Bela Lugosi's Dead, Jim

Dreamwidth

ewx — Sat, 31 Dec 2016 19:56:31 GMT

I have migrated this journal to ewx.dreamwidth.org. See you over there!

Monstress

ewx — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 23:10:48 GMT

Monstress vol. 1: Awakening, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda.

I encountered the first issue of this as a Humble Bundle sampler (http://ewx.livejournal.com/626752.html) and liked it, and bought it cheap on Comixology during a sale. From a high level, the setting isn’t the most original: the world is largely divided (with a literal wall) between humans and magical halfbreeds (Arcanics). However it’s a good implementation of the cliché and the plot and characters in any any case transcend it.

The previous hot phase of the conflict between the humans and Arcanics was terminated by some kind of major and very destructive magical event, with even the known details to some extent covered up. Maika, superficially human but in fact rather more complicated than that, knows her mother had something to do with it, and wants answers from her former colleagues. As the book opens she is tactically exploiting helplessness, but she soon turns out to be exceptionally dangerous, a repeating theme being others discovering this a bit too late. This could easily have been mishandled but by in practice it stays interesting throughout; her strength, or a least her willingness to use it, does have its limits.

Maika’s principle antagonists are a powerful religious order which when not exploiting enslaved Arcanics seems to be thoroughly overrun by its own members’ private agendas, a characteristic which extends (albeit mostly in less brutal form) to many of the other protagonists, adding a realistic gloss of human nature to a fantastical world.

The volume ends with a satisfying resolution, but with open questions and loose ends lined up for further issues. I look forward to them.

Holiday Reading

ewx — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 18:14:46 GMT

House of Cards, Michael Dobbs, 978-1-4711-2852-3.

An unscrupulous 1980s Conservative chief whip plots and schemes within a re-elected but weakened government. This is not really great literature: most of the characters are stereotypes rather than in any way rounded portrayals, and the writing felt a little pedestrian. Nevertheless it was fun to read and I can see why it was adapted for television multiple times.

A Very British Coup, Chris Mullin, ISBN 978-1-84668-740-2.

A far-left Labour politician becomes Prime Minister, and the establishment and the Americans set out to undermine him. In some ways timely as Harry Perkins partially reflects Jeremy Corbyn: however, importantly, he is considerably smarter and has the backing of his parliamentary party (and, at least initially, the country). As above the writing is not of the most dazzling style, and the characters are if anything even more 2-dimensional, but also as above, it got the job done.

Also, really, a more serious political work, focusing not on the process of climbing the greasy pole (and stamping hard on those below) but instead on the structure of UK politics (at least as it stood at the time). Amusingly, the book mentions US interception activities in Europe, three decades before Snowden and half a decade before Campbell.

Stanage Edge

ewx — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 21:32:49 GMT

We went climbing on Stanage Edge, a lengthy escarpment in the Peak District.

Climbing. We mostly stuck to Mod and Diff routes. For the first few days we managed a lead and a second each; much of the rest of the time was consumed with false starts and getting lost trying to find the next route we wanted to do. We had nice weather and beautiful scenery though. For the last couple of days our productivity roughly doubled, partly a result of more effective navigation but probably also “getting into the swing” of it. On Sunday Matthew and Sally joined us which made for a good end to an already excellent week.

N looks down.

Other Activities. Friday was the only day that was seriously wet during the day and we went to Chatsworth House, the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire even today. In local terms it’s kind of like Wimpole but on a rather grander scale. Its continued noble occupation has resulted in the accumulation of contemporary art as well as the usual stately home standbys, although excepting the photography I didn’t rate much of it. It’s also substantially covered in scaffolding and sheeting at the moment due to extensive renovation works; apart from the occasional drilling sounds (which based on conversation maybe annoyed the staff more than they did us) this didn’t really impact on our visit, though if you want a clear view of the whole exterior then maybe you should postpone your visit until this is finished.

I kind of want Mallory Ortberg to caption this.

We also made it to Sheffield Hallam Parkrun, where I chipped a few seconds off my PB. I’m not sure how comparable it is with Cambridge, though. Doing a 5km run in the morning coincided with the uptick in our climbing productivity, which N didn’t consider a coincidence.

Accommodation. We stayed at the North Lees campsite, which is a pleasant 10m walk from the road below Stanage Edge (more to the rock, depending which bit you aim for and how lost you get). Slightly spartan but it did the job. It was mostly fairly empty, only really getting crowded at the weekend. Generally the first thing we heard on waking was sheep.

The purple sleeping bag is N’s, surprising nobody.

The nearest village is Hathersage, which was a pleasant enough walk in the light though a bit dicey coming back in the dark. We tried two of the three pubs for dinner, returning to the Scotsman’s Pack for a second visit and eating once at the nevertheless perfectly acceptable Plough Inn and one of the two local curry places, Maazi.

Driving. I haven’t owned a car for more than a decade and until very recently hadn’t driven one for around half as long. For this trip we hired a car and mostly got on well, though I thoroughly disliked the single-track lanes around the campsite.

Vroom!

