how to dismantle an atomic bear

30 July 2004

Just Updating...

I have many thoughts to post on the Democratic Convention which I am much too lazy to collect and post at the moment. Perhaps later.

I have e-mailed every conceivable person at UNT who workes with the paper and might be able to point me in the right direction to becoming a columnist. I did this some time ago. I'm beginning to think that perhaps people just don't bother to read their e-mail at this school.

I haven't done much reading lately. My fantasy baseball team built a sizeable lead heading into the break, but it rapidly disappeared. So I've had to spend the last few days in damage control mode, and once again am solidly in the lead again. So I expect to get back to my books again.

I'll try to get my thoughts posted on the convention a bit later, but I only slept for three hours last night, so I'll have to come home and sleep after speech therapy. So I probably won't be able to get anything up until early Saturday morning (probably between 1-4 am).

08:14

26 July 2004

AGoT; Kerry, Iran, Pre-emption

The dialogue in Martin's A Game of Thrones makes the conversation in Jordan's The Eye of the World seem like the script of a cheap children's cartoon movie. It is much more lively, believeable. The prose is of a much more dignified style. Martin seems to feel less compulsion than Jordan to every little ridiculous thought that might pass through his characters' minds. It is a novel clearly targeted at adult audiences. It even has sexual references and much swearing. I don't like that much. I much prefer fantasy novels that are complex enough for adults and still innocent enough for bright children. Like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

I have read little of the 9/11 Commissions' s report. What I have read sounds much like a broad exposition on all the presuppositions that ultimately led to the formulation of the Bush doctrine. I'm utterly befuddled as to how a war on Islamist terror can be fought by a president who eschews the doctrine of pre-emption. The Democrats still seem to have no answer to this question, no alternative to the Bush doctrine.

Says Charles Krauthammer in his latest Post article:

If not war, then what? We know the central foreign policy principle of Bush critics: multilateralism. John Kerry and the Democrats have said it a hundred times: The source of our troubles is President Bush's insistence on "going it alone." They promise to "rejoin the community of nations" and "work with our allies."

Well, that happens to be exactly what we have been doing regarding Iran. And the policy is an abject failure. The Bush administration, having decided that invading one axis-of-evil country was about as much as either the military or the country can bear, has gone multilateral on Iran, precisely what the Democrats advocate. Washington delegated the issue to a committee of three -- the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany -- that has been meeting with the Iranians to get them to shut down their nuclear program.

The result? They have been led by the nose. Iran is caught red-handed with illegally enriched uranium, and the Tehran Three prevail upon the Bush administration to do nothing while they persuade the mullahs to act nice. Therefore, we do not go to the U.N. Security Council to declare Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We do not impose sanctions. We do not begin squeezing Iran to give up its nuclear program. [...]

The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time -- rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

This is a question John Kerry should answer at the convention. What would he do about Iran? is he prepared to use force if necessary? Is he prepared to go it alone if he must? Lawrence Kaplan, writing in the rather New Republic had this to say:

Kerry's calls for a rapprochement with Teheran come at a rather inopportune moment. The very regime that Kerry demands we engage, after all, has just been certified as an Al Qaeda sanctuary--and by the very commission in which the Kerry campaign has invested so much hope. The report's finding, moreover, counts as only one of Teheran's sins. Lately its theocrats have been wreaking havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan, aiding America's foes along Iran's borders in the hopes of expanding their influence in both countries, even as they continue to fund Palestinian terror groups. Then, too, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has amassed a mountain of evidence pointing to Iranian violations of the Nonproliferation Treaty. With two nuclear power plants slated to go online in Iran, and IAEA inspectors stumbling across designs for sophisticated centrifuges, even the Europeans and the United Nations have nearly exhausted their efforts to engage the Islamic Republic. [...]

Put another way, the [Bush] administration has two Iran policies, and the result has been a mix of good and bad. Kerry, by contrast, boasts a single, coherent, and--to judge by the description of Teheran's activities in yesterday's report--utterly delusional Iran policy. Now, if only the Bush team could sort out its own, it might have an opportunity to draw a meaningful distinction.

05:06

24 July 2004

Thoughts on The Eye of the World

In the opening to his Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan presents a world of astonishing depth. Unfortunately, this is the most that can be said for it. For as much depth as his world has, it is equally lacking in imagination and originality. One can hardly make it through an entire chapter without running across an element that seems to have been lifted directly from Tolkien's work. Included among these are (off the top of my head): a mountain range called "Mountains of Mist"; a mountain range called "Mountains of Dhoom"; an evil villain who has been locked away for centuries but is quickly returning to power; a great warrior who happens to be a king by birth -- an heir to a discontinued throne. There are other elements as well. Even the plot line takes the general shape of the Rings novels. A group ("fellowship" if you will) must travel across the world to a particular destination as they are pursued by agents of the Dark One. They manage to accomplish their objective just as an army consisting of their allies is making a final stand against an enemy army. Sound familiar?

