Tag: Introduction

October 27, 2023 – Anthem, Introduction

October 27, 2023 /

And we are back to an old friend. We have now moved on to Anthem by Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged and Anthem cannot be more different from an outward appearance. Anthem is described as a novella. My copy is barely over 100 pages and I was planning on breaking it up into four groups. The first three chapters are going to be almost half the book (and about one chapter in Atlas Shrugged).

I got to thinking that it is interesting that both Rand and Zamyatin were Russian ex-pats writing at the same time on very similar subjects. Maybe, just maybe there is something to the similarities, just saying. It seems like people experiencing the same situation and writing their thoughts have come to very similar conclusions.

Sometimes I have read the book, sometimes I haven’t before I start writing the introduction. In this case I read the first chapter to get a sense of what is going on. I don’t like to be influenced by what others think it is about or concepts but it is also hard to introduce the book without having any prior knowledge.

I plan on breaking the book into four segments plus a conclusion. That means that we will finish this series in the beginning of December. Not to spill the beans but the next author will be a new one for me. I have a reserve of books that I have not yet read and I am trying to vary the authors a little bit even though there is more Rand in the future (already have the book).

This is another dystopian, science fiction story. We will talk all about what is in the book from a concept and a story line next week. I didn’t know this, but when I was reading the plot summary in Wikipedia, there is reference to We as the only related work. I suspect that it may be because the main character’s name is a number sequence. It also takes place in a dystopian future, etc.

The story was originally conceived as a play, then it was going to put in a periodical. Finally, it was published in the United States after the success of Fountainhead. Reading the history in Wikipedia, Rand tried to persuade Disney to make an animated film using stick figures. That would have been really interesting.

I am leaning more and more on moving away from the dystopian genre exclusively. Maybe, I will move from Friday book reviews even. I really enjoyed 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Atlas Shrugged. But, it started to slip with Lord of the Flies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy checking these things off of my list but it is starting to feel like a chore trying to extract things week over week. I will leave it open for now. I do want to get through this one and the next one before I make the decision. For sure, I will continue to read and review books, it just may not be in one genre and chapter a week.

End Your Programming Routine: I am even struggling to get through the introduction. It has taken me three days to write this. But what do you write about a book that you don’t know anything about? Maybe I shouldn’t do these series before I have actually read the book? You get the point. Next week I will have more substance.

August 18, 2023 – We, Introduction

August 18, 2023 /

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin; I really don’t know anything about this book. It is said to be the grandfather of all dystopian fiction and direct inspiration to Aldus Huxley who by proxy influenced George Orwell, Ayn Rand and Kurt Vonnegut. Sounds good to me.

I have taken a look through the book and there are 40 chapters, called Records. Since I really have no idea about the flow or anything, I think that I will do five Records per week making this a total of ten weeks. That being said, the book is only a little over 100 pages. So, I might change my mind before next week as I get into the book.

This book was originally written in Russian (1921) and translated into English (1924). I can already tell from the language that I am going to struggle a bit comprehending its more archaic dialect. That is one reason why I am thinking of taking smaller bites into the book.

Reading the plot summary online I will give a brief recap of the highlights. It seems that the plot takes place in a homogenous and utopian society. People no longer have names but IDs and live in a highly regulated society. From what I read, it seems like the main character begins to question the perfection of utopianism.

Huxley claims that he was influenced by Orson Wells and that he never read We while 1984 seems like an alternate plot. Orwell claims that he read We a few months before writing 1984. I hope that I am not going to lose my luster Orwell who so far is at the top of my list.

I am going to keep it short today. Partly because I don’t know much about the book and partly because I don’t have much to say yet.

End Your Programming Routine: I will say this in parting. I don’t know exactly what the future holds with this segment. There is plenty of dystopian literature around that I want to read. I am weighing the impacts of other controversial works like Catcher in the Rye or classical titles as well such as Crime and Punishment. Good art should stimulate the brain, not just entertain so there may be something to learn by branching out. I am keeping it in this genre for now.