Cars have changed in the (mumble) years since the previous car I drove left the factory. Six forward gears is an obvious enough evolutionary step and I was vaguely aware of start-stop but I’d not expected the electronic handbrake, nor had I expected the car to tell me when to shift gear - something it was generally right about on the motorways, but I thought less reliable when getting round those narrow lanes.

Photos. There are lots more photos on flickr. I made some videos while climbing although I think they’ll be of more interest for analyzing gear placement than general interest.

Clip 'n Climb

ewx — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:26:07 GMT

We went to http://clipnclimbcambridge.co.uk/. As a quick look at the website will make clear this isn't a traditional climbing wall - instead of the usual rock-like holds there is a broad variety of (mostly plastic) constructions. The gallery on the website gives some idea and a lot of the routes in the video turn up in Cambridge.

It’s aimed at a general audience of children and adults, not just experienced climbers - there’s no need for climbing shoes, and harnesses are provided. (If you have one, don’t bother bringing it, they won’t let you use it.)

We enjoyed it though going on an extremely hot day wasn’t the best of plans; the only concession to cooling possible was some fans in the corners. I managed most of the routes although a few defeated me in their harder versions (most of them have two or three difficulty levels). In some cases the biggest difficulty was sweat making plastic holds slippery - I had to use slightly awkward grips to stay held on reliably.

The staff insist on doing all the clipping in and out (understandably given the inexperienced intended audience). All the routes have auto belays; among other things this means that usual rest between climbs while belaying someone else didn’t exist l-)

I thought it was quite expensive for what we got; specifically, for an hour climbing we actually slightly paid more than our regular trips which includes a train journey. Still, we had a lot of fun.

Impending doom

ewx — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 21:47:19 GMT

With a real likelihood of UK exit from the EU, it makes sense to move the bulk of any savings you may have outside the British economy, since there's a serious risk that they will soon become worth substantially less and stay that way. Where are you moving yours?

View Poll: Sitting it out

Photo catchup

ewx — Fri, 20 May 2016 19:17:31 GMT

The most annoyed-looking pigeon I’ve seen in some time.

This started out as a photo of the National Monument but I think works better as a photo of the people.

More here.

Issue #1 of Various

ewx — Sun, 08 May 2016 10:53:38 GMT

Some sampler issues that came via Humble Bundle a while back and I’ve only just got around to.

Black Magic #1. A witch who is also a policewoman. First episode works in isolation but is clearly intended as the start of a longer story. I liked this and could be tempted by more.

Citizen Jack #1. Brutish snowplow salesman makes a deal with a demon to run for president. Didn’t grab me at all.

Huck #1. Small-town superman-alike just wants to do a good deed every day. What happens when the media find out? Find out next issue! Difficult to assess as it’s basically all setup in this issue.

I Hate Fairyland #1. Small girl magically transported to fairyland wants to get home and (eventually) responds to persistent setbacks with anarchic cartoon violence. Amusing idea but I didn’t get a sense there was any more to it than that.

Injection #1. See here.

Limbo #1. Noirish amnesiac detective (reminds me of Dead Letters, which I enjoyed) with magic. The issue concludes at the point he thinks he's got a job all wrapped up, and there's a genre convention about that... Has potential.

Monstress #1. A physically and emotionally damaged witch tricks her way into the stronghold of her enemy in search of answers, but has to leave satisfied with nothing better than revenge. I liked this.

Paper Girls #1. Four ?1980s paper delivery girls in (I think) encounter some kind of alien intrusion, although not a hugely competent one so far. Curious to find out what’s going on.

Plutona #1. Spends the entire issue character-building the group of kids who encounter the eponymous superheroine towards the end of the issue. Difficult to asses for the same reason as Huck, but the setup is more character-building and less situation, which I think is promising.

Pretty Deadly #6. Nice artwork and creative panel layout. But the story seems to be mostly setup and I wonder how much I’m missing from being dropped in at a 6th issue. An odd choice of sampler?

Ringside #1. Lots of good character stuff around an ex-wrestler and others ... followed by what looks suspiciously like the setup for a revenge fantasy. Undecided.

Saints #1. Saints run around a dingy bit of the USA and find each other. Angels plot. Reminds me a bit of Lyda Morehouse. The authors clearly share my amusement at medieval depictions of Saint Sebastian.

The Goddamned #1. A blond naked white dude called Cain (yes, that one) kills a bunch of savages in order to recover his stolen clothes and stuff, then spends a few pages moaning about how horrible everything is. I didn’t really like it.

Tokyo Ghost #1. A pair of police-ish types track down a villain who might be at home in a crossover between Ghost in the Shell and Batman: The Killing Joke. Sanguinary but fun.

Two religiously themed books

ewx — Sat, 07 May 2016 15:33:03 GMT

A History Of Christianity, Diarmid MacCulloch, 978-0-141-02189-8

Set aside some time to read this; at comfortably over a thousand pages, you’re unlikely polish it off in a weekend.

MacCulloch nominally starts his history in 1000BCE, though devotes just a few dozen pages to the Greek/Roman and Jewish background. The following 2000 years get considerably more detailed attention, across a broad geographic range. Western Europe, Russian, the Greeks, the Miaphysites and Dyophysites of the Middle East, China, Africa (especially but not only Ethiopia) and the Americas are all covered (and I’ve probably missed more than a few from this list).

