Grumpasaurus.com

Following Henry’s following of Jim Henley’s following of Adrienne Aldredge’s meme:

What authors have you given up on for good? And why?

Now, we’ve got two people saying Dan Simmons so I can’t use him. Which is unfortunate, since he certainly deserves to be on the list, both because of the GWOT malarkey and his horrible second-novels in each series he’s done. So… here’s my list of authors that started off great. Our relationship was perfect and my love for them burned brighter than two suns … only to fizzle when they kept publishing past their expiration date. These authors are dead to me, our love a dry, barren, scorched earth of place where only the unlikeliest of seeds may take root henceforth:

Chuck Palahniuk. Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, and Survivor were fantastic. Choke was good. But Diary, Lullaby, and Haunted were all empty nothings that lacked the energy, vision, and genius of his earlier work. I was pretty sure I was done after Diary, but I’m certain I’m done after Haunted.

Neal Stephenson. There, I’ve said it. Quicksilver was such an awful book that it overwhelmed the truly awe-inspiring works of Snow Crash and Diamond Age. and I liked the Big U, Zodiac, and Cryptonomicron as well. Interface… not so much (it was a long way to go just to get a black woman as president). Visionary, meth-and-death-metal fueled genius… toppled under it’s own weight and affectation of writing three massive tomes longhand.

Orson Scott Card. Three of his works were fantastic – Ender’s Game, Seventh Son, and Red Prophet. Some were pretty good (like the first two in the Homecoming series), but every book after the second in each of his series was just awful. The returning to former glories with Ender’s Shadow and the like is just pathetic. The well is dry, Orson. That and the freaking incessant pounding of the Mormon mythology drums just gets tiresome.

On the bubble: Neil Gaiman, Greg Bear, George R. R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Stephen King
Definitely on the list, but too trite to mention: J.K. Rowling, Robert Jordan, Michael Moore, Anne Rice

Update: Just found out about OS Card’s warporn book. Feeling very secure with my pick there.

Books

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?
…
While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it’s hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here’s one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn’t emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, “Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?”

While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen’s average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It’s almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.

A 1987 article by Jared Diamond before he became Jared mofo’n Diamond!!!! (Guns, Germs, & Steel; Collapse).

I have nothing substantive to add, just that it was an enjoyable read and an interesting take on ideas that he’s expanded on in his later works.

Books, Misc, Science

Check out the Discworld Cake

(it probably helps if you know something about Discworld (best! series! ever!), but in sum it’s a world … that’s a disc… carried on the backs of 4 giant elephants who in turn stand on the shell of the giant space turtle A’tuin. And A’tuin swims through space).

I have no idea how you’d eat that cake, but who cares? That totally rocks.

Awesome, Books

Sweet. I wonder if he covers the plagiarism of Ann the Man or when she was dumped or was one-upped by Adam freakin Carolla.

Awesome, Books, Crazy, Evil