The Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

Summary

Having conquered Caemlyn and Cairhien in the previous book, Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, begins to build an administration, but there are so many things to occupy his attentions. He has opened a new school in Cairhien, to do research and development in any and every field. He has opened another school near Caemlyn to train men to channel. Meanwhile, he's preparing a nasty surprise for his current nemesis, Sammael, who's hiding out in Illian these days and he just needs Mat there for it to be completely ready.

Meanwhile, rival factions of the Aes Sedai are sending embassies to him. He's pretty sure he knows which side he should trust, but before the end, he'll wonder if he should trust either side.

Mat heads down to Illian, but at the last minute gets diverted to an important mission, that ends up being pretty much the most frustrating one he has ever faced.

Meanwhile, Perrin, showing up again for the first time in two (or three?) books, returns from the Two Rivers where he defeated the Trolloc Hordes (well, not exactly hordes, but, you know...), and shows up on Rand's doorstep, offering to help. Now, if only Perrin could figure out what his wife wants.

Egwene gets called back to Salidar from where she's been learning from the Aiel dreamwalkers, and she suspects that she's going to be punished for passing herself off as Aes Sedai all these past months. Nynaeve and Elayne are holding Moghedien captive between the two of them, and may have just found out how to break the nasty heat wave that's been plaguing them. The only hitch is, they've got to go to Ebou Dar to do it. Whatever, though, they've been itching to get out of Salidar for a long time now, well, Nynaeve has, Elayne is not so sure.

The Forsaken are up to their usual sneaking around and plotting. Finally, it looks like they might get some success, with two more added to their numbers incognito. But they can't trust each other long enough to put together any kind of collective plan, so their plotting against each other as much as they are against Rand.

And the drama continues...

What I liked

The intrigue, the detail, the character development, the suspense. One of my favourite books of this series so far. The writing and story telling both seem to have improved. A solid addition to the series.

What I didn't like

Although the drama in this book was more palatable than in many of the previous books, it was still present. Elayne, Aviendha, and Min can't decide whether to fight over Rand or share him; Rand isn't sure he wants to be shared or forget about any kind of relationship altogether, if only he knew what was going on... Perrin can't figure out what's up with his wife, Faile. She's angry at him, but why? And a good many pages are devoted to that particular piece of soap opera... Gawyn thinks Rand killed his mother, and even though he's madly in love with Egwene, who tells him Rand hasn't killed Morgase, he still wants to kill Rand, maybe just on principle. And he won't listen to reason. Actually, none of the characters seem able to listen to reason... Anyways, yeah. It's just weird and mostly pointless drama.

Conclusion

Fun, adventurous, suspenseful, interesting. I pretty much tore right through this one. It's gripping. Some boring parts, and lots of explanations, but overall, packed with suspense. A real page turner. I'll give it 4.5/5 tricky witches. I can't recommend starting anywhere but at the beginning of the series, but so far, it does seem to get better and more interesting and more suspenseful as it goes along.

Deepak Chopra and Truth

In a debate on Nightline, Deepak Chopra said: "I want to seek the company of those who are looking for the truth but I want to run away from those who have found it."

(The debate should be available on the internet. Janelle and I watched the whole thing on youtube.com last night.)

This seems platitudinous to me. It's like searching for something so that, when you find it, you can deny it exists. That's a self-defeating exercise.

We don't approach science this way: while studying for an exam in biochemistry, I don't kick out of my study group the people who claim to know the answers to the problems, I seek them out and get them to teach me.

Or, if I was looking for something, if, for example, I lost Mr. Chopra in the mall and wanted to find him, I might go around asking people: "Hello, have you seen a pretentious man?" And give a brief description of the man's physical appearance. And they might say, "Ah, yes, I know exactly who you're looking for, he's doing a book signing at Chapters." I would not, then, go looking for him at Canadian Tire: I would go to Chapters.

Or, if I wanted to hire an electrician to upgrade the wiring in my house, I would look for one who knew the proper code and adhered to it. I would not hire an electrician who claimed not to know the code and avoided the company of those who did know the code. I would avoid such an electrician and perhaps take steps to have his license removed.

Why on Earth, then, should I apply this method to explore philosophy? It is foolish to simultaneously search for truth and deny its existence in so far as anyone else has experienced it. There are methods in philosophy for reasoning out truth with logic. If the truth that you eventually come to by logical and rational examination is unpleasant or does not square with your hypothesis, do not assume that your methods are unsound.