It is of course thoroughly entwined with other elements of history: Constantine, Charlemagne and colonialism all make an appearance. Some appreciation of (particularly, western-oriented) history over the last couple of thousand years will surely help the reader but the wider context is not neglected. Equally, you will find a lot of philosophy and science in here, covering both religious background to new thinking and subsequent engagement with it.

The writing is excellent, informal without being lightweight, and making occasional but good use of sarcasm; the result is a pleasure to read. Particularly well done is the 16th chapter, which despite the dry-sounding title ‘Perspectives on the True Church’ in fact engrossingly lays the intellectual and political groundwork for the Reformation.

I’ve previously reviewed The Popes by John Julius Norwich. Where that was the narrowest of vertical slices through history, this book may be as broad a slice as is possible while still representing a single coherent theme. Recommended both for readers interested in Christianity in particular, but also world history in general.

(A curious detail that I’d not previously been much aware of is the growing strength of Dyophysite Christians among the Persian elite in the first half of the 7th century. Given the previous Roman experience, it’s interesting to wonder how that would have played out had the Sassanian empire survived any longer.)

God’s Crucible, David Levering Lewis, 978-0-393-06472-8

A history of Islamic Spain and its context and impact. The first quarter of the book quickly covers Roman and Persian background material leading (in the west) to Visigothic Spain and (in the east) to the rise of Islam, before putting the two together with the Islamic conquest of Spain in the early 8th century. The rest covers the history of ‘Al-Andalus’ and its interactions with its geographical and ideological neighbours. (Sadly for my particular interests the author simply states one of the theories for the etymology of the name without alluding to the difficulties in this areas.)

At the political level those interactions generally produced much heat and little light, although the Byzantine gift of De Materia Medica to ’Abd al-Rahman III is a notable exception - essentially a bribe to maintain opposition to the Abbassids, but in practice a substantial injection of knowledge into the western Caliphate and (eventually) Catholic Europe. And it underlines the case the author really wants to make: for an extended period Islamic Spain was the major intellectual and cultural centre of western Europe, for instance putting Alcuin’s efforts in the Carolingian empire into the shade, and moreover that it had an outsized impact on the rest of western Europe.

The case is not badly, though I thought that the balance between the political and intellectual history could be shifted further towards the latter with little real loss. Maimonides, for instance, has to share a chapter with the comparably significant Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and the two of them don’t even get the whole of it. Still, this is a minor flaw. An enjoyable book about an interesting episode in history.

West Highland Way (2)

ewx — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 09:06:50 GMT

Two more from naath:

(Click through to embiggen.)

West Highland Way

ewx — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 20:34:37 GMT

naath is taking a long walk in Scotland. She's sent some photos:

(Click through to embiggen.)

Colorful Security Question

ewx — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 14:35:21 GMT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red/black_concept describes a notation sometimes used when discussing confidentiality:

red denotes signals carrying secret plaintext;
black denotes signals carrying ciphertext.

Is there any generally agreed coloring for the analogous integrity question? i.e.:

a color which denotes signals where integrity matters (or maybe this is "all of them" and we don't need a specific choice of color); and
a color which indicates a signal with cryptographic integrity protection of some kind.

Non-color visual notations also welcome for several reasons:

things still get printed in monochrome;
color vision is not uniform among humans;
using too many color notations at once leads to angry fruit salad rather than clear diagrams.

Happy Saints Cyril and Methodius' Day

ewx — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 23:04:39 GMT

Since it’s the feast of day Saints Cyril and Methodius, it occurred to me to wonder who else has a script named after them. pseudomonas chipped in and we came up with the following:

Tironian notes, a shorthand system attributed to a Roman scribe called Marcus Tullius Tiro from the 1st century BCE. This seems to be an alphabetic system with an aggressively compositional character leading a large number of distinct signs. It was used in medieval Europe.
The Manichaean alphabet (technically an abjad), a descendant of the Aramaic script used in the Persian empire (the original one that caused classical Greece so much trouble) and supposedly the creation of the prophet Mani. Mani was the founder of Manichaeism, an early competitor to Christianity that failed to attach itself to any imperial power and seems to have subsequently been persecuted out of existence.
Cyrillic, a C9th descendant of the Greek alphabet attributed to the brothers Cyril and Methodius, a traditional attribution apparently supported by explicit reference in a papal bull that unfortunately I can’t find a copy of (much less translation into something I understand). It remains widely used for Slavic languages.
Braille was invented by Louise Braille in the C19th as an improvement on the unusably difficult Night writing, originally invented for the purposes of silent communication among soldiers. I often see this in public places and of course the use case has not gone away.
Pitman shorthand, invented by Isaac Pitman in the C19th as a phonetically system for writing quickly. Gregg shorthand and Duployan shorthand also date from the same era and there seem to be a number of other shorthands with people’s names attached, and I lost interest chasing down variations on this particular theme. I’m not sure how widely used these systems are any more.