March 9, 2023 – Life Without Fuel

March 9, 2023 /

I was born in the mid-1970s. I do remember the gasoline shortage of 1979 vaguely. I remember asking my mom if the water could run out. My dad purchased a bicycle and started riding it to work everyday. He rode a bike to work and back from 1980-1983 (until we moved too far away). My mom rode a bicycle to the grocery store and around town.

Whether people realize it or not, our lifestyle revolves around fuel. One type of fuel is electricity. In my house that is the stove, the refrigerator, the freezer and the furnace. I would say that it is pretty important. A small amount of electricity can be stored in batteries and another small portion of electricity can be made with a generator but that doesn’t run without fuel.

We have all seen the Walking Dead where gasoline all runs out and the entire planet switches to ethanol. It’s a fun fantasy for sure but not really realistic on a large scale. Some preparedness minded people have made a huge investment in solar but this also assumes the outage is not caused by something like an Electro Magnetic Pulse. This is essentially a high level nuclear detonation that fries anything electrical. If you think that it is not possible, think about military escalation with Russia and a Chinese balloon that flew undiscovered along with who knows how many others.

I really don’t think that it is possible or practical to prepare for catastrophic events. What is smart is to deal with the typical, short term problems we see in everyday life. An ice storm knocks out power for a week or the government shuts down society for a month. You can’t leave or you don’t want to leave how is this going to work?

Can you actually stay home for two weeks? I know that examining what happened during the pandemic we didn’t. Sure, we had lots of food and we were fairly well prepared for survival. On the same hand, none of us knew what was going to happen so we went out in search of more while we could.

I remember standing in an hours long line at Costco on one of the first Saturdays of the lockdown. We waited for an hour and eventually decided that it wasn’t worth it. We ended up going to a scratch and ding kind of place called Wheeler Dealer because there were no lines. We got everything we wanted at scratch and dent kind of prices without the wait. It was mostly snacks and comfort foods, not something we stock a lot of. The truth is, we didn’t need to go out. It was a shortage fear that triggered us to react.

Leaving woulda/coulda/shoulda of that era behind, fuel is not much different the food. We may need to leave to get it, the prices are generally going up, it has a shelf-life, we can never have a lifetime supply at any one time and we use it daily. I am going to take the next couple of Thursdays talking about fuel storage, redundancy and alternative solutions.

End Your Programming Routine: This was going to be a single post but I couldn’t get my head around exactly what I wanted to say. There was too much and the topic was too broad and I wandered too much. I think I changed the title ten times before I settled on this one. Fuel is always something on my pantry list. It’s not sexy or fun but boy are you glad you have it when you need it.

December 20, 2022 – Fly Tying Basics

December 20, 2022 /

I am not tying flies yet. Let’s see if I can shake the cobwebs off enough to get started. On my 18th birthday, I got a class where my dad and I went to a fly tying class for a term. That was a few weeks shy of thirty years ago, I think that was close to the last time I did this. The good news is that this is no longer a dark art. With YouTube and websites, the information should be readily available. I still have my old manuals too.

I suppose the good news is that this is not expensive to get into. Some of the introduction kits are around $50 and have everything that you need to start and move on from there. Even the supplies are pretty inexpensive. But a word of warning, as with all fishing tackle, some things are hot at particular location and/or time. It really is best to tie for the situation and not just amass a huge pie of potentially useless flies (unless you just like doing it).

What I am showing in the picture above is the result of two kits plus some additions. Without much ado, here are the required items.

  • Vise
  • thread
  • fish hooks
  • scissors or X-acto knife
  • materials appropriate to the pattern.

These are the strongly helpful items

  • bobbin
  • hackle pliers
  • head cement

That is it. It is really not that difficult to get started as long as your dexterity is reasonable, you have an adequate workspace with light and space. Some people use a repurposed desk, I am using a dedicated bench, I have tied plenty of flies at the kitchen table and even a card table in front of the TV.

There is more to know with materials, but I think that I will save that for another day. With that, you cannot really separate flies and fishing because that is the whole point. So, I am going to cover some terms that you will come across.

  • Wet Fly – This a a whole class of flies that are meant to spend time under the water.
    • Nymph – this is a type of wet fly that simulates a larva
    • Emerger – This type of fly is when the larva is changing into an adult
    • Streamer – This is a flashy wet fly used in steelhead fishing
  • Dry Fly – This is a whole class of flies that are meant to float on the water. This would be the classic fly.
  • Popper – these are flies that make noise. They are wet flies but make a sound when you are stripping them back in. Bass plugs do this as well.

The world of fly fishing can be confusing because they use some of the same equipment as conventional angling, but call them different names. For instance conventional fishing would call this item a ‘bobber’ while in fly fishing, it is called an ‘indicator’. I think that this is part of why fly fishing appears pretentious along with the catch and release ethic among other things.

A dry fly traditionally used natural materials like hair and feathers. It seems like the whole movement has loosened up quite a bit with flies called ‘dirty flies’. They might have suggestive names or they may be made of any kind of material. This is things like craft materials or rubber legs and things significantly departing from hair and feathers. I guess what I am trying to say is that what used to be very rigid rules about what to wear, what to use and how to do it seem like it is slowly changing.

I have always liked streamers. These flamboyant flies are imitating baitfish. This is where I am going to start because it uses a big hook. This will give me opportunity to practice technique at the same time I have some room to work.

End Your Programming Routine: Next stop, actually tying flies. Of course as I said at the beginning, these first couple are just to get my head right. I am not going to worry about them actually being fishable. That means the right fly for the fish and environment. I think for 2023, I am going to set a goal of catching a fish on a fly that I have tied. I should say try to catch a fish on a fly that I tied.

February 4, 2022 – Introducing the “American Dream” Series

February 4, 2022 /

Even though I have been spotty over the last couple of weeks, I got really inspired to go deeper into Wikipedia’s definition of the “American Dream”. I realized that I talk around it quite a bit but I have never really defined it. According to Wikipedia, the American Dream is comprised of five values: democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality. Each week, I am am going to take one of the five values and analyze the origins and the state of the value. I will sum it up with an overall score card when I am done.

In 2001, a bipartisan bill was introduced called the DREAM Act. While DREAM is an acronym, it is a play into the American Dream ethos. At the heart, the DREAM act is essentially an amnesty program for undocumented aliens that were brought into the country as minors (without consent). It even spawned a self-labelled generation of ‘DREAMERs’. My point being, from our history to our culture, the American Dream is something uniquely indigenous in our beliefs from the origin this country.

Have you ever really read Martin Luther King Jr’s I have a Dream? There is no doubt that that it was racially targeted, however if we take the speech out of context of it’s deliverance, the words are still relevant today. I cut some excerpts below.

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.“

“There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.“

“And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.“

“We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.“

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.“

Now, re-read those quotes and replace ‘white’ with vaccinated and ‘black/negro’ with unvaccinated. Or if you would rather, replace ‘white’ with liberal and ‘black/negro’ with conservative (or vice versa if it pleases your bias). I ask you, can we deny that we are living a civil rights conflict at this moment?

I realize that the comparison is not perfect. I am not saying that beliefs are equated to physical traits i.e. race. You can’t necessarily look at a person and know on what side of the argument they stand, unless maybe they are wearing/not wearing a mask. I am also not saying that this new dichotomy was something that we were born into and likely will never leave. here are aspects of choice to the conflict. We can choose compliance at the expense of ethics but isn’t that the opposite of freedom?

We don’t fear lynching, we fear being cancelled for having an opposing view. We don’t fear being barred from voting, we fear our vote doesn’t matter. We do fear our children will not be allowed into schools, we fear losing our jobs from lack of vaccine passport, we fear being barred from the lunch counter.

What I am saying is that institutions are starting to produce the same policy that put us squarely back to the 1890s, separate but equal (Plessy v. Ferguson). Isn’t ironic that the states with the most institutional segregation in the 1960s are the states that are implementing the least amount of segregation today and vice versa?

End Your Programming Routine: Why did I choose this to kick off the discussion when a good introduction should highlight what I am going to talk throughout the series? Because King’s speech is encouragement to fight for and problems within his socioethnic status from obtaining the American Dream. He directly uses the phrase American Dream, quotes the Declaration of Independence and heavily references the Emancipation Proclamation all in support of that effort. That is some of the most poignant works on freedom I can think of.

“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.“

December 21, 2021 – A New Book Review: “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

December 21, 2021 /

This is one of those books that often is paired with “1984” or “Atlas Shrugged”. I was toying around with doing “Fahrenheit 451” after Christmas but then I heard some information on “The Dangerous History podcast” the other day that brought this one up again. I highly recommend the whole thing, but in case you just want to listen to some Orwell interpretation, I clipped the relevant part here.

A Brave New World was published in 1932.  From the brief research that I have done, this work was an influence to both Orwell and Bradbury.  As it turns out, Orwell was actually a student of Huxley’s when he was a French teacher and it appears that they had a professional relationship. 

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narcohypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.”

Aldous Huxley to George Orwell on publishing 1984.

What is going to make this review different than “1984” is that I plan to go through it quicker.  I technically have as much time as I need from the library but I am going to try and not take eight months to get through it. 

The plan is to review this book in five segments, this being one of them.  There are fifteen chapters, so five chapters at a time and then a summary.  This is also the first time I have read this, so my eye is not as tuned to the subplots and I am trying to follow the story line first.  That being said, I have already seen a bunch of good stuff in the first two chapters.  Of course with the holidays here, I don’t know if I will be able to keep this schedule, but let’s say that this will be compressed as compared to my previous review.

With the wide and quick swath through the book, I am going to again hit concepts.  This time, I am not going to spend  a bunch of time supporting the ideas to go along with them.  I will save that for the final wrap-up.  My ultimate idea is to build an AltF4 reading list for you to support the end your programming journey.  

I may have tainted my opinion a little, I read the introduction before actually reading the book.  So, I am not going in completely blind, I have some ideas about Huxley as an author, his influences and motivations when writing.  One interesting thing that this particular edition has is a timeline of Huxley’s life compared to world events.  Since I read it, I will introduce it here.  The three central influences are

  1. Henry Ford
  2. Sigmund Freud
  3. Jazz music

While I haven’t seen any biographical links to justify Huxley’s fixation on those particular topics, I will be keeping an eye out for them in the book.  I do have some working theories at the moment, but I will reserve those for the after I read the book.  One fact to keep in mind if you are reading along, Henry Ford was born in 1863 so the years referred to in the book AF630 would be 630 years after Henry Ford was born or the year 2493 AD to us.

As I develop this concept a little more, I will likely include more than just dystopian fiction although that is where we will start..  I am interested again taking another look at other titles like “Catcher in the Rye” and “Crime and Punishment” as well as non-fiction such as “Seven Habits of Highly effective People”.  Don’t fear, this isn’t going to be a book report blog, this is about developing a library of work and knowledge that supports the efforts of ending your programming.  

End Your Programming Routine: As you might remember from “1984”, my final analysis didn’t line up with the ‘tin-foil-hatters’.  On the surface, I see it.  But look deeper into the story and then try to put it together,  I couldn’t get there.  Is it great fiction – yes.  Is our course eerily charting the same direction – yes. Is it clairvoyant or a roadmap – No.  In fact, I think “Animal Farm” is probably closer to a roadmap.  That is on the list too.