Review: The Atrocity Archives

The Atrocity Archives
Charles Stross
Golden Gryphon Press

Rating: 8 of 10

There are those books where the cleverness of the author is irksome, where one cannot escape the vague impression that the reader is expected to stop and applaud the literary gymnastics at the end of every chapter. In The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross does not engage in pyrotechnic wordsmithery, but his cleverness is unmistakable.

Stross, (we dearly hope), has conjured up The Laundry from the bowels of his imagination, an esoteric department devoted to cleaning up those nasty messes that result when dimensions collide. The occultic Laundry is one part NSA, one part MI5 and two parts bureaucratic nightmare, as even the most awe-inspiring eldritch horrors are somehow reduced to matters of paperwork and departmental infighting. It is as if 007 was fired for sexual harassment and replaced by 013, a Dilbert in uneasy possession of Lord Voldemort's powers. The complex synthesis is a most unlikely one, and yet Stross pulls it off with effortless expertise.

A longtime technology columnist for Computer Shopper, Stross presents a world in which modern science and mathematical theory have been used to harness occult power from... elsewhere. The Cold War, it seems, was even more grim and cold than anyone imagined, as the arms race involved far more than the comparatively prosaic threat of nuclear weapons. An insignificant pawn for a minor player in the Great Game, Bob Howard has recently traded the boredom of a desk job for what he hopes will prove a more exciting position in the field. But in this environment, one can never tell when things squamous and rugose will unexpectedly liven up a tedious day at the office with a moment of sheer horror.

Story: 4 of 5. Surely one of the strangest thrillers ever written, the fantastic and science fiction elements only add to the tension. Yes, there are girls that must be rescued and worlds that must be saved, but the unique nature of the threats involved, both wordly and otherwordly, keep the pages ever-turning. There are actually several stories contained within one meta-story, as a related novella, The Concrete Jungle, follows the Archives proper.

Style: 4 of 5. The text is gripping and entertaining throughout, as the juxtaposition of everyman's office life with the omnipresent possibility of sudden and horrible death is quite amusing. Stross uses his jargon judiciously, piling it on for maximum effect at times, but never allowing it to slow the story down. Like Umberto Eco and Dan Brown, he manages the neat trick of making the reader feel smarter for having immersed himself in his book.

Characters: 3 of 5. Stross's Howard - an homage to a genre legend - is an amusing protagonist. He is not at all the cliched reluctant hero, but his self-deprecating nature makes his occasional self-doubt all the more real. Stross, for all that he is manifestly an vision writer, still manages to draw his characters with precision and more than a little wry humor.

Creativity: 4.5 of 5. Yes, this is a synthetic creation. His influences - Lovecraft, Stephenson, Fleming, Adams - are obvious, and yet the wizard's melting pot prduces something new, different and even stylish in a technocratic manner. Stross is perhaps the best "new" writer the science fiction genre has produced since Neal Stephenson; he is certainly the most interesting.

Text Sample:

The fact of the matter is that most traditional magic doesn't work. In fact, it would all be irrelevant, were it not for the Turing theorem - named after Alan Turing, who you'll have heard of if you know anything about computers.

That kind of magic works. Unfortunately....

The theorem is a hack on discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves the Church-Turing hypothesis (wave if you understand that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted into P-complete ones. This has several consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms - translation: all your bank account are belong to us - and ending with the ability to computationally generate a Dho-Nha geometry curve in real time.

This latter item is just slightly less dangerous than allowing nerds with laptops to wave a magic wand and turn them into hydrogen bombs at will. Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct - except for the little problem that this isn't the only universe we have to worry about. Information can leak between one universe and another. And in a vanishingly small number of the other universes there are things that listen, and talk back - see Al-Hazred, Nietszche, Lovecraft, Poe, etcetera. The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandlebrot mathematics, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics - computerised or otherwise - draws them forth.

(And you thought running that fractal screensaver was good for your computer?)