Things that didn’t quite make it:

Ogham, an early medieval Irish script attested from the C4th but probably somewhat older. Mythologically attributed to the god Ogma. I rejected this because I wanted people with scripts named after them, not scripts with a probably fictitious attribution to someone who didn’t actually exist.
The Gupta script, used for writing in Sanskrit in the Gupta Empire in India (roughly contemporary with the Roman Empire). The script is only indirectly named for an individual - in fact is is named for the empire, which is in turn named after the Gupta dynasty. I rejected Georgian scripts for the same reason.

pseudomonas is mentioning more on IRC but it’s getting late…

Latest Humble Books Bundle

ewx — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 22:40:06 GMT

Humble Comics Bundle 'Creators Own Worlds'. About a day left so I’ll post pint-sized reviews now rather than waiting any longer.

Bitch Planet Vol. 1. The setting is a world where patriarchy is more overtly the basis of society; the president is called “Father” and women are imprisoned for the most trivial breaches of strict gender roles. The plot is largely set in a prison, where it can focus on systematic oppression and attempts to live within a corrupt, brutal and tightly circumscribed environment. But the planet of the title refers to the fact that apparently space travel is easy enough to ship these convicts to a prison located on some other planet - yet puzzingly this doesn’t seem to have made any other difference to society (at least as far as we see it). Some good characters.

Descender Vol. 1. Haven’t read this yet.

Free Issues Courtesy of Image Comics. Haven’t read this yet.

Image Comics Humble Bundle Preview Book 2016. Haven’t read this yet.

Injection Vol. 1. Magico-technological thriller. (Magicological?) The computer stuff mostly didn’t make me roll my eyes, which sounds like a low bar but in practice isn’t. I found the presentation a bit flat but the story was interesting enough to make up for it.

Invincible Compendium (Issues #1-47). Haven’t read this yet.

Jupiter's Circle Vol. 1. 1950s-ish superheroes with 1950s-ish flaws (gay, has affairs, alcoholic, etc). Watchmen did it better.

Just The Tips. Satirical sex and dating advice from the people responsible for Sex Criminals. Funny.

Kaptara Vol. 1. A small group of humans get stranded on an alien world. Very reminiscent of the Flash Gordon film. Humour with occasional darkness. Not bad but not great.

Low Vol. 1. End-of-time submariners attempt to navigate sea monsters and human monsters to save the world, which seems to have less clothes and less immortals than you might otherwise expect. The artwork sometimes emphasizes prettiness over clarity but I coped.

No Mercy. A group of students are in a bus crash somewhere remote. Relentlessly depressing.

Nowhere Men Vol. 1. A small group of superstar scientists degrade over the years from successful and positive collaboration to struggle and the creation of monsters. Lots of flashback. I found it hard to follow.

ODY-C Vol. 1. The Odyssey in space with female characters. More artwork emphasizing prettiness over clarity. Lots of narration, which would normally be a bad sign in a comic, but it gets away with it.

Outcast Vol. 1. Haven’t read this yet.

Phonogram Vol. 1. Magic and 1990s indie bands. Would particularly suit a reader who didn’t need most of the four-page glossary at the end (none of it about magic) but I enjoyed it nevertheless

Phonogram Vol. 2. Haven’t read this yet.

Rat Queens Special: Braga #1. An orc wants something more than orcish conflict. *shrug*

Saga Vol. 4. By volume 4 you should probably know whether you like this or not. I do.

Saga Vol. 5. Haven’t read this yet.

Self-Obsessed. Bounced off this almost immediately.

Stray Bullets #1-41. Unsympathetic people doing horrible things ... I nearly put it down, but I persevered and got to some more engaging characters. There’s nearly 1,200 pages here so don’t expect to get through it in a single sitting.

Sunstone Vol 1. Two women enter into a BDSM-based romance. Nicely drawn.

Trees Vol. 1. Mysterious alien trees plant themselves on earth, causing chaos and destruction. Most of the story is about the various characters development rather than the trees; some of them are sympathetic and interesting but others unexcitingly horrible. If anything I was more interested in the idea of volume 2 about three quarters of the way through than by the end.

Virgil. Revenge fantasy involving a gay Jamaican police officer.

Wayward Vol. 1. Tokyo urban fantasy. A teenage girl moves to Japan and finds she has magic powers and meets similarly equipped peers. Together they struggle against creatures from Japanese folklore. Nice artwork, good characters. Huge appendices containing background on all the things they run into.

Wolf Vol. 1. Los Angeles urban fantasy. European folkloric monsters this time. Not bad but not as good as Wayward.

Wytches Vol. 1. Black magic in rural America. I found the artwork a bit chaotic but the story was enjoyable.

Purple!

ewx — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 22:47:55 GMT

naath has purple hair now!

(In fact since before Christmas, I'm just behind on posting photos.)

Daftness

ewx — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 22:46:05 GMT

You see a lot of this design around Cambridge, I think invariably at floor level. Also Herons, though I've not been recording those.

There wasn't any evidence of anyone using this spot for its designated purpose.

In King's Cross Station:

Centre for Computing History

ewx — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 22:41:41 GMT

We visited the Centre for Computing History in October. Although a bit haphazard in places there's a lot to look at and much of it was familiar.

naath playing Atic Atac. You run around a castle collecting keys (to get through doors) and the fragments of a quest object. I spent a lot of time playing this; I remember one of my brother and I finishing it though I can no longer remember which of us did so!

atreic playing Chuckie Egg - a classic platform game.

emperor driving some kind of remote-controlled vehicle. I probably knew what it was in 1985 or something.