His characters are dreadfully boring. Jordan has succeeded marvelously at crafting an entire 800-page novel that hasn't a single character the reader might actually care about. There are few or no strong characters in the book. Moiraine Sedai is his strongest character and even she has very little nuance. She's obviously Jordan's favorite character. She's the smartest, the prettiest, has all the witty comebacks, is the most powerful, and all the men fear her.

Much of the book describes the travels of the company, and much of it is bland and dull. The plot line is monotonous and mostly unchanging. One might expect a few more incidents and plot twists in a novel of 800 pages. Major details about the main conflicts of the novel are never actually sorted out. For example, it is never very clear why Ba'alzamon (the villain) is pursuing our protagonists so heavily. This might be a nice thing to understand from the start of the novel. I kept reading in anticipation of more details. They never came.

Conflicts between the characters are one-sided, superficial, and have very little nuance to them. It is usually flatly obvious which characters the author favors in any given argument among the protagonists.

In conclusion, Jordan's opening work in his Wheel of Time series has very little going for it. Even it's primary strong point -- the depth of Jordan's world -- seems, in many ways, an unimaginative rehashing of what most all fantasy readers have already encountered.

I may have forgotten to mention this earlier, but I did buy a domain for this page. You can access this blog at http://www.kreliavsrealm.com.

I intend to start Martin's A Game of Thrones soon as well as Dune. Also, I bought a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report. It's pretty hefty and I'll probably only read a couple of chapters -- there's only a few that really interest me (the ones pertaining to the formation of a broad strategy for combatting Islamist terror in the wake of 9/11). I'll probably post some of my thoughts on it soon.

04:42

23 July 2004

Russian Troops in Iraq; Storms on the Iranian Front

As I was in the process of becoming a foreign policy wonk during my time in Washintgon, D.C., I managed to assmeble a collection of online sources of intelligence about the latest occurences in world affairs. I read into some of them recently for the first time in months. According to stratfor.info, President Putin is busy pondering the potential political repercussions of sending up to 40,000 Russian troops to Iraq this coming fall.

But the real story is this: US-Iranian relations are breaking down and approaching the borderlines of a crisis. It may very well be that Iranian leaders have calculated that their U.S. counterparts will be ill-prepared to deal with a crisis in an election year, and therefore, might decide to provoke one. This is where the conflict over Iranian nuclear development comes into play. The diplomatic standoff has come about less as a result of Iran's unalterable resolve to acquire nuclear weapons than as a result of nuclear weapons providing a convenient mechanism with which Iran can provoke a crisis. Like North Korea, Iran is holding out the prospect of nuclear weapon development as a way to remain relevant to the United States.

Apparently, there is still hope that some agreement may come out of this. But it seems highly unlikely to me.

All this to say that a storm over Iran is threatening. And the rain may start to fall as early as late this year. Presently, U.S. military planners are said to be working away updating plans relevant to Iran.

02:39

22 July 2004

Military Spending Is Much Too Little

I haven't been able to work up the motivation to write many political entries here in the last couple of months or so. I anticipate writing regular columns when I get to UNT, and I'm currently in the mode of storing all my thoughts away in reserve for that possibility. But what follows is a few of my latest thoughts.

For some time now, it's been apparent to even the most casual observer that the war on terror is something distant and far away to most Americans. The burden of sacrifice seems to have fallen entirely on shoulders of our armed forces servicemen and their families.

In the face of calls on the Capitol Hill for a bigger army, a Pentagon general has come forth with renewed arguments that any dramatic increase in the number of army troops would undermine efforts to modernize the army.

Schoomaker said the disagreement is not over whether the Army needs to be bigger, but over how to pay for it and whether "we should encumber ourselves ... in the out years with increased permanent" troop numbers.

"If we are encumbered, we end up trading off ... our modernization and transformational capability," he said.

Once again, it's about the money.

Here's my question: why not dramatic increases in military spending. With the onset of World War II, military spending increased from 1.7% of GDP in 1940 to a peak of 37.8% of GDP in 1944. Even during the years of the Korean War, military spending ranged from 5-14% of GDP.