Book reviews

Nate has a little Pan-Galactic book club aborning at his site, which made me wonder if it might be interesting to put together a community book review collection over at voxday.net. I have a distinct review form in mind, and I'm thinking that if Digital Cowboy and I designed the forms for automated entry, the reasonably well-read collection of people here would be able to put together a fairly solid selection of book reviews that might be of use to people in short order.

Is anyone amenable to the suggestion? Let me know if you:
a) like the idea and would like to contribute reviews;
b) like the idea and would like to read reviews;
c) think it's a dumb idea as one can find plenty of reviews at Amazon.

Basically, I like to see reviews hitting the four distinct aspects of a novel: Story, Style, Characters and Creativity. For example, I would rate Tanith Lee very high on style, somewhat high on creativity, and much lower on story and characters, whereas Rowlins would tend to score much higher on characters and story than on style.

The election is moot?

We spend a lot of time discussing the merits of third party voting here, but as I've now run across a fourth distinct source that believes that the election will be canceled in between now and November, I thought that I'd at least bring one of the more interestingly paranoid theories to your attention. Is any of this real? I couldn't possibly say. The only thing of which I am sure is that there are real unanswered questions about the events of 9/11, that there a number of what appear to be logical holes in the official story, and that history suggests that there is more of a power struggle going on beneath the surface than the average person following the national media would be likely to understand.

As a tangential example, I happen to know from a direct source that the story about smart missiles hitting Baghdad was false. The missiles weren't that smart, instead, there were spotters who had infiltrated into Baghdad who were using lasers to guide the missiles into their targets. A minor inaccuracy, sure, but a blatant misrepresentation of the facts by the government nonetheless. As to the assertion that Israel tested out some of its tactical - if tactical is the word for something that can strike from 600 miles away - nukes in Iraq, I can't say except that the radiation reported does seem far too high for it to be nothing but expended rounds of depleted uranium.

Conspiracy theory is the most accurate theory of history, the problem with using it to understand what is happening is that one seldom has any idea of which conspiracy is real and likely to be successful until it is all over. Lenin's takeover of Russia was a conspiracy after all; how many attempts to take over the USA have been made, attempts of which we have never heard? Given Roman history, it stands to reason that more than one individual would very much like to take control of the most powerful military and wealthiest economy in the world.

AJ: Do you think the globalists are going to have the will to carry out another massive attack here in the U.S. to try to get control back over the population and get their agenda back on track? Or do you think they've calculated, computed as you said, that that will blow up in their face because so many people now know who the real terrorists are?

DGP: That's a two-prong question, Alex. I think it deserves a studied answer. The only thing I can say is I'm not sure how it will turn out. But it is very dangerous.

AJ: From watching the globalists, I think they had a plan, they are still following a plan but I think they are shook-up. I think, from the evidence, in fact I know from the evidence, that a lot of things they planned haven't gone according to schedule and so they don't know what to do right now.

DGP: This is correct. I think it's personified in the persona of the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. They almost got him in Baghdad when they fired the salvo, one night, of weaponry and they scared Paul Wolfowitz off. He's ready to resign or get the hell out.

AJ: You think that was U.S. forces doing that?

DGP: I believe it. It was very well planned again and ..

AJ: Yeah, only U.S. forces would know that he would be there. Yeah.

DGP: That is correct. And the precision of those weapons that came into the hotel. There were eleven rounds in all and I can speak from authenticity that they scared the hell out of Paul Wolfowitz.

I have to admit, I did wonder about that mysterious attempted hit on Wolfowitz, as the modus operandi was very distinct from the usual suicide vehicle, RPG ambush or gang of gunmen. It may a priori be a frightening thing to think that there may be elements in the military now in the midst of planning a coupe-de-etat, but then, it's not necessarily the case that they are the bad guys either. Perhaps, if they are serious about their oaths to the Constitution, we might even see a return to Constitutional government. In these profoundly interesting times, the only thing of which we can be certain is that we do not have it now.

Could this simply be Y2K-style fearmongering writ large? Definitely. But as with Y2K, we'll find out soon enough.

It's a Massachusetts thing, you wouldn't understand

From the Borowitz Report:

EDWARDS ASKS KERRY TO STOP GRABBING HIS ASS

Public Displays of Affection ‘Distracting,’ Says Kerry’s No. 2

After a mere two days on the campaign trail, the first signs of tension between John Kerry and running mate John Edwards emerged today as Sen. Edwards requested, firmly and unequivocally, that Mr. Kerry stop grabbing his ass. “I think Sen. Kerry has made it very clear in our joint appearances that he is happy to have me on the ticket,” Mr. Edwards told reporters. “He really doesn’t have to prove it by repeatedly grabbing my ass.”

At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania today, Mr. Edwards was in the middle of a speech when he emitted a high-pitched yelp, apparently in response to yet another unexpected display of affection from Sen. Kerry. “Jesus, John,” a visibly annoyed Mr. Edwards said to Mr. Kerry, who merely stood behind him smiling mischievously.

In a sign that Mr. Kerry’s unwanted embraces may be taking their toll on the newly-minted vice-presidential candidate, Mr. Edwards departed from his prepared remarks, telling hs audience, “There are two Americas – one that gets to grab ass, and one that gets its ass grabbed.”

Intriguingly, a source confirmed that Mr. Kerry’s penchant for ass-grabbing was the principal reason Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri) did not make the Democratic ticket: “The whole idea of it grossed Dick out.”

Elsewhere, indicted former Enron CEO Ken Lay today announced that he would seek amnesty by applying for a position as an Iraqi insurgent.

And in Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft told all Americans to be on the lookout for a terror suspect disguised as an obese man wearing glasses and a baseball cap, accompanied by a documentary film crew.

If they have the Comunards play the convention, we'll know it's a serious relationship.

Hoops and hubris

I remember shooting some hoops with my neighbor back in eighth grade. He was a junior, and a star shooting guard on one of the best basketball teams in the state. One afternoon in his driveway, he rapidly fired five shots from distance, in each case hitting nothing but net. He looked at me and said: "Damn, I'm good!"

I was feeling that after turning in next week's column today. It's not everyone who can draw a direct analogy between the Dalai Lama and the state of the nation. Ten points for anyone who can correctly ascertain the fundamental point of the column from that hint.

A big fat slow pitch floating over home plate

"I've been covering Washington and politics for 30 years [said one wire-service photographer]. I can say I've never seen this much touching between two men, publicly." Indeed, editors determined to preserve the appearance of a little presidential dignity and campaign decorum on "the trail" are frustrated in their search for photographs suitable for a respectable mainstream newspaper. The photographers, keen competitors for the most startling shot of the day, naturally love it.

Karl Rove was a fool not to take my advice to pin John Kerry's ears to the wall over homogamy a few months ago. Now that the sweet-lovin' hugbuddies are getting so very personal in public, he'd have to be a complete idiot should he fail to take that ball, run with it up the field and spike the hootenanny out of that sucker under the goalposts.

I hope someone has the foresight to play "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" at their next joint press event, should they decide to get a little less frisky.

You get what you deserve

Candie believes she can get what she wants:

I think it's time you jump into the time machine and return to 2004. I don't think that just because I'm a woman I have to choose between a nice job or a nice husband. I'm not going to just lay down and play the 'I'm a woman so I'm going to be submissive and silent' game. If I want a college education and a doctorate, I'll get it. If I want a husband and a family, I'll get that too. But I'm not going to sacrifice one or the other just because I don't have the same equipment you do.

Candie's comment immediately brought to mind War and Peace, in which Tolstoy mocked those who believe that basic human realities change over time: "- mentioning "our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "our days" and that human characteristics change with the times -"

There's a huge gap between "submissive and silent" and "tyrannical bitch that never shuts up and brooks no disagreement"; what is frightening about these so-called "strong" women who are so emotionally fragile that they can neither bear nor defend themselves against criticism is that they can't see it. They are so terrified of being viewed as outdated by those they've chosen as their peers - the Sisterhood - that they don't even dare look at the situation with their eyes open and judge the facts for themselves.

It sounds to me as if Candie will likely not only get what she wants, she'll get even more. A degree, a career, a husband, a divorce. Perhaps it she'll marry a man who will one day realize that he doesn't want to be married to a woman who is a bad wife and a worse mother, more likely, she'll grow bored and discontent with the spineless jellyfish that is the sort of man these women tend to marry.

If you want to have it all, you'll likely end up with far less than you could have had.

Why there is hope

Here's why I believe that there's no reason to despair when America is again presented with a choice between Tweedle-corporatist and Tweedle-socialist this November. Consider the following facts:

1. John Kerry feels the need to lie about when life begins.
2. John Kerry feels the need to disguise his arch-liberal voting record.
3. John Kerry feels the need to pose for pictures killing birds with guns.
4. George Bush is unwilling to openly support the assault weapons ban.
5. George Bush is afraid to openly declare his support for LOST.

There is still some chance that the American vision can be reborn without a journey into chaos as long as those most dedicated to destroying it feel the need to conceal their true intentions. Sure, the masses are stupid and easily fooled, and the chances are very high that things will have to fall apart under the weight of the central State before the vision can be renewed. But there is hope.

Mailvox: strong, scary women

Dian flexes her muscles and writes:

Actually the friends in my circle are all highly intelligent college graduates and/or self-made women (read: VPs, Tech Writers in Silicon Valley, Managers, etc.). This happens to scare the bejesus out of most men.

As a result, my circle of friends have married men who are either weaker in intelligence, education, or accomplishments than the males whom Vox proposes that most women marry "up" to. That is not to say we do not adore our husbands, who are construction workers, drivers, and techs.

Now, first, there's absolutely nothing wrong in marrying "down". But for a "highly intelligent college graduate" to say that female intelligence can "scare the bejesus out of most men" is absolutely risible. First, such females' peers aren't the least bit intimidated, as they've been using such females for at least four solid years before graduating from college, and another two to three years before grad school is done. That cures most of the intelligent males of any desire to waste any more time on what is surely the most conflict-prone, high maintenance group of people on the planet.

It's entirely possible that smart women scare less intelligent men - I wouldn't know - but it's interesting to see how even smart, successful women attempt to evade responsibility for their failures. "It's not that I'm an unpleasant bitch that no one wants to be around, it's just that I'm so smart and strong and pretty that everyone is afraid. And in the place of the Dark Lord, there will be a Dark Queen! All shall love me and despair!"

I have news for Dian and everyone else prone to swallowing the Myth of the Strong Woman. Most men don't fear women. Not at all. While some men may be appear to be afraid of their wives or girlfriends, their actual fear is that if they behave the "wrong" way, their wives won't have sex with them. Those are two entirely different concepts. Fear of the strong woman" is nothing more than projection that reveals the inherent fear that the physically weaker sex naturally has of the stronger.

Now, Camille Paglia would argue that all men have an instinctive psycho-sexual fear of the cthonic Dionysian Great Mother, thus accounting for the rival Apollonian neuroses of homosexuality and the Church, but this is far outside the scope of Dian's assertion as it applies to all women, not merely the educated, intelligent and financially successful.

The Terrible Twosome take Broadway

I just thought that the following exchange from the Gargler's blog deserved a re-airing:

NATE: Acceptable Man Behavior...

3) If your daddy, or grand-daddy dies, you get to cry.
4) Crying at any other time for any other reason is unacceptable....

BANE: I'll cry any damn time I want to. I am very sensitive. I will probably cry while I am whipping your invincible ass. I cry where appropriate in movies. And then I blow my nose in the hair of the girl in front of me, and cry while I whip her boyfriend's un-understanding ass. Your post makes me sniffle a little. God gave yuh tear ducts for more than clearing gunsmoke from your bloodshot eyes. Dammit.

NATE: Great. This is what I have to look forward to. When the shit hits the fan.. No doubt I'll end up stuck in a foxhole with Bane... I'll be cold... tired... and sittin' there listenin' to him cry. ***NOTE TO SELF*** Add suicide pill to Bug-out-bag.

Ah, yes, if Shakespeare had only been a crotchety, paranoid Southron, he would have dreamed of writing dialogue like this.

Unfaithful women

Everyone knows men who refuse to grow up. Most of them have the good sense to avoid marriage and children like the plague, knowing full well that they are unsuited for it. But this Newsweek article appears to demonstrate that some women, too, are developmentally challenged, and what is pehaps worse, are capable of becoming wives and mothers without either state propelling them beyond a child's self-centered and superficial grasp of the world and how it operates.

In retrospect, Nadine understands what pushed her mother to be unfaithful. Beautiful and intelligent, her mother was stifled by her life's low horizons, and her father, a stand-up guy, was probably a little bit boring. The new man promised travel, wealth and adventure; her father was the kind of guy who'd say, "Why go around the world? You'll get plane-sick."

I find the notion that boredom is an understandable reason to be unfaithful to be somewhat strange, especially in light of the fact that women tend to marry "up" in terms of intelligence. Who do you think is more likely to be bored with the other? Furthermore, I know far more married couples wherein it is the woman, with her nesting instinct, who refuses to contemplate gallivanting around the world, and yet I've never heard any of these men consider it a reasonable rationalization for unfaithfulness.

Strangest of all is the idea that "Sex in the City" should have any influence on one's behavior. If a man began acting like James Bond because he was a fan of the films, one would think he was insane. Morality aside, any woman whose behavior and life philosophy is seriously affected by a television show should probably be committed to a mental institution on grounds of terminal shallowness.

The absurdity of fantasy

From Slashdot:

Q: Is LoTR really based on Christian Mythology?
A: Yes. Tolkien wanted to demonstrate that even the mentally and physically challenged were capable of success and that therefore we should love everyone, regardless of their defects.

Q: So who represents the mentally and physically challenged?
A: Well obviously the hobbits are the physically challenged ones here, but the central mentally challenged figure is Gandalf, responsible for the most horrible attack plan in literature.

Q: What's so horrible about a poorly armed team of two hobbits infiltrating Mordor?
A: Well, basically it ignores the fundamental strengths of the forces of light. Anyone who's played C&C or Warcraft knows that if you have an advantage in air units, you have to use it. Remember that elves can ride eagles, and that elven archers are incredibly potent - early on, Gimli [I think he means Legolas] dismounts a Nazgul with a single shot! With about a thousand eagles (given elven archers on each one), the forces of good would have matched up pretty well in the air against Mordor's air units: all nine of them. While the leader of the Nazgul cannot be killed by any living man, this does not prevent a team of twenty eagles from tearing him to little shreds, especially if Gandalf rode along for help. So basically an air battle would have been brief unmitigated slaughter of the Nazgul as about a thousand eagle-mounted elves blew them out of the sky in a hail of arrows.

Q: But I thought that there was some other book that said that the eagles wouldn't help?
A: We're not talking about some other stupid book here, we're talking about the Lord of the Rings. And in this book, the eagles most definitely help out, first by flying Gandalf off the tower and secondly by pitching into the Final Battle in full force, attacking ground units (stupid!) at great risk to themselves. So obviously they would have been content to take part in a brief airborne slaughter of the Nazgul.

Q: Ok so you defeat all Mordor's air units... then what?
A: Well with air superiority, you command the skies. Which means that you can fly right over Mount Doom and drop anything you want right in there... like a ring. Mordor only had nine airborne units, and with them out of the way Mordor has absolutely no way to prevent anyone from flying anywhere.

I love fantasy literature and I read it voraciously, but this sort of thing does amuse me to no end. Rare indeed is the author who can think through all the alternative possibilities, although ofttimes the illogic is truly ridiculous. So, we have a divine right of kings sans any religious divinity, the bizarre concept of Balance that is more reflective of an author's political moderation than any known historical religion and a plethora of poorly-reconstituted quasi-European principalities. And, as the Slashdot poster demonstrates, even the great ones slip up from time to time.

Of course, this flaw could have been easily addressed by showing an Eagle getting blown out of the sky by Sauron once it crossed into Mordor, but that's neither here nor there.

My favorite gay columnist

As you may know, I can't stand Andrew Sullivan. But while he doesn't know jack about anything outside matters homosexual and political intrigue, I do like Michelangelo Signorile's fearless approach to writing. Sen. Barbara Mikulski is the first to be outed in the approach to the Defense of Marriage Amendment showdown; it will be interesting to see how many others are booted out of the closet.

As the July 12 date nears for a vote on the federal marriage amendment, an outing panic has gripped Washington's political and media circles. Some gay activists have vowed to expose those closeted members of Congress who are supporting the amendment, as well as the closeted gay staffers of any member backing it. And it's not only right-wing Republicans who should be on notice. After initially indicating that she would vote against the constitutional amendment that would make gays and lesbians into second-class citizens, Sen. Barbara Mikulski's opposition to the amendment appears to have gone into the closet: Now that a vote is near, the Maryland Democrat—who is up for reelection in November—is suddenly not returning reporters' phone calls seeking her intentions on the vote, nor is she issuing any statements on the matter.

Mikulski's position on same-sex marriage isn't the only thing in her closet: The sexual orientation of the forever-unmarried 67-year-old has been an open secret for many years. But Mikulski has apparently always worried about what her working-class Democratic base in Maryland might think of her sexual orientation, making her irrationally petrified of ever discussing it (except to make heterosexual allusions)

Occam's Razor

The lineup of primetime speakers at the Republican Convention predictably reflects its New York location by giving prominent spots to the hosts, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki. But those enjoying the coveted spotlight also pay tribute to New York's former Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Joining the hosts will be other mavericks and dissidents who represent a minority in Ronald Reagan's GOP. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona's Senator John McCain, and California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will all be at the primetime podium. The only announced speaker who actually agrees with President Bush on major issues is Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georigia.

The decision to showcase rogue elephants as representatives of the modern Republican party is not the mark of a self-confident party establishment. If the lineup is intended to make an overwhelmingly conservative party attractive to swing voters, it does so by pretending to be something it's not. The Republican party seems to habitually internalize the criticisms of its opponents. When the only Reagan Republican to enjoy a prominent supporting role at the party's convention is a Democrat, the GOP has a serious identity problem. The Kerry-Edwards ticket is liberal. The Boston convention will not be featuring Louisiana senator John Breaux in an attempt to pretend otherwise.

Or perhaps they're not so roguish after all. Perhaps the party is electing to present itself as it truly is, the faction of strong interventionist government with a corporatist, nationalist edge. I do not agree with those who constantly find innocence in incompetence and apparent stupidity. Perhaps I've spent too much time around Italians, who are molto furbo in using one's assumption of their incompetence in order to get away with doing exactly as they please.

False assumptions

A former public school teacher writes:

Picture "advanced placement" 4th, 7th, or even 8th graders who do not know their addition tables, or the names (much less the sounds) of the vowels.

I not so long ago looked into some federal funds for pre-school reading programs under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. I was initially optimistic, as I had had excellent recent success getting three and four-year-olds reading fluidly (as high as the upper middle school level, in terms of proficiency). On inspection of the grant offer materials, I found I did not qualify - for the simple reason that the government "absolutely" did not encourage the teaching of actual reading to pre-schoolers. Recognition of the letters of the alphabet was the maximum acceptable.

If you are considering sending your kids to government schools (or have some there already), be advised that the above account accurately describes such schools. The only variance pertains to the "chatted, argued, screamed..." passage. That state of affairs, you see, exists only in those classrooms whose misguided adult patrons attempt to actually be teachers. Administrators take care of such infidels in short order - by making it crystal clear to these poor souls' pupils that they (the administrators) do not support them (the poor souls). By now, most classroom managers are compliant in their expected roles as social directors, abdicating these roles just long enough to cover the pretentious, perfunctory pablum required on today's standardized tests. Such classrooms are uniformly harmonious most of the time.

You do not have to accept that there is an organized conspiracy to keep our kids ignorant to get the picture. As long as you realize that things are exactly as they would be if there were such a conspiracy, that will suffice.

There are a number of assumptions that a parent foolish enough to put his child into the government schools must make in order to do so:

1) I turned out okay, therefore my child will be fine. This is based on the assumption that nothing in the school system has changed significantly in the quarter-century since you were in first grade. This is false.

2) The purpose of a school is to teach reading, writing and math. This, too, is false. Not only do the actions of most educational institutions belie this assumption, but often their charters, slogans and policies state outright that this is not the case.

3) My child's teachers care about my child's education. Of course they pretend to care, but does one really expect a teacher to publicly proclaim his true indifference? The average teacher doesn't care any more about how much the children in his class learn than the average office worker cares about his job. I don't know about you, but based on my office experience, that's a pretty high level of apathy. The testimony of this teacher and other former teachers like John Gatto certainly appears to support this line of reasoning.

A confession

While I must state that I have never experienced anything like the incident to which I alluded earlier. I am not without some experience of the martial homoerotism that is the sport of Rugby. After my 100 meter career ended with a series of blown hamstrings, I played a season of wingback for one of the top collegiate teams in the country.

I never really figured out all the rules, since as a wing, my only responsibility was to a) tackle the other wing if he had the ball, and b) run to touch and try to avoid the other wing if I had the ball. Simple enough.

However, I achieved some measure of distinction in my brief career as a rugger by being kicked out of my first game. I was quite shocked, having been led to believe that all was fair in love, war and rugby. What happened was that our fullback punted the ball high and deep, giving me about a forty-yard run at the Penn State winger, so I was at full-speed when I hit him shoulder-to-chest just as the ball arrived. I was about 75 percent sure I'd killed him and the crowd was going wild as our scrum had managed to come up with the ball, so I did a few repetitions of the shovel-of-dirt-over the shoulder thing, followed by firing off a few rounds in the air from a pair of imaginary six-shooters. And yes, I was prancing.

The crowd went completely berserk - we were playing at home - and the referee promptly threw me out of the game for excessive celebration. It was probably just as well, as I'm pretty sure the Nittany Lions were gunning for me after that. And on the plus side, it did cement my place on the team, which had been pretty iffy up to that point.

Mailvox: mind your sources

Waterboy proves to be a sucker for NFL propaganda:

Were the France-England numbers worldwide? The quote for the Super Bowl number indicates they were for the US only; do you have the worldwide estimate? Besides ex-pats and military, there is a growing following in Europe.

From the NFL: "Super Bowl XXXVII TV audience: Last year's game was the most watched program ever with 138.9 million viewers. The 10 most-watched programs in TV history are all Super Bowls." The NFL-Europe estimate for World Bowl XII: "World Bowl XII will reach an estimated worldwide television audience of 200 million in more than 150 [countries]."

France-England was also one of the bigger marquee games. What were the numbers for the final?

First, to correct a few misconceptions. The France-England game only featured one marquee team in TV terms, as contrary to what I would have imagined, England, Germany and Portugal were the the biggest TV draws in Euro 2004. The source for the 118 million watching the England-Portugal game was Initiative, a Nielsen-type company which tracks 52 markets. This is probably NOT a worldwide number, as UEFA has 50 members and Latvia was mentioned as one of the markets tracked. The numbers for the final are not yet available, but based on the quarterfinal numbers, Initiative predicted it would hit 150 million.

The NFL numbers are downright laughable, as I doubt that even two million people watched the World Bowl. You'll note that the NFL says the broadcast "would reach" 200 million, which is more than the global viewers it claims for the Super Bowl. Even this latter number is questionable, as Nielson reports the following:

In 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders for their first Super Bowl victory averaging a 40.7 rating with 88.6 million viewers in the U.S. Worldwide the game averaged more than 97 million viewers in 22 countries.

That's eight million more viewers with the addition of 21 countries, presumably the biggest and most important additional audiences since Nielsen is bothering to track them. That's 380,000 viewers per additional country. And we're supposed to believe that the other 178 countries in which the game is being televised, which aren't important enough to be tracked, are averaging the minimum of 236,000 viewers necessary to bring the total to the claimed 139 million?

In direct country-by-country comparison, it's easy to see that Euro 2004 games - not including the final - commanded much larger percentage of viewers in the countries involved. Furthermore, neutral viewership tended to run about half of those in the two countries involved. This is significant since the EU - which, keep in mind, is smaller than UEFA, has 380 million people to the USA's 293.

Euro 2004
Britain: ENGLAND v PORTUGAL 24.7M/59.8M = 41.3 percent
Holland: HOLLAND v LATVIA 7.6M/15.9M = 47.8 percent
USA: NEW ENGLAND vs CAROLINA 89.6M/293M = 30.6 percent

This shows that not only the quarterfinals, but even group stage games involving minor countries were of serious interest. In 2004, viewership was up 14 percent overall, compared to the increase of 1.3 percent from the 2000 to 2004 Super Bowls. In both 2000 and 2004, neutral viewership was somewhat more than half that of the two nations involved, but still extraordinarily high.

Euro 2000 final (France v Italy)
France 21.4M/ 59.3M = 36.1 percent
Italy 21.3M / 57.7M = 36.9 percent
Germany 18.4M / 83.2M = 22.1 percent

So, one can safely conclude that EU-wide, (which does not count large extra-EU UEFA countries such as Russia and the Ukraine), the average Euro game has viewership comparable to the Super Bowl even if one leaves out the larger-than-average viewership contributed by the two nations involved. As for the big games like the semis and final, there is simply no comparison. Taking the tournament as a whole, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that the Super Bowl and the NFL playoffs are relatively small fish by comparison.

A pox on both houses

118 million people tuned in to the first-round France-England match, which was decided in the final minutes. That figure trounces the 89 million-person American audience for the Super Bowl last year, which was the biggest television event of 2003; and the 90 million for the Super Bowl this year, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.

Not only is the Euro 2004 tournament bigger than the Super Bowl, but nearly every game of the 31 involved blows it away in the ratings. In Holland, for example, the semifinal match with Portugal scored a 50 share - half of all televisions in the country were tuned to the game. Unlike American sports, there's no need to schedule around things, instead, everything else is scheduled around it.

Now, there are no bigger fans of the NFL than me. I'm such an old school purist that I'm still irritated about the 16-game schedule since it messed up all the old records. (Although, I admit, it's hard to deny that a longer season = more football, which is an obviously good thing.) But to be honest, the disdain that some football fans show for the Beautiful Game strikes me as a weird combination of ignorance and insecurity.

To a connoisseur of both sports, the two are perfectly complimentary. The latter half of the league seasons and the international tournaments are in the NFL offseason, and whereas the NFL is the ultimate game of pre-plotted cerebral strategy, soccer is the pinnacle of impromptu creativity. I simply laugh when I hear Philistines of either continent dismissing the other continent's favorite sport; such poorly founded contempt reveals nothing but the ironic snobbery of the ill-informed parochial. For every American sneering about low scores and Nancy boys, there is a European scoffing at martial homoeroticism and interminable breaks in the action.

A pox, I say, a pox on both houses.

Ding dong, the witch is dead

I can't say I'm terribly surprised to hear that it's Edwards. Why? Because John Kerry likes a mate with money. Heck, if Theresa goes bust in the upcoming bear market, we may well see John ditch her in favor of a Massachusetts Matrimonial with John-Boy.

The best news is that this should finish off any real threat of the Lizard Queen running for President. If Bush wins, Edwards will become the presumptive Democratic nominee. And if Kerry wins, well, Hillary's potential presidency is deader than a twice-staked vampire.

Finishing off Hillary, hmmmm, that alone might be reason to vote for Kerry... oh, relax, will you? I'm kidding!

The Original Cyberpunk strikes back

The OC writes:

This morning's P_Press carried another editorial decrying the small-mindedness of those who refuse to see Fahrenheit 9/11. Since I have the fullest confidence that they will ignore my rebuttal, I'm copying you on it.

Dear Sirs/Ms,

I already know that I hate okra, therefore I feel no need to go to a restaurant and spend $8 on some new okra dish just to see if it tastes different this time. Likewise, having seen Michael Moore's earlier films, I have every reason to expect that "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be just another revolting load of dishonest leftist agitprop.

The genius of film is that it is a highly emotive medium with a very fast information decay rate. A skilled filmmaker can use emotion, energy, and rapid non-sequitur cuts to leap over yawning chasms in logic and sense that would, if presented in print, cause the reader to stop short, sit up, and say, "What