Alas

ewx — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 21:22:47 GMT

I reached for 1. Outside first, because of course I would. A concept album and I love the concept; aurally while I like the music, it’s the lyrics that I’m really here for. Some of my favourites:

(i) “Oh, Ramona - if there was only something between us
If there was only something between us
Other than our clothes”

Something I have thought about a number of people over the years.

(ii) “Something is going to be horrid” ... BOOM CRASH HALLO SPACEBOY

A fantastic audio cut, at a key point in the story - if it was a film this would be the last time we saw Baby Grace Blue alive (nonlinearity permitting).

(iii) “Watching the young advancing all electric”

A lovely image, and always makes me think of the explosion of personal electronics in the years since. Laptops, iPods, smartphones, Fitbits, and it’s not over yet.

(iv) “I started with no enemies of my own
[...]
I’ve been dreaming of sleep ... and ape. men. with. metal. parts.”

Ramona gets the best lines, consistent with her role, and the delivery of the latter in particular is fantastic. The implication that someone might have to - or want to - borrow someone else’s enemies, until they could organise some of their own, is a marvellous one.

Rolling Stone wrote, admittedly among some more sensible things:

It’s too bad that Bowie and Eno don’t allow themselves the luxury of a straightforward pop song until the very end. You have to wade through 19 tracks of conceptual mischief to get to the simple melodic development and swelling chorus of “Strangers When We Meet.”

Fucking philistines. The conceptual mischief is the whole point. For a review from someone who actually got it, see the second review here (by Iai).

Two TV reviews

ewx — Tue, 29 Dec 2015 17:08:16 GMT

The Killing. Lengthy subtitled Danish police procedural, in which Copenhagen detective Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) becomes obsessed with solving the horrific murder of Nanna Birk Larsen.

There are some fairly engaging characters here. Lund’s self-destructive obsession is very well portrayed, and Troels Hartmann (Lars Mikkelsen) political machinations under fire are enjoyable.

I guessed fairly early on who was the most likely killer although of course I wasn’t sure until late whether this was the kind of story where you see the perpetrator from the start or the police eventually track them down while they’re mostly off-screen.

The biggest problem, and it’s a recurring one, is characters who spend much too long being stupid, for instance inexplicably preferring to get tangled up in a murder investigation instead of than tell the police what they were really up to (which rarely turns out to be anything that the police would be very likely to care much about). In general, failure to communicate is an ever-present theme. I think they were aiming at with all this is “no-one is what they seem” but, to be effective, that needs a bit more than just clamming up for unconvincing reasons.

The series would also have benefitted from being a bit shorter, for instance by ditching one of the false leads, either completely or by having someone given the perfectly reasonable explanation for their superficially mysterious behavior up-front rather than taking a few episodes over it.

Top of the Lake. A more compact story set in a remote part of New Zealand. 12YO Tui Mitcham turns out to be unexpectedly pregnant and then ups and disappears. Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) investigates.

Griffin is not as self-destructive as Lund, but instead mostly struggles with her own history. Tui’s monstrous but complex father Matt (Peter Mullan) dominates every scene he’s in and is the most interesting character here, producing several surprises over the course of the series.

The final episode packs rather a lot of resolution into a small space, satisfyingly tying together a lot of threads but leading to a bit of a change of pace from its fairly relaxed predecessors.

Is there a well-known name for this?

ewx — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 21:38:55 GMT

From time to time I and colleagues find ourselves extending some function in C in a way that requires extra arguments. Often this happens in a context where it's impractical to change all the callers (for instance, because some of them are in customer code) so the extended version of the function gets a new name and the original name just calls that with some default value of the new arguments.

For instance I might go from this:

int refine_glorp(glorp *g) {
  /* refinement */
}

…to this:

int refine_glorp(glorp *g) {
  return refine_glorp_ex(g, 0);
}

int refine_glorp_ex(glorp *g, int arg) {
  /* extended refinement, based on arg */
}

Is there a well-known name for this transformation?

A colleague who did this a week or so ago started out with 'decapitation' but changed his mind to 'recapitation' on the grounds that he was really adding a second head to the function rather than removing one. But neither of us knew if there was already a name for this.

Résurrection

ewx — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 20:02:51 GMT

A Savage War of Peace, Alistair Horne, ISBN 978-1-447-23343-5

This is an account of the Algerian War of Independence.

It covers the background quickly: French colonization in the 19th century (an attempt to shore up the Bourbon monarchy, which did not really work), the establishment of the Pieds Noirs (i.e. European-origin colonists, not all French by any means), and early hints of trouble (at least some of it recognized, but never meaningfully acted upon).

Having set the scene it really gets going in 1945 with the Sétif massacre, with around 100 Europeans killed and shortly afterwards many thousands of Muslims being killed in official and unofficial retaliation. As well as being an appalling crime this was a serious mistake, being the event that radicalized many of the future leaders of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), the key resistance organization.