Similarly, in 2001, U.S. military spending stood at 3.0% of GDP and was dramatically increased in 2002 to... 3.4%.

No joke. For a time of war, this is easily the lowest this nation's military expenditures have been in its history.

Why no dramatic increase? Why not increase military spending to $700 billion/year, double the size of the army, and open a second front in Iran? There is plenty of historical precedent for such a move.

01:43

20 July 2004

Layout/Rangers/Potter

After months of trying, I have finally got my mother hooked on Harry Potter. She has spent most of the last three or four days lamenting the drop in her productivity as she been unable to tear herself away from Harry Potter long enough to get anything done. Mom has read the first three books in about four days. I'm very proud of her. As a reward, I'm taking her to see the new movie this weekend.

So here's the new layout. Everything should be working again. This is a layout I can live with. I added a "favorites" section, but it was thrown together pretty quickly. So far, I only have a bunch of movies up there, but I plan to add a section for books and maybe for video games in the near future.

I haven't done any reading in the last few days on account of having to write a little speech for a Toastmasters meeting tomorrow. I have to memorize it and everything. Shouldn't be too bad. I'll be glad to have time to get back to my books again though.

The Rangers are starting to frighten me. I've had trouble taking them seriously all year, but after Sunday night's game, I think it's time to start. They remind me of the '96 Rangers a little bit more each day just because they're a team that might be playing in October after a season of initially very low expectations. But the team they really remind me of is the '96 Yankees -- with that stellar bullpen and infield. Should be nice to be able to go to the Ballpark in October again.

This is for Karlminion (see tag-board):

I STUTTER!!!!!

04:13

18 July 2004

From Deep in Outer Space

Recently, I had a startling epiphany.

When I neglect to update my blog, it is very often because I hate my layout. My latest (soon to be former) layout was full of good ideas, but they didn't seem to gell very well, and I didn't much care for the result.

This will change. Or my name isn't Captain Hook. A new layout is in the works, similar to, but simpler than the current one.

I much prefer Orson Scott Card's brand of science fiction to Robert Jordan's fantasy. Jordan likes to inundate the reader with terms that are ordinary to the characters, but make absolutely no sense to the readers. This is frustrating. It's also lame. I suspect that many of these things are never defined in Jordan's books anywhere. It is simply a cheap tactic Jordan uses to give the reader the impression that his fantasy world is much bigger and grander than it actually is.

Furthermore, I'm inclined to think that Jordan must have consumed a good dose of ridiculous feminist crap as a child. Almost all the men in his novel are bungling idiots who fear the always self-possessed, more intelligent women who usually have all the authority.

Jordan's characters are described in such a way that suggests a lot of depth, but yet, they rarely actually do or say anything that would validate Jordan's descriptions. Jordan would have you believe his characters are powerful and extraordinary. You are expected to take his word for it. He offers little other than that.

Ender's Game, by contrast, is a novel much lighter on adventure and much heavier on character development. One can read the summary on the back cover and discover that it is a novel about a boy genius who must save the planet from invasion by an alien race. That's a summary that barely scratches the surface, however. One could summarize Jordan's plot in as many words and almost do it justice.

But Card's novel is not so much a story about human struggle for survival as it is about the emotional journey of a good-natured boy who loves people, but is constantly forced into a situation in which he must hurt them. He wants badly to befriend his peers, but his commanders are constantly forcing him into isolation. It is a story of a child who must learn to cope with self-hatred, isolation, and the knowledge that the fate of the world depends on his efforts.

In Jordan's world, everything revolves around the fantasy, the adventure. In Card's world, the science-fiction world is merely dressing for a much deeper, more personal story. The characters hold center-stage in Ender's Game.

I'll have finished Jordan's The Eye of the World soon, so I went out and bought a couple more books. Next on my list are A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin and Herbert's Dune.

AGoT looked like it was right up my alley. Reviews say it's heavy on plot and character development and lighter on fantasy elements and adventure. I picked up Dune simply because it's a classic that I really ought to have read by now anyway. I'll probably begin posting my thoughts on them before long.

I attended orientation at UNT on Friday. It's nice to be back on a normal college campus. The people are much friendlier there than in Washington. No word yet on getting a possible weekly column at the paper. I'm still looking into it.

I had decided months ago that I would be much better off at UNT being happy and getting a 2.90 then being miserable and getting a 3.70 like I did at GWU. After looking over the textbooks for my classes, I have decided that it would be rather difficult for me not to make a 4.0 here. We'll see.