If, in science, our research and experiments continually disprove our hypothesis, we do not change the standards of critical examination and experimentation to prove our hypothesis. This is bad science. Instead we seek to reconcile the hypothesis with what we have learned through research and experimentation and emerge with greater knowledge: I previously believed that a+b=y but experimentation showed, and I now believe that, a+b=x. We do this all the time. Why approach one subject differently?

We claim that philosophical, moral truth is subjective. But if the universe is constructed around physical laws that are as rigid as we have found them to be, there can be no subjective area of knowledge or wisdom and the universe must be founded on rigid absolutes in every aspect.

(In my opinion. Of course it's my opinion. It's my blob, who else's opinion would it be?)

A Question of Power by Bessie Head

Summary

In Apartheid-era South Africa, Elizabeth was born in an institution for the insane because her father was a black native African and her mother a white woman. Her mother, a white woman, had committed a crime by having sex with a black man. Authorities concluded she was insane and had her committed her.

Elizabeth, the child of that criminal union, was born in the institution and rigidly classified as "coloured."

The story takes place many years later. Elizabeth, now a grown woman with a child, moves to the village of Motabeng in Botswana and teaches in a school. But she begins to go insane and much of the action in the novel takes place inside Elizabeth's mind with three or four characters in a deadly war over Elizabeth's soul.

What I liked

Very little. The evils of Apartheid are starkly demonstrated. For example, Elizabeth ends up in an institution for the insane where a white South African psychiatrist comes to treat her. She begins to spew hatred for black Africans, and the psychiatrist assumes that, since she hates black people, she must be sane and has her released. That was painfully funny.

What I disliked

Just about everything. Most of the novel, being the confusion of an insane woman's mind, was difficult to read. The third person narrator is meddlesome.

The story is well put together and well written, for the most part. However, it's not interesting, it's bitter, it's horrible. It's like all the worst parts of feminism or something. I'm not a fan.

Conclusion

An academic novel. Definitely worth the paper it's printed on, but not worth owning or reading. It's good to have, on a shelf in the library. 1/5 lobotomized vaginas.

Professor Bernard on the Vietnam War (Continued)

Today's class covered the last part of the Vietnam War and a little exam review...

About the exam, professor Bernard said, "You won't have to defend a major thesis, I don't want to saddle you with those kinds of topics." How nice of him.

During the lecture, a student asked: "Would it be right to say that the [Johnson administration] deliberately lied to get executive powers in Vietnam?" And professor Bernard replied, "Yes. Sure. They usually do that."

I love understatements like this one: "American behaviour at Hue, that city being shelled to dust, and My Lai, where several hundred civilians were slaughtered, did not endear the Americans to the South Vietnamese population that they were purportedly saving from Communism."

On War Crimes and Crimes against humanity, Bernard says that Great Powers are never held accountable for their crimes, the United Nations International Tribunal always goes after the small powers. For example, Chechnya had four million people, now there are only two million people. Were there war crimes committed there? Of course, but you will never see Putin dragged to the International Tribunal. Instead they will go after some black military dictator in a small African country.

About the US imposing its will on South Vietnam, "This is the way Great Powers behave."

Also: "Politics are very dirty and politicians too."

"I've heard we are in Afghanistan to help little girls go to school. I'm glad if that's what we do, but I doubt it."

"Thanks to a massive inflow of US money, arms, and weapons, South Vietnam expanded its forces to 1.1 Million soldiers. At the beginning of the 1970s almost the whole artificial economy of South Vietnam rested on war and American financial assistance. Saigon's population swelled from 300 000 to 3 or 4 million. Saigon became a brothel city, a prostitution city, and a drug city. The drug trade was very, very important in Saigon." (Statistics report that well over 70% of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam became addicted to Heroin. American Mafias began importing Heroin in the coffins of slain American soldiers.)

"After his re-election in 1972, Nixon launched the Christmas bombing campaign, which made Hanoi the most-bombed city in all of history. North Vietnam has been more bombed than Nazi Germany. Hanoi is not Berlin. It is small. Little bigger than Thunder Bay, I think."

"After My Lai, the American army was looking like a gang of disgusting thugs."

Professor Bernard on the Vietnam War

Today in my Cold War History class, professor Bernard introduced the Vietnam War. Easily the most interesting class so far this year. Here are a few quotes:

1. "I think the only ones who understood the situation were the French, because they had been there and left."