The FLN’s initial strikes were not particularly effective, but got the attention of the French state and even generated some recognition at high levels that reform and negotiation were required - but (in fact despite several attempts) significant reform was never actually delivered, not least due to persistent Pied Noir obduracy. For a long time nor was negotiation, partly for the same reason (i.e. the political impossibility of being seen to negotiate) but also due to the difficulty of identify a negotiating counterparty. The latter seems to have been partly a result of the colonial strategy of disrupting rather than co-opting the local elite.

Instead the response was to send in the troops. The FLN’s rapid and effective adoption of asymmetric warfare (maquis tactics in the countryside and bombings in the cities) saved them from complete destruction but the military part of the story is, ultimately, one of gradually increasing French success, and brutal tactics on both sides (with the French military tactics often acting as recruiting adverts for the FLN - “The stupid bastards are winning the war for us”). The FLN managed to find a degree of sanctuary in recently independent Tunisia (whose initially good relations with France were repeatedly degraded by ill-considered French military action) but weren’t able to exploit it other than tying down a lot of French troops in the form of a highly effective border force.

The result was a disastrous situation for France. The army felt they were doing the politicians’ dirty work, but that the politicians did not have their backs; a problem compounded by France record of repeated military humiliation (in WWII, in Indo-China, at Suez) - the army wanted to win something and thought (quite possibly correctly, in narrowly military terms) that they could do it in Algeria. In Paris meanwhile politics fell deeper and deeper into crisis, with independence politically impossible but no other realistic political solutions on offer and no government able to stay in power for long in any case. Moreover the combination of these two factors had led to the armed forces developing a politically unchallenged habit of independent action.

The result in May 1958 was a military revolt, with General Jacques Massu and others seizing power in Algeria, capturing Corsica, and preparing to take Paris. Their condition was that Charles de Gaulle must return to power, and in this sense, they got what they wanted.

Having taken the reins, however, de Gaulle was faced with much the same difficulties as his predecessors: the military campaign would probably work on its own terms but will not actually solve anything - it would be a permanent occupation, at considerable financial and moral cost. However, despite the hastily papered-over irregularity of his accession, he was equipped with a considerably stronger mandate to do something about it. In this sense, Massu and his allies did not get what they wanted, but exactly the opposite. By 1961 this had lead to a second military revolt, but this one failed dismally, and subsequently the remains of the war party resorted to the same terrorist methods under the name Organisation de l'Armée Secrète (OAS), in both Algeria and France, that their FLN opponents had long practiced. Nor did it stop there: the Gaullist paramilitaries of the Mouvement pour la Communauté (MPC) were in the habit of blowing up cafés frequented by members of the OAS. (The Day Of The Jackal is fiction, but the OAS really did try to kill de Gaulle).

Ultimately de Gaulle conceded enough about the future disposition of Algeria for negotiations to start making real progress, leading to the Évian Accords concluding the war in 1962. In principle he had been attempting to secure some kind of life for the Pieds Noirs in Algeria after independence; what happened in practice was that hundreds of thousands of them emigrated. He also failed to secure any practical protection for the Harkis, natives who had fought for the French and were subsequently treated exceptionally badly by the country’s new rulers.

History has not treated independent Algeria well. Its first independent government was quickly replaced by military dictatorship. It spend much of the 1990s in civil war.

Why was the conflict so intractable for so long? Many among the French governing elite understood that the game was up, but the persistent weakness and instability of French governments prior to 1958 meant they were unable to act on this. The Pieds Noirs and their military and nationalist allies, as well as being the immediate cause of that instability, were convinced they could and should win, although rarely within any kind of coherent idea of what the outcome should look like - the most clear-headed saw South Africa as their model, but others imagined even into the 1960s that they could reach some kind of accommodation with the Muslim population, which over the course of the previous decade had gone from optimism to fantasy. Finally, the FLN also thought they could and should win, but were actually right: they knew how to use their enemy’s strength against them, by provoking them into ever more brutal measures. Essentially they discovered how to make victory - or even a frozen conflict - too painful for France, and then they just had to wait until France broke, at which point they achieved their goal of total independence.

The reason I really bought this book, though, was to learn more about the May 1958 crisis.

de Gaulle does not (at least in Horne’s account) seem to have been involved with the planning and initiation of the coup. Rather he seems to have been ‘waiting for the call’ - but there is no clear indication that he was expecting to come from the army rather than, say, popular demand or a political party. However, he made himself complicit with Massu’s revolt both by announcing once it was underway that he was ready to assume power, and (in response to the last gap of parliamentary resistance) remarking “I shall have no alternative but to let you have it out with the paratroops”.

In particular, after reading books by Javier Cercas and Serhii Plokhy, I wanted to know how the coup compared with the failed coups in Spain and the USSR in the second half of the twentieth century.

In Spain, the golpistas perceived a country in serious trouble, just as France was in 1958, and General Armada planned to follow in de Gaulle’s footsteps by using military pressure to ensure he won a vote. But unlike the French example, where President Coty and the National Assembly conceded, Armada was unable to constitutionalize the coup, due to the failure to successfully co-opt the Spanish monarchy; whether he could have won a vote in the Cortes is unknown. And while 1980s Spain did have some serious problems, the country was in an ongoing process of reform; in contrast France in 1958 was demonstrably not coping and there did not seem to be any reason to think matters would improve - there was no light at the end of the tunnel and no realistic alternative to de Gaulle to rally opposition.

In the Soviet Union the country was also in a bad way - it had run out of money, had already lost territory and key regional elites were agitating for independence. Indeed the worst fears of the coup plotters were ultimately realized: the USSR destroyed itself from within not long after they had been defeated. While their actions no doubt contributed to this, the internal destructive processes were already well underway and I don’t think it’s controversial to say the outcome would have been essentially the same.

Comics catchup

ewx — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 21:51:05 GMT

(Caveat: it’s a while since I’ve read most of these so they aren’t all very fresh in my mind.) Underlining marks the best of the bunch.

From the 2015 Hugos packet:

Ms Marvel #1. A Muslim girl in the US gains super powers, and spends most of the book learning to cope, although some longer-term plot starts to pick up towards the end of this volume. Think Vimanarama but more American. Enjoyable.

Rat Queens #1. Four female mercenaries in a D&D setting. Praised as “realistic-looking female characters” and I guess that’s true by comic standards (i.e. discounting pointy ears etc). Well-drawn, some nice lines, reasonably engaging plot. Would probably read more (I’d have to re-read volume one to remember what was going on).

Saga #3. Continues the story. If you liked #1 and #2 (the latter of which I said a little about last year) you’ll probably like this.

Sex Criminals #1. Suzie discovers that time freezes when she orgasms, and as luck would have it meets Jon who has the same unusual power. Inevitably they team up and ~~fight~~ commit crimes. Enormously funny and I will be reading more.

Via Humble Bundle:

Alone Forever. 100 pages of mostly amusing ?autobiographical anecdotes about being single.

Bone #1. Weird little creatures who look like this gradually integrate with cute talking animals ... and find themselves caught up in obscure and rather darker than the setting would have suggested. I’ll be reading more.

The CBLDF Presents: Liberty. Huge collection of shorts, mostly touching on censorship and opposition to it. Mixed quality but fun overall.

Crime Does Not Pay #22-25. A 1940s collection of sensationalized accounts of crimes. Massively popular in its days, which was before a culture of self-censorship set in during the 1950s.

ElfQuest: The Final Quest. Elves doing nothing I found remotely interesting, I got bored and read something else instead.

Essex County. Small boy who likes comics grows up in rural Canada. I’m afraid I got bored of this one too.

Locke And Key. A family loses its father and, on returning to the ancestral home, becomes embroiled in struggle with an evil spirit, their principal weapons being a collection of magical keys unlocking a variety of capabilities for their users. There’s a lot in here and I couldn’t put it down.

Lost Dogs. Roughly-drawn tragedy. I made it to the end but I don’t think it was worth it.

Maggie The Mechanic (Love and Rockets). A vaguely futuristic setting provides the backdrop for meandering relationships between a collection of characters slightly too large for me to remember entirely clearly at this distance. Reminded me of Strangers In Paradise in many ways (not just the artwork).

Heartbreak Soup (Love and Rockets). Similar kind of idea but with an initially more claustrophobic and down-to-earth setting of a Latin American village.

The Madame Paul Affair. Chaotic goings on in a Montreal apartment block. It didn’t grab me.

March #1-2. Account of the US Civil Rights Movement as seen from the inside. Hard work at times but very interesting.

Morning Glories #1. Superficially an exclusive school but in fact the staff are torturing and murdering the students, among others. Might be tempted to read more of it sometime, not sure.

Mouse Guard. Sword-wielding talking mouse on a quest. I can’t really remember anything about this.

Parker #1-4. Career criminal repeatedly finds himself in ever bigger holes due to incompetence and/or betrayal by his associates. I remember this being fun to read.

Revival #1. The dead come back to life and cause all sorts of trouble. I don’t remember much about this but skimming it just is encouraging me to revisit it at some point.

Sidescrollers. A bunch of kids who mostly like playing video games get into scrapes. Fun though not exactly heavyweight plot. Wonderfully characterful greyscale artwork.

The Boys #5. Superpowered hit squad whose job it is to deal bloodily with the worst excess of the world’s superhero population, who seem to be at best criminally reckless. I think I probably suffered a bit from coming in at the fifth volume, but it was good enough that I’ll probably get hold of #1 at some point.

The Frank Book. Weird ?dog creature encounters weird things in a weird world. Quite nicely drawn but I got bored relatively early on.

The Little Man. Random ?autobiographical strips. I didn’t find it very interesting.

We Can Fix It. Jess Fink uses a time machine to revisit her past and generally interfere. A lot of fun.

Wytches #1. Villagers sacrifice people to dark forces in return for all the usual gifts. The victims fight back. I found some of the artwork a bit hard to follow in places but the story was a good one.

Holiday Reading

ewx — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 20:54:56 GMT

…and some post-holiday reading, as it happens.