03:53

14 July 2004

JoeyDie5 on The Two Towers: Revised Edition

I needed some material to read to a group of 7-12 year-olds that would make them laugh. JoeyDie5's book report seemed just the ticket to me. But I had to revise it a bit and adapt it to fit my audience. Here's my revision.

Book Report: The Two Towers

By JoeyDie5
Edited by Kreliav

I recently read the book The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein. It was a good book. In fact it was more than just a good book. It was a great book. In fact, I enjoyed this book with roughly the same magnitude of the force of impact at which a deranged rhinoceros commits suicide running full speed into a wall.

This book was primarily about the breakup of the Fellowship after Gandalf went insane and leaped off a cliff in the mines of Moria in pursuit of the balrog. In this book, events take place that eventually lead to the end of the world and Sauron being blown up, but that's at a later time. What's important is that now, not later, Frodo has completely lost it. For example, when Sam asks Frodo if he is hungry, Frodo responds that elven bread tastes worse than dirt; and then proceeds to pull out a Soviet-made Cuban AK-47 and tries to swallow it. Frodo has realized the ring is evil so he leaves it around his neck and slowly goes nuts. Clearly Tolkien is setting up everything so that at the end of the third book, Frodo will turn into Darth Vader.

Meanwhile Merry and Pippin are running around in the fields with a bunch of orcs. Unfortunately, the orcs are running rapidly back to Isengard, taking the hobbits with them to be tortured by Saruman. Aragon is trying to find the two hobbits but realizes he'll never catch them after the horseman of Rohan tell him they killed all the orcs and hobbits and burned them to death until they were dead. Legalos realizes this isn't true when he finds tracks into Fangorn Forest. Now Legolas thinks he's an elf. But it's fairly obvious that he is actually composed of a bunch of aardvarks all crudely pasted together to look like an elf.

This book eventually ends with Rohan fighting for it's survival at Helm's Deep. The battle went badly at first, but then Theoden blew a huge horn and everyone charged out of Helm's Deep on horses like a pack of drunken monkeys with laser guns.

Clearly up to this point, the book has a lot of obvious parallels to World War II. For example, the sound of Theoden's horn was clearly meant to meant to be a veiled reference to a cross between the sound of a '67 Ford Mustang exploding and the sound of an oliphant rampaging through the woods of Rohan. There are other parallels as well. The new Gandalf the White was an example of either Jesus or a crazy old man who liked wearing white robes and wrecking havoc all over the country side like the elephant previously mentioned. Either way, I think it's better to be a hippo.

Bringing me to my next point that as the ents busied themselves, trampling on the ashes of Isengard, a lot of orcs got killed as they fled Helm's Deep and just then a whole ton of trees killed all the rest of the orcs in a moment of pure genius. This brings us to the question of why modern generals don't use trees to kill their enemies today, to which we can only throw up our arms in complete bewilderment. Trees after all will occasionally just walk around killing people.

On page 681, Tolkien writes, "That day passed much as the day before had gone, except that the silence seemed deeper; the air grew heavy, and it began to be stifling under the trees."

This sentence betrays perfectly the fact that, as a child, Tolkien was an insane beaver killer, and would occasionally attack wild grizzly bears for no apparent reason with his fists.

In conclusion, the Two Towers proves that Tolkien was sacramental and didn't believe in confessions, which is why this book makes absolutely no sense and causes people to have brain aneurisms and die. That is a strong statement but this book is clearly a weak attempt by the Nazis to drive us all to insanity. After all, Tolkien must have been a Nazi because this book certainly couldn't have been written by a Massachusetts communist. Which brings me to my last point, don't do drugs.

05:00

13 July 2004

OSC

Orson Scott Card is my new favorite author of the week. I'm reading his book, Ender's Game. He even writes political columns. He's a filthy Mormon. But I like him. Ender's Game has much of the psychological intensity that I prefer in my fantasy novels. The depth of the political complexity of Card's world is a bit lacking. But his characters are strong, easy to become attached to. They are fantastic and perhaps not fully believeable, but always interesting; and interesting characters can make up for a lot of shortcomings in a novel. Card's novels are shorter and much more charming and engaging than Jordan's. You won't want to forget about Ender's Game. I picked it up on a whim, but found out recently that a movie is being made of it.

I have a list of corrections I need to make to this blog. Broken feedback hyperlinks. Font that only shows up on my monitor(the links on the left weren't actually supposed to be Times New Roman; your computer probably doesn't have the actual font I selected though). And I've run across a number of interesting columns that I meant to reference here.

Later though.

Tired now.

Must read more. Then sleep.