founded by former president Jack Ryan. The Campus operates outside the law, its budget does not appear on any government books, and it holds a small stack of pre-signed, undated presidential pardons. Jack Ryan Jr. works for the Campus as an analyst and, unbeknownst to his father, as a field agent along with his cousins Brian and Dominic Caruso, and former Rainbow Six operatives John Clark and Domingo "Ding" Chavez.

As the Campus hunts the Emir down, he is in fact secretly living in the United States, planning a large-scale terrorist attack that involves obtaining scrap components from old Russian naval vessels.

Meanwhile, Jack Ryan Sr. contemplates another run for the presidency, dissatisfied with the way his successor has handled the economy and the War on Terror.

Dead or Alive has the elaborate criminal plots and familiar characters that are so characteristic of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller. In and of itself, it's a decent story. However, since the elder Ryan became President in Executive Orders, Clancy's novels have become virtual wish-fulfilment fantasies, with Ryan (or the Campus) standing in as Mary Sues. The didactic, how-I-would-run-things elements have, since then, weakened the stories as a whole (excepting the intense Rainbow Six. Dead or Alive sets itself up neatly for a sequel (which Clancy's latest, Against All Enemies is apparently not). This was an enjoyable enough read, but I yearn for Clancy's glory days of Clear and Present Danger or The Sum of All Fears. I also wonder why he has started working with co-authors (Grant Blackwood for this book and its predecessor, and Peter Telep for the latest), since I don't perceive that the style or substance of his novels has changed much. Is this perhaps how he manages to crank out one of these 2-inch-thick volumes twice a year?

Two qualifications you apparently don't need to be a CUSA councillor

The Carleton University Students' Association (CUSA), the student union that can't make up its mind whether it's a Gestapo or Politburo when it comes to its pro-life subjects, is at it again. They have released proposed referendum questions for this year's general election. Not every proposed question deals, directly or indirectly, with the issue of abortion or campus pro-life clubs, but #4, specifically, does:

Are you in favour of banning groups such as Lifeline, the Genocide Awareness Project, Campaign for Life Coalition and other organizations whose primary purpose is to use inaccurate information and violent images to discourage women from exploring all options in the event of pregnancy from Carleton University campus?

And now . . . this - Jan. 11/12

Ever since 1998, when The Wedding Singer first resurrected Journey's "Don’t Stop Believin'", the 1981 arena-rock anthem has achieved pop-culture permanence . . . although there is one spot where the arms always collectively falter, even if for just a moment: Southeastern Michigan. . . .

East Side? Sure. It’s where Eminen spent his adolescence. West? Home to the original Motown Records. Southwest? Best Mexican food in the state. But South Detroit is as fictional as the Shire of Middle-earth.

[Full Story]

I—I think I've stopped believin'. (sob)

(H/T: Five Feet of Fury.)

Got a feeling 2012 is gonna be a good year

Happy New Year, Faithful Reader!

I just took a look back at my blog resolutions from last year. Then I laughed. I'm not going to make any this year.

On a more positive note, the official blog-post count for 2011 was 74. For the record, the last time I broke 100 was 2006, but this was the second most productive year since then. I also have a small backlog of posts that I may roll out in the next week. That, in itself, is a good sign. I think.

Have a happy and prosperous 2012, folks.