The Last Light Of The Sun and The Lions Of Al-Rassan (Guy Gavriel Kay). I thought I’d reviewed some of his other books in this forum but I can’t find any evidence of that. GGK’s favorite strategy is to take a more or less well known historical era and its actors, lightly rename them, add a bit of magic, and then write a compelling story in the resulting setting. In this case we are mostly dealing with Viking era England, with Alfred the Great renamed Athelbert and the Vikings renamed Erlings in the former, and a renamed Spain during the reconquista in the latter, with the most famous of the character templates being El Cid. I got on well with both books, which meditate in various ways upon the passing of ages. Specifically, in the former, the subject is the end of a heroic age and the dawn of powerful medieval states, with the arbitrariness and brutality of the violence of the former contrasted with the inexorability and totality of the latter. The latter concerns the existential conflict between a sophisticated and cosmopolitan society with a more primitive but more vigorous one, to a great extent making the same sort of contrast.

Tigana and A Song For Arbonne (also Guy Gavriel Kay) have a slightly weaker connection with real-world history, though both take inspiration from past cultures in their settings. It seems to me that Tigana is really about how the weak can hope to fight the powerful and monstrous: direct open confrontation in force is impossible, so the indirect, covert and personal must be employed instead. A Song For Arbonne covers some of the same territory as The Lions of Al-Rassan, really, but draws quite different and ultimately more hopeful conclusions.

Cider With Rosie (Laurie Lee). The author recounts his Gloucestershire childhood, early in the C20th. Beautifully written, engaging characters, interesting events: it’s completely obvious why it’s considered a classic.

The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting (Holly Bourne). Teenage girl struggles with friendship, popularity and love at school, packing in a multitude of (some of them perennially) topical misadventures. Entertaining.

The Virgin Suicides (Jeffrey Eugenides). Slightly unusual narrative structure fails to rescue a story that I found essentially dull. But not half as offputting as…

The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell). Jesuits In Space sounds superficially promising, though the idea of a bunch of friends deciding one night to mount the first manned interstellar mission and succeeding made me laugh in disbelief. Putting that aside, however, the flashback structure means that the body horror aspects that might otherwise have been localized to a disaster towards the end of the book instead relentlessly impinge upon the reader throughout. I couldn’t finish it.

The Shell Collector (Hugh Howey). A bit of a departure for Howie. The post-apocalyptic scenario is familiar, albeit that it’s a more realistic and less drastic one than usual. But rather than the usual engineering-fiction romp that he does so well this is actually a straightforward love story. More strikingly still he doesn’t massacre enormous numbers of his characters, which I can only imagine must have been a wrench. Joking aside I got on pretty well with this, while the science-fictional element may be there just to support the primary romantic plot it’s still nicely done and the side-character interactions are enjoyable.

Also recently Ancillary Mercy (Ann Leckie) but (i) I suspect people are still hoping to avoid spoilers just now and (ii) I don’t think 2145 on a Sunday night is a time at which I can do justice to it. So maybe another time.

Scandinavia

ewx — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 21:43:42 GMT

We went on holiday to Scandinavia in August. Some of the highlights…

Copenhagen:

Photos.
Viking ship museum at Roskilde (about 20m on the train from Copenhagen). Ancient boats rescued from the bottom of a fjord, an opportunity to chop things, and rowing a reconstructed boat. http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/
Wandering around Kastellet in the sun and the Tivoli on a warm evening.
The Nordic Bronze Age. I was already well aware of the Trundholm Sun Chariot but hadn’t realised (with due deference to taphonomic bias) quite how rich was the material culture of that time and place.
Hire bikes with built in navigation. http://bycyklen.dk/en/

Stockholm:

Photos.
The Vasa. It’s big and very well preserved. If your model of early modern ships recovered from the sea is the Mary Rose then you have a treat in store. http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/
Lemurs. Who doesn’t like lemurs? If you know the answer, I don’t want to know.
Wandering around Skansen and Djurgården.

Both:

The public transport worked well.
Canal tours. Good decision in both cities.
My usual photographic idées fixes were well served, as you can probably tell…
Food. We ate at a lot of excellent restaurants, although the passage of time means it’s probably beyond me to review them individually now.
People. Friendly and with only one exception that I can remember spoke excellent English.

Ad-blockers

ewx — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 12:19:52 GMT

Ad-blocking in web browsers has been going on for years, but it’s generating more press lately because Apple have started doing it. (Possibly also it’s reached sufficient levels that it’s starting to hurt). I have very little sympathy for the organizations impacted by this for a number of reasons, but in particular:

Online adverts represent a serious threat vector. Breaking into a obscure blog and using that to server malware only infects that blog’s readership; breaking into an ad server affects the readership of everything that uses that ad network. This isn't a hypothetical concern; here’s a recent example (edit: here’s another) (edit: another, with a bonus of some social engineering to get users to make themselves vulnerable). If I asked an ad network to indemnify me against any losses resulting from permitting them to access my computer, what sort of response do you think I might receive?

Ad-blockers do indeed disrupt the business model of many websites, and this may yet be fatal for large numbers of them (or at least a contributing factor in their demise). But so what? The web has already thoroughly disrupted many existing business models[1], and is continuing to do so; if ad-blockers do kill a bunch of websites then really we’re just seeing another round of the same thing.

[1] although to my surprise I saw an apparently surviving video rental store on Saturday morning.