Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Movie report: Superman III Realizing that there was a gap in my education, I watched Superman III (1983!). Sigh. I wonder if they actually had a meeting to decide they wanted to take the most powerful being on the planet and reduce him to tepid leftovers, or if it just kind of happened spontaneously. Some random thoughts (because it doesn't deserve an essay): * Kryptonite: Sorry to be a kryptonite nerd, but green kryptonite doesn't work that way. Green kryptonite hurts or possibly kills Superman. It doesn't split him into nice Superman and ass-hat Superman. Red kryptonite *might* do that, but it might also turn him into a lizard. * Romance with Lana Lang: Okay, this was sweet, for Clark to rediscover a woman from before he was Superman. But, my gosh, he makes no progress whatsoever, even though she's giving him a green light the size of Kansas . If he has constraints on whether he can fall in love, you have to let us know, Mr. Director! Otherwise, wh...

Book report: The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser When I read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, I had the definite overall feeling that he was wrong. Not just that I disagreed with his ideas, which I do, but that he was making actual mistakes in his reasoning and arguments. I pointed out some of these in my book report ( http://dejesus.blogspot.com/search?q=delusion ), but I knew there were more that I just couldn’t put my finger on. I’m just an old country theoretical physicist, not a trained philosopher, so I’m not up to the task of pointing out and refuting all his errors. Luckily, Edward Feser is. As a professional philosopher, with special interests in Aristotle and Aquinas, he has the philosophical chops to expose the fallacies in the arguments of Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and the others who make a pretty cushy living by mocking belief in God. Feser’s book “The Last Superstition” presents counterarguments that are essential if one...

Book report: Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell My son James recommended this novel to me, and I’m glad he did. It’s certainly one of the strangest novels I’ve ever read. I’m going to do my best to describe it without giving away too many of the surprises. First off, it is actually six different stories, with different main characters, different times and places, and, most impressively, different styles. After reading this book, I have no idea what David Mitchell’s writing style is, and I mean that as a compliment. The book opens with a journal being kept by Adam Ewing, an American legal clerk in the 1830s returning from an assignment in the South Pacific to his home in San Francisco. This section reminded me of the “Master and Commander” books in their descriptions of shipboard life. This section was the toughest sledding for me, with descriptions of cannibalism and inter-tribe atrocities that made me queasy. But definitely press on, because the next section is an absolute de...

Book report: Pattern Recognition (a novel), by William Gibson As soon as I finished reading this novel, I started back at the beginning and read the whole thing again. I liked it that much. I’m surprised I didn’t read this earlier. I loved Gibson’s “Neuromancer”, and read both sequels, “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”. “Virtual Light” is one of my favorite books of all time, and I re-read it about once a year. But its sequels, “Idoru” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, left me cold. I didn’t connect with the characters, and the plots seemed muddied. But, after hearing Gibson speak earlier this year, I thought I’d get back on track again, and I’m glad I did. The main character is Cayce Pollard, a 30ish American woman with a strange gift-slash-curse: she is acutely sensitive to product logos. On the plus side, she can immediately tell if a new logo “works”, so she is in high demand from advertisers willing to pay her big bucks for her opinion before launching their ad campaigns. Th...

Book report: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire Why is the Wizard of Oz such a compelling story? This modern myth seems to get a new retelling every couple of years, each with a different angle, a different emphasis. Certainly, the 1939 movie version has left an indelible impression on American culture: most people can quote large sections of the movie verbatim, and certain phrases crop up in ordinary speech almost daily. A writer is lucky to come up with a single memorable character in their entire lifetime, but L. Frank Baum created 8 in this one story. By far the most memorable character is the Wicked Witch of the West. Margaret Hamilton’s performance in the 1939 movie is surely one of the most unforgettable film roles ever. I know she scared the bejeezus out of me, and my experience was not unique. That face! Those gestures! That voice! Yet, if you think about it, how wicked was she? She certainly threatened a lot, and put people to...

Book report: Is God a Mathematician?, by Mario Livio First off, this book has nothing to do with God. When scientists – and mathematicians – say “God”, they don’t mean God, they mean something like “nature” or “the universe” or “the laws of physics”. So, the title of this book actually means something like, “Why is the universe so mathematical?” As Mario Livio points out, this question actually has to do with a couple of connected questions. You see, mathematicians split into two philosophical camps: some mathematicians believe that mathematics has a kind of independent existence of its own, and that we discover its pre-existing truths; others believe that mathematics is invented, something that we create as we go along, like the rules of a complex game. So, which is it? Is mathematics discovered or invented? There’s a related question: why does mathematics describe the universe so well? When you took physics or chemistry classes in school, you probably had to learn a jillion for...

Book report: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson Snow Crash contains at least 7,000 clever ideas, any one of which could form the basis of a personal philosophy, a system of government, a business plan, a religion, a video game, an action movie, a floor wax, or a dessert topping. How can an author include so many ideas within the plot of a novel? Well, he can’t: they stick out of the actual story like Post-It notes on book pages. Neal Stephenson has never heard of the writer’s motto “Show, don’t tell”, so instead you get “conversations” that consist of character X asking, “What do you know about Sumerian mythology?”, to which character Y responds with a 6-page encyclopedia entry. In other parts of the book, the author can’t even be bothered with that meager illusion of story-telling, and simply presents large slabs of information directly to the reader, without bothering the actual characters, who presumably have other things to do. Oddly, there are characters in this book. The hero, ...