2. "Dean Rusk, Kennedy's foreign secretary, firmly believed that the National Liberation Front (the Viet Cong) was simply an arm of the North Vietnamese government people who were themselves Chinese stooges. Which is very dumb to say the least, of course, they weren't stooges for anybody."

3. "The leaders in Washington were pretty much conceited."

4. "They killed one million Vietnamese because they loved freedom so much."

5. "The people you train will not kill their brothers, they will join them."

6. "Weapons manufacturers don't need a war to sell their wares."

7. About President Kennedy: "It is very difficult sometimes to do what you want to do."

8. It snowed during the night, leaving a nice coat of fresh snow over everything: "For the Americans it was like having an arm in the snowblower--very difficult to extricate yourself once your arm is caught by the auger."

9. "Kennedy didn't appreciate the military situation."

10. "The Americans thought it was the bad communists in the north who were meddling with the south."

11. "Even now, I hear on the radio, these backwoods Canadians talking about how we have to fight the Talibans because if we don't they will come in their back yards. If you paid me, I wouldn't go into their back yards."

12. About the Tonkin Resolution: A student asks a question comparing the Tonkin Resolution to the post 9/11 Patriot Act. Professor Bernard deflects the question, a second student comments on how the Patriot Act came out only one or two days after 9/11, and wonders how they got "like five thousand pages" written in that short a time. A third student puts in, "Well, you're a good history student, you know all about that." And Professor Bernard says, "Yes, they enlisted some history students to write the Patriot Act." Student number three says, "That's not very patriotic" (referring to the deception of the Tonkin Resolution, but said right after the professor's comment about enlisting History students--there were two or three discussions going on at the same time.)

Stalin, Khruschev, and Brezhnev

My cold war history prof told this joke in class today about the Soviet leaders:

A Soviet train gets stuck in a snowdrift. When the problem comes to Stalin's attention, he says: "Find and shoot the saboteurs." The police randomly choose five passengers and shoot them, then force the rest of the passengers to push the train.

In the same circumstance, but years later, when General Secretary Khruschev is alerted of the problem, he boards the train and says to the passengers, "For the glorious advancement of socialism, come with me and we will shovel the snow."

And, when the same thing happens while Brezhnev is General Secretary, he gets on the phone with the conductor and says, "Close the drapes and shake the train so the passengers think it is still moving."

Here are some further quotes from my Cold War history professor that I found humorous:

1. About the atomic bomb: "President Truman thought: we paid for it, we might as well use it."

2. "Representative government has not the same meaning to the Soviets as to the Americans."

3. "I am not a great leader makes history person but the leader does make a difference." (On the difference between Roosevelt and Truman.)

4. "The bourgeoisie owns the capitalist system."

5. "There is no friendship between states, only interest." (This is one of his favourite sayings.)

6. "It was very easy for the Americans to make Stalin into a second Hitler."

7. "Humanitarian causes are never motivations for political action."

8. "1953 is a key date: Stalin died."

9. "The USSR had not much to give."

10. "Sovietization was extended to every aspect of life, with the USSR's academy of science demonstrating Soviet supremacy in every field ... they could say that the USSR invented the wheel."

11. "Propaganda was also used in the west. Sometimes the two systems are symmetrical."

12. "Stalin was a complicated guy."

13. "The Atomic Bomb is not something you use, but something you like to have."

14. "Roosevelt was considered a shoddy president for being too conciliatory with the USSR; after him, the presidency was reduced to two terms."

15. This one demonstrates the way he talks: About post-Korean war cross-border conflicts: "They would think, it would be interesting to have that hill, you know, fortified line."

16. "I cannot overstate this enough, Stalin was paranoid."

17. "You can believe that workers need decent pay without being a Bolshevik."

18. "Stalin drank vodka like water even in his 70s. So he was very tough."

19. About brinkmanship: "Or, if you prefer, brinkpersonship; I received a comment, so now I am prepared."

20. About post WW2 sentiment about Germany: "We love Germany so much that we want two of them."

21. "The USSR was okay with neutralism."

22. About the settlement of the Suez Canal Crisis: "The French were a lot tougher and quite sore at the British for backing out. They thought if you invade someone, you should have the wherewithal to see it through." (The British bowed to international pressure and withdrew from their short Suez Canal adventure, which they had commenced jointly with France and Israel.)

23. About the USSR's involvement in the Third World: "There was a lot of mischief that could be caused by the USSR."

24. "Politics is not a very very ethical activity."

25. "The soviet rockets were put together with glue, string, and scotch tape."

26. About Soviet and American nuclear war strategy: "I destroy Toronto, you destroy Budapest, I made my point, you made yours... This concerned the European leaders, as you can see, because what if, after a nuclear war has ravaged the allies of both countries, the USSR and the United States decide to make peace?"

27. He asks the class this question: "How did Khruschev use the sputnik success for foreign and domestic propaganda?" When the class doesn't seem to understand the question, he asks: "Was he in the sputnik capsule?" Someone from the class says, "No." He laughs, "No, of course not. But it was pretty annoying for the Americans."

28. "Everything happened in 1956."

29. "I think Eisenhower would have a heart attack if he saw today's deficit."

30. About Khruschev's international travels, compared to Stalin, who rarely traveled internationally: "This was annoying for the Americans. With Stalin it had been convenient to be able to make him into an ogre in the Kremlin."

31. About the Sino-Soviet Split: "There was a big crack in the Eastern Bloc."

32. "Mao was impractically driven by ideology."

33. About the Chinese Industrial Revolution or "Great Leap Forward": "This was an industry manned by peasants. The plan was to have small factories in villages. To the Soviets this was not Proletarian, it was unorthodox and it was impractical. It would produce scrap, and even today, the Chinese have become very successful at producing scrap. But the Soviets thought it was a hare-brained project."

34. "The USSR is always pro-peace for propaganda."

35. "Kennedy made big mistakes in the beginning."

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Summary
Caelum Quirk lives in Littleton Colorado with his third wife, Maureen. He is a teacher at Columbine High School, she is the school nurse there.

When Caelum's aunt Louella dies suddenly of a stroke, Caelum, her last surviving relative, travels to Connecticut to arrange the funeral.

On April 20, 1999, Caelum is at his dead aunt's house in Connecticut, his wife Maureen is in the school library, helping a student when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enter.

The plot of this novel follows Maureen's recovery from post traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings. It's told from the perspective of her husband and deals with his issues as well.

Eventually, Caelum digs into his own past and into the lives of his ancestors.

What I liked
This novel was very well written. One of the best. And the storytelling was well done too. It was evocative, the characters were awfully believable. And the story wrestled with some really weighty questions that made me think real hard.

What I didn't like
It was a very difficult book to read. It's kind of dark until the very end. Even then, the light is murky. None of the characters are very likable. I could relate to them easily enough, but the story is more about how they succumb to their flaws rather than how they overcome them.

Also, I've never read anyone who could make sex as dirty as Lamb makes it in this book.

Conclusion
I have very mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it was well written, it tells a story that's well worth reading, and it wrestles with very important questions. On the other hand, it's unnecessarily dark. At the end, it talks about hope, but hope in what? The ending seems to point to human goodness or innocence as a source of hope... but it's not convincing. Realistically, human goodness isn't something you can count on, so, to me, it doesn't seem to float much as a source of hope. All in all, it's a book worth wrestling with, though. I'll give it a 3.9/5 alcoholic school teachers.

Patrick Misses Janelle

So, Janelle's new job has taken her to Winnepeg for a week of training. I miss her. Here's some reflections on a week of singleness:

1. It sucks. Seriously. I don't go to bed late and sleep in, and then feel like I missed my whole day and end up staying up late again to make up for it, which makes me tired in class the next morning. I forget to eat. I forget to take my vitamins and my apple cider vinegar... which reminds me.

okay, i'm back now.

2. It's really lonely. We talk on the phone every day, but it's not the same.

On the plus side, it was really nice on Tuesday and I had a nice walk. I walked all the way to meeting and it only took me about half an hour. I got to think about stuff. Also, I got to work more on my story, and I'm really happy about that!

I've also been working on an essay about the Soviet Union's General Secretary/Premier/President Mikhail Gorbachev (of the late 1980s and early 1990s) for my Cold War History class, which I'm liking a whole lot. It's my favourite and most interesting class and my professor is really, really cute. He's French, and he says funny things, like last week he was talking about Egypt's Aswan Dam project and he said they wanted to use it to control the "fluudes" on the Nile. And then he said, "Fluudes, fluudes. I do not know how to pronounce this anymore." And someone yelled "Floods!" And he said, "Ah yes, floods." It was funny. :)