Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Resend to Black Gate

Due to some hardware/virus issues Black Gate lost a bunch of e-subs, 440 of them.  I've had one there since October 2004, the first time I'd tried to e-submit a ms.  More info on the Black Gate newsgroup.  I'll try printing it out this time and sending it.

If you've sent an electronic submission and have not yet received an answer, kindly RESEND it.  DO NOT QUERY, just go ahead and re-send. Feel free to mock me in your cover letter.

Blogging for peace

Assumption:  All extroverts have a blog.

Are you constantly bothered by overly-talkative colleagues?  Want to keep them out of your office?  Start by using encouraging phrases like, "You should blog that" when they say anything that approaches an interesting topic.  Also, point out that you've been blogging nearly every day, and then ask candidly, blank face, touch of innocent wonder, "When did you put up a post last?"

Blogging's the answer, my friends.  These talk-too-much-write-not-enough'ers will see you blogging, feel shame at the lack of recent posts on their blog, and then set out to correct the imbalance--sometimes, if you're lucky, "resolving" to do so.  (And unless they're one of those Scoble-influenced TabletPC fanatics they'll do it in their office not yours). 

Conclusion: Introverts to your blogs!  The more you blog, the less others will bother you. ;)

OK, maybe this doesn't work, but you should shoot for the ideal, and someday...

In the meantime, check out Skott's post to which this is my fairly sarcastic response.  And I think the TabletPC, especially the slate form factor, is extremely cool tech.

Give the world back

A great quote from Aristotle the Desire to Understand, Jonathan Lear, p 7-8.:

The world as such is meant to be known (by beings like us) and it invites man to fulfill his role as a systematic understander of the world.  Imagine how frustrating it would be to be born with the desire to understand in a world which did not cooperate!  The world would remain incomprehensible, and yet we would obsessionally keep bumping our heads against it.  Aristotle had great faith in the world: indeed, his philosophy is an attempt to give the world back to creatures who desire to understand it.

Kings and Poets

solus aut rex aut poeta non quotannis nascitur
[It is only king and poet who is not born every year.  From Annius Florus (circa 130 A.D.)] 

I think I got that right.   For Plato, the two rivals for philosophy, rivals for the minds of men, were kings and poets.  Plato's philosopher kings had absolute authority--and those damned poets are going to wish they'd never been born.

For Plato, those who grasp the Forms were always going to be a small group who must control, enslave, direct, think for those who do not grasp the Forms, vast numbers of them, the masses, artists, etc.  The ratio between the two groups was never going to change.  For Aristotle, those who are nurtured in a functioning polis (civilized) are an ever-growing group and percentage of the whole.  The uncivilized groups of men--"barbarians" of today did not have to remain so tomorrow.  They could join villages into a polis and in a few generations could be every bit as civilized as any Greek polis--regardless of race.  Aristotle's often accused of having an elitist us and them, Greek and non-Greek, attitude toward civilization.  But this is false.  He was familiar with most of the Greek poleis, Macedon, the satraps and cities along what is now the western Turkish coast, many of the isles in the Aegean, Persia and its holdings, Egypt, and many other Mediterranean cities.  He did not simply regard the Greeks as civilized and everyone else uncivilized.  For example, he held the Carthaginians in high regard, and Carthage was a North African city state with a population of mostly Phoenician decent.  They were non-Greek, but they were civilized, they had a polis, they had laws.  Aristotle also thought there were uncivilized Greeks, and then there's his constant harping on Athenians and others, but that's another post.

A man with a bunch of names

Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece, and that's why he's sometimes referred to as the Stagyrite (also, Stagirite).   He was called Notre Doctor (Our Doctor) by the great French Classicist, Pierre Cornielle.  He was The Master of Them Who Know to Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy.  He was The Philosopher to the Medievals.

A closer transliteration of his name would be Aristoteles.  It's often shortened to Ari. (Aristotle Onassis was Ari, Telly is also short for Aristoteles--Telly Savalas' full first name was Aristoteles).

Floating trees

OK, you caught me listening to some old Yes...but I swear it's Bruford on percussion! I've had a thing for floating trees ever since I saw Roger Dean create them in the early '70s, and my liking for hovering foliage was--if anything--refueled a couple decades later when Miyazaki animated a whole world around them in Castle in the Sky. (A very fun movie I try watch whenever the kids put it on. You have to ignore the female lead's name, Shita, an unfortunate transliteration from Japanese, pronounced shee-tah, although you could also shorten it to sh'tah. And then there's the name of the castle in the sky itself, Laputa, which my wife thought way too close to "la puta." In Spanish it means something like "the whore."--may or may not be to your liking. That said, a great animated film). I drew this a couple nights ago.  Sitting there with my nine year old son, sketching trees, trying to figure out where that wicked bright sun's beaming from so I can get the shading right.  I look over, ask, "What are you drawing?"  He shows me.  "Cool," I say.  "Skeletal clawing hands!"  Trees are boring.  I turn the page and start working on some evil hulking fellow that'll show up in one of my stories to beat the crap out of my protagonist.

Almost lost in translation...but you're not allowed to read it anyway

Plato on censorship (Republic 386b).  Plato's arguing that his Republic must censor (expurgate, stifle, purge, repress, etc.)  anything that makes death look bad.  According to Plato, death must be seen as a release, a good thing, "ours is not to reason why," something you really look forward to if you're to get your soldiers to the point where they fear nothing, even death:

But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away [386b] the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Certainly not, he said.

And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?

Impossible.

Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile, but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them [386c] that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.

That will be our duty, he said.

Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses,

"I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to naught."  (Odyssey II .489 sq.)

Achilles tells Odysseus this when his ghost is called up from Hades' halls.  (Hades is the god, you go to his halls when you die).  Basically, being dead sucks, it's boring, painful, gray, dull, don't do it, live as long as you can, Odysseus my man.

It's interesting to see how the translations differ.  See Perseus for the Greek.

Samuel Butler's trans:

I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above
ground than king of kings among the dead.

Sir Desmond Lee (Penguin Classics):

I would rather be a serf in the house of some landless man, with little enough for himself to live on, than king of all dead men that have done with life;

WHD Rouse trans:

I would rather be a serf or labouring man
Under some yeoman on a little farm
Than be king paramount of all the dead

Francis Cornford:

I would rather be on earth as the fired servant of another, in the house of a landless man with little to live on, than be king over all the dead.

Chaos just isn't nice

Aristotle, following Pythagoras--as well as your typical Athenian in the street--thought the unlimited, the infinite, was evil, and the limited good.  Evil is unordered, chaotic.   The good is ordered and finite.

Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult- to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue;  For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

Nichomachean Ethics 1106b29, W.D. Ross Trans.

Tell me O muse...which one?

Trying to remember...Terpsichore, Clio, Thalia, Calliope...who's the muse who handled clichés? Urania!  That's it.  It's got to be Urania.  Come on, with a name like that.

John Scalzi's editing the Spring 2006 edition of Subterranean Magazine, and he wants fiction and non-fiction on the theme of Science Fiction Clichés. And he's even giving us time for inspiration. Check it out.

Not a lot, but enough

I wrote another 1000 words or so last night, not a lot, but it keeps the story going.