Category Archives: Culture

Considering engineering

Mark Bernstein provides a link to this article in Civil Engineering called The Creeping Storm. A bit of it goes like this

In the 1980s Joseph Suhayda, then a coastal oceanographer in the civil engineering department at Louisiana State University (LSU), began to seek an answer to this question by simulating storms with a modified version of a hurricane model used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Suhayda first began modeling the storms to help parishes in southeastern Louisiana determine appropriate flood elevations for FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. As his modeling capabilities improved, he began to more closely investigate the level of protection provided by the levees encircling New Orleans.

Suhayda’s model contains a geographic information system overlay that divides a fairly large boundary, from Alabama to Texas, into 0.6 mi (1 km) grids containing information about ground elevations, land masses, and waterways. The FEMA hurricane model does not draw on the same processing power as AdCirc and in general produces more liberal projections of flooding from storm surges. But by solving numerical equations representing a storm’s pressure, wind forces, and forward velocity, Suhayda was able to use the model to predict the storm surge associated with an actual hurricane dozens of hours before it hit land. By subtracting the elevations on a topographical map of coastal Louisiana from those surge values, he was able to approximate the flood risk of a given storm.

In the 1990s, Suhayda began modeling category 4 and 5 storms hitting New Orleans from a variety of directions. His results were frightening enough that he shared them with emergency preparedness officials throughout Louisiana. If such a severe storm were to hit the city from the southwest, for instance, Suhayda’s data indicate that the water level of Lake Pontchartrain would rise by as much as 12 ft (3.7 m). As the storm’s counterclockwise winds battered the levees on the northern shore of the city, the water would easily top the embankments and fill the streets to a depth of 25 ft (7.6 m) or more.

Suhayda’s model is not the only one that describes such a catastrophe. A model called SLOSH (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes), which is used by the National Weather Service and local agencies concerned with emergency preparedness, portrays an equally grim outcome should a storm of category 5 hit New Orleans. The SLOSH model does not contain nearly as many computational nodes as does AdCirc, it does not use a finite-element grid to increase the resolution of the nodes on shore, and its boundary is much smaller. Even so, its results are disheartening.

“Suppose it’s wrong,” says Combe, the Corps modeler. “Suppose twenty-five feet is only fifteen feet. Fifteen feet still floods the whole city up to the height of the levees.”

Experts say a flood of this magnitude would probably shut down the city’s power plants and water and sewage treatment plants and might even take out its drainage system. The workhorse pumps would be clogged with debris, and the levees would suddenly be working to keep water in the city. Survivors of the storm—humans and animals alike—would be sharing space on the crests of levees until the Corps could dynamite holes in the structures to drain the area. In such a scenario, the American Red Cross estimates that between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die.

Some announcer on TV tonight wonders if it’s too dangerous for the help to go in. Pathetic. So much talk about security and looting. People are dying in the streets, in shelters. Water’s everywhere but there is no water. Drop tons of meals-to-eat on the islands of waiting people. Time for “overwhelming aide.” Overwhelming aide. We have the force side down.

On assassination

The various certifiable reverends are out today defending the mad cleric, who claims we should murder Hugo Chavez. I’m sure there are lots of reasons why we should do this (and who else?):

Because Venenzuela is becoming a hotbed of communisim and a harborer of mad clerics
Because of Chavez’ habitual downloads of pornography and updates from Stream
Because Chavez speaks Spanish
Because he wears tube socks to church
Because he reads the newspaper
Because he enjoys the OC
Because his dues lapsed
Because he’s forsaken true biblical readings
Because he’s been seen reading poetry

I wonder what else.

Priorities

There are times when you have to trust that the government knows what it’s doing. When those times will come, I have no idea.

Various agencies, including the UN, have been crying for help in Niger and other places (including our own cities and schools) for long enough to have been heard by countries with the wherewithall to put the thumb to some portion of the cracking dike. The president is supportive of Intelligent Design (now that’s news), yet people who should know better can’t intelligently design some means of providing food to the hungry (and gifts of wonder to systems in bad need of repair). Let’s give tax dollors to profitable energy companies (how many times do I have to pay the power company?) so that they can profit more in my name. Sure, it’s a Christian country. When it’s easy.

Shame on us.

Joe Writer and the Publishing Game

Josh Radke and I have been going on about issues in publishing and the markets, a topic we will be talking about at our upcoming Narrative’s meeting. The conversation has looked like this:

I agree that assigning blame doesn’t help anyone involved. I thought the problem was the Agents. Having read that thread (http://www.sfreader.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1313), it’s clear to me that the problem is largely Ingram and their almost monopoly.

..I don’t know if I can agree that people are reading more. At least in my generation (and those that are following), many of us are much more interested in the quick fix of a movie or game for their entertainment than in finding a good book. I can’t say I blame them. When that thread states that the majority of new fiction out there is saturated with politics and multiculturalism, they’re right–at least by perception. That comment I posted to your blog comes into play here on the grounds that readers under 30 are tainted by the the fiction we were force-fed in school. We think that it is a representation of what is on the bookshelves, and so many don’t even bother to try and find thee diamonds in the rough. If there were more Dan Browns and Harry Turtledoves allowed in school curriculums, schools might make some headway. And many others just simply don’t have the time in this labour-intensive, corporate society.

..More people are writing? You bet, and I suspect that this trend is probably tied to self-publishing and the internet. And the more people that write and think they can be published, the more we hear about rejection letters and scams and the impossibility of getting published. However, I don’t think the issue is Joe Writer getting rejected because there is no room at the inn. It’s that Joe Writer is getting rejected without being given a chance because he’s being compared to Dan Brown or James Lee Burke or Robert Jordan. And Joe Writer realizing after more rejections that he can’t be Joe Writer is he wants to be published and on a shelf at a major bookstore. Because apparently the only book-types that are worth promoting are the ones that are proven and politically correct. I’m sure you’ve noticed the amount of “trials of a young wizard” books that are popping up everywhere. This same trend is dominating a movie industry where there is no such this as an “original screenplay”.

Writers aren’t suposed to have the impression they have to pattern themselves after a successful authour or story. And literature isn’t something that is meant to be clones or grown in a winter greenhouse. By telling writers this is what they have to do, writing becomes a science and not an art.. and writing as a science is betrayal of the art of the worst kind.

As I see it at the moment, the solution is the continued success of small presses and their distributors. Small presses are still willing to take a gamble on new writers. Independent bookstores like to promote local authours, and consequentially, local authours find it easier to get a booksigning with an indy bookstore. Self-publishing also figures into this equation. And this kind of grassroots action is how all successful “revolutions” start.

My arguments about the state of publishing in the United States may be flawed, but I don’t really see a question of altruism or public service in publishing; nor do I see why Joe Writer would need to write derivatively in order to see himself in print. I see the main job of “publishing” concerns as that of “selling” books not “publishing” them. In the markets, print books are a commodity that must be sold not just published, since publishing doesn’t necessarily “imply” money changing hands but it does necessitate a “reader,” whereas “book stores” need to stay in business somehow. Somehow the question comes to a basic issue of fairness toward authors. But to do “houses” owe Joe Writer a hearing? My conclusion is “no.” Joe Writer,who’s a guy with an unpublished novel, needs to find some way to get his book to a reading public but if he wants to “sell” his novel he needs to play the market game. That’s my opinion.

But the original issue came from this focused question by Josh: “Are books and literary reading becoming obsolete?”

My answer is absolutely not. As far as I know, people are still interested in reading poetry, fiction, and all kinds of things from the diversity of presses out there. But another way of risking a question is to ask how reading habits are changing such that when we ask “Are people still reading” we negociate what we mean by “reading” in this sense.

A lot of what I’ve written here is off the top of my head and is in no way intended as factual or even valid as inference. But I think that a lot of this has to do with what we mean when we ask Joe Churchgoer if he’s religious and he says, “Sure am. In fact I have a devil worship meeting tonight. Would you like to join me?”

Pedestal as Canon

My friend Neha Bawa in a comment writes

Heck, there are times when I think that post-structuralists like nothing better than to sit around a square table (round is too structured for them, I think) and knock every [sic] theory against the wall either out of pure spite or complete laziness.

On the other hand, you’re talkin’ to a Lit major here…I would never reject that feast listed up there…but I would challenge the pedestal.

I would disagree with this. Post-structuralism as a large set of approaches–which include critiques of medicine, law, and literature–to reading “the world” has produced highly rigorous and interesting points of view: I find Foucault readable and interesting. As in any area of human affairs and talk, there are bound to be cranks, hacks, and opportunists. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the work seriously. But I agree with Neha about challenging the pedestal, hence the call for other lists of “reader” points of view. This is why I don’t like top one hundred or top ten lists as totalizing paradigms. Perhaps the world does indeed stand atop an infinite stack of turtles (plugged metaphor).

On reading the city

Nerd journalist Mark Anastasio reads the city:

Stepping out into the steets of San Diegos’ Gas Lamp Quarter this morning, we were taken aback by the smell of freshly scrubbed streets and the lack of pastey white geeks(not unlike myself) milling about in a merchandise induced stupor. Along the sides of the road lay the foamy reminents of city soap, diluted with fanboy drool, dandruff and keys to Mothers’ basements. It had seemed as though we’d gotten a headstart on them. The endless halls of B-list celebrities, video games, and comic books had surely tuckered them out. Yes, the anteaters of popular culture had surely slept in . . .

Read for more coverage of Comic-Con here.

Fantastic strangeness

My teenaged daughter, K., and I and a friend of hers, C., hit the next blockbuster, The Fantastic Four, as is our habit (to check out the blockbusters). And the thing that struck me was the audience in attendance, primarily made up of young children–on average from 6 to 10 years old.

Now, on the one hand, FF4 is marketed to children; it’s part of the culture of summer-fun stuff. The story, however, isn’t kid’s stuff, though the dialogue was definitely adolescent. You’d expect a lot of kids in the audience.

Interestingly, the previews, which we failed to miss, were definitely not tailored for the audience. I spent a lot of time during the previews making K. and C. laugh by imagining the questions the kids in the audience might be asking their parents:

“Mama, what is that mean guy going to do with that giant knife?”

“Papa, why was that vicious-looking nurse wearing garter belts?”

“Ma, is our car going to blow up like that on the way home; does it hurt to drown like that, too?”

“Father, does our nurse have an Uzi in her underpants?”

Reading lists

I’m currently working on a reading list for a friend. It’s a list of suggested readings build on two parts, foundational texts and advanced. The foundations include such authors as Augustine, Saîkaku, Montaigne, and Julius Caesar, while the advanced (in time) include Kristeva, Ong, and Feynman. The readings are world-oriented and cover intellectual history. This isn’t a list of favorites, but what I consider influencial texts across the areas of human concern and the human life-world, so we have poetry, politics, history, philosophy, architecture and science among the offerings.

So, you’re a canon builder. A friend comes to you in all honesty and asks for a “course” in the breadth of human making? What would your list include?

Celebrations

My son, Samuel Mark (his name is actually quite literary, if you can guess the riddle), is now 4 years old today. Congratulations Sam.

He was presented clay as a gift and the first thing he did was roll it all into a Katamari.