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Today's topics:
* The Monsters and the Critics - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/37d82f48cdab306a?hl=en
* Looking for the title of a young adult book I read over 10 years ago about a
girl with psychic abilities. - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/0f16d42bb86080d1?hl=en
* The fall of a scientist - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/a64f8c335cf4308b?hl=en
* Rare Books - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/192091fca020614e?hl=en
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TOPIC: The Monsters and the Critics
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/37d82f48cdab306a?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Nov 13 2009 7:14 pm
From: "Arindam Banerjee"
"Marko Amnell" <marko.amnell@kolumbus.fi> wrote in message
news:7lo0g6F31ejg3U1@mid.individual.net...
> The subject line refers to Tolkien's well-known essay. I think I've
> mentioned my favourite quote from "The Monsters and the Critics" in r.a.b.
> already; I think it was in some debate with Mike Morris. Here it is again:
>
> "[Courage] is the great contribution of early Northern literature. This is
> not a military judgment. I am not asserting that, if the Trojans could
> have employed a Northern king and his companions, they would have driven
> Agammemnon and Achilles into the sea . . . . I refer rather to the central
> position the creed of unyielding will holds in the North. We due reserve
> we may turn to the tradition of pagan imagination as it survived in
> Icelandic. Of English pre-Christian mythology we know practically nothing.
> But the fundamentally similar heroic temper of ancient England and
> Scandinavia cannot have been founded on . . . mythologies divergent on
> this essential point. 'The Northern Gods,' [W.P.] Ker said, 'have an
> exultant extravagance in their warfare which makes them more like Titans
> than Olympians; only they are on the right side, only it is not the side
> that wins. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason'-mythologically, the
> monsters-'but the gods, who are defeated, think that defeat no
> refutation.' And in their war men are their chosen allies, able when
> heroic to share in this 'absolute resistance, perfect because without
> hope.'
>
> I think that is an insightful observation about the fearless Viking ethos,
> and I agree with Tolkien that the critics make a mistake in ignoring
> monsters. I'm not sure Tolkien's observations are directly relevant to the
> latest crop of monsters in popular culture. I saw the film "Zombieland"
> and while the cameo by Bill Murray was hilarious, otherwise watching the
> movie mainly reminded me forcefully that I am no longer in my twenties.
> I'm sure I would have enjoyed the movie 15 or 20 years ago.
>
> There is an article about the current monster fad in popular culture in
> The Chronicle of Higher Education.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> October 25, 2009
>
> Monsters and the Moral Imagination
>
> By Stephen T. Asma
>
>
>
> Monsters are on the rise. People can't seem to get enough of vampires
> lately, and zombies have a new lease on life. This year and next we have
> the release of the usual horror films like Saw VI and Halloween II; the
> campy mayhem of Zombieland; more-pensive forays like 9 (produced by Tim
> Burton and Timur Bekmambetov), The Wolfman, and The Twilight Saga: New
> Moon; and, more playfully, Where the Wild Things Are (a Dave Eggers
> rewrite of the Maurice Sendak classic).
>
> The reasons for this increased monster culture are hard to pin down. Maybe
> it's social anxiety in the post-9/11 decade, or the conflict in Iraq-some
> think there's an uptick in such fare during wartime. Perhaps it's the
> economic downturn. The monster proliferation can be explained, in part, by
> exploring the meaning of monsters. Popular culture is re-enchanted with
> meaningful monsters, and even the eggheads are stroking their chins-last
> month saw the seventh global conference on Monsters and the Monstrous at
> the University of Oxford.
>
> http://chronicle.com/article/Monstersthe-Moral/48886/
I was given the encyclopaedia "Pictorial Knowledge" when I was a small boy,
and that was perhaps the best gift my parents gave me.
In those volumes there was a section of Norse mythology, which made a
profound impression upon me. Classical information only grows better upon
one with passage of time, and aquisition of experience. Those tales are the
greatest gift to us from antiquity, as they have the quality of
timelessness, and they relate to each of us, although in different ways.
When I think of Norse monsters, I do not think of them as chaos and
unreason, but as examples of cunning and deceit, great intelligence and
superficial wit, an appearance of enormous latent power but also a saving
streak of honesty. As opposed to them, Thor and his god-mates are like
village bumpkins, simple-minded and naive. They feel they have no chance
against the enemy, but the enemy's main skill is to make the gods
underestimate their own strengths.
I am sure you must have read of Thor's adventures in GiantLand, Marko. If
you have not give a yip and I will post a summary. Those adventures are the
most meaningful, to me.
Cheers,
Arindam Banerjee.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: Looking for the title of a young adult book I read over 10 years ago
about a girl with psychic abilities.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/0f16d42bb86080d1?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Nov 14 2009 2:54 pm
From: eselen
Over 10 years ago, I read this young adult book from the local
library.
It was in hardback form. I don't know when the book was actually
published.
The story's about a teenage girl who was clairvoyant. Her parents were
divorced and she didn't like the fact that her mother had gotten
remarried.
So, she goes to live with her father. I think he's a writer or
something. And,
he's a bit of a recluse, who doesn't spend much time with his
daughter.
The girl makes friends with a boy around her age. He lives with an
older
couple. They may be relatives or just a couple who took him in.
Later in the story, the girl goes into some kind of psychic trance
where she
sees a family trapped in their car during a snow/ice storm. While in
this trance,
she squeezes her fingernails into the palms her hands causing half
moon cuts.
Her father brings her around and believes in what she can do, in what
she saw,
and gets help for the trapped people.
Near the end of the story, the girl comes to terms her mother's new
marriage.
And her stepfather even finds a good school for kids with psychic
powers where
she goes and makes friends she can talk to... with her mind!
If anyone has any idea what the name of this book is, please post it!
Thank you!!!
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TOPIC: The fall of a scientist
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/a64f8c335cf4308b?hl=en
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== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sat, Nov 14 2009 4:41 pm
From: Stratum101
Several years ago, I read of a prolific young Bell Labs
scientist named Jan Hendrik Schön whose advances in
electronic materials science with applications in nanotechnology
were fantastic. Then in a report I remember reading in
early 2003, I read his research could not be validated,
and soon his papers were unmasked as frauds.
I just started _Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest
Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World_, by
Eugeneie Samuel Reich which is about this story.
It is reviewed in the current issue of American Scientist.
The lit-news aggregator (my term, not theirs), Arts & Letters
Daily picked the article up in today's issue. You
can get to the review from there, or go directly to
the source at
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/physics-and-pixie-dust)
Reich published her book in May. There are no
spoilers. This is an explanation of how Schön
got away with it, rather than new revelations.
Apparently, peer review helped him perpertuate his
misdeeds for awhile rather than preventing them. He
would be asked challenging questions which he used
as hints to what he had to demonstrate. Further, once
he had published a few papers, his new pieces were
eagerly awaited.
In a sense, Jan Hendrik Schön is a genius, but
not that kind exactly.
== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sat, Nov 14 2009 7:59 pm
From: "Marko Amnell"
"Stratum101" <j.collier@cross-comp.com> wrote in message
6e648187-d7d3-4270-b462-46c6498f42b8@g23g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> Apparently, peer review helped him perpertuate his
> misdeeds for awhile rather than preventing them. He
> would be asked challenging questions which he used
> as hints to what he had to demonstrate. Further, once
> he had published a few papers, his new pieces were
> eagerly awaited.
>
> In a sense, Jan Hendrik Schön is a genius, but
> not that kind exactly.
I know the story, and I saw the piece linked to in
Arts & Letters Daily.
An interesting contrast is the story of Grigory
Perelman, an actual genius who proved the
Poincaré Conjecture, but never bothered to
publish his proof in any journal, peer reviewed
or not. He was satisfied with having communicated
his proof in three preprints posted to the arXiv
electronic preprint archive in 2002 and 2003.
He also, famously, turned down the Fields Medal.
But he may win the $1 million Millennium Prize:
"Perelman may also be due to receive a share
(or the totality) of a Millennium Prize. The rules
for this prize-which can be changed, as stated
by a member of the advisory board of the Clay
Mathematics Institute-require his proof to be
published in a peer-reviewed mathematics journal.
While Perelman has not pursued publication himself,
other mathematicians have published papers about
the proof. This may make Perelman eligible to
receive a share or the whole of a prize. Perelman
has stated that 'I'm not going to decide whether to
accept the prize until it is offered.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
I just ordered a new book about him, _Perfect Rigor:
A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of
the Century_ by Masha Gessen. The best technical
introduction to the proof is the book-length article
"Ricci Flow and the Poincaré Conjecture"
by John Morgan and Gang Tian, which you can get
from the arXiv http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0607607
Just reading the first few pages of this article
gives some idea of Perelman's proof.
There is also a more popular book by Donal O'Shea
entitled _The Poincaré Conjecture_ which was
published in 2007 and carries the grandiose subtitle
"In Search of the Shape of the Universe." It's a
free ebook, which you can download as a torrent,
for example from http://tinyurl.com/yecea8h
==============================================================================
TOPIC: Rare Books
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/t/192091fca020614e?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Nov 14 2009 5:07 pm
From: Leander
Nicholas Pounder Rare Books
Latest Catalogue
View or download at:
www.nicholaspounder.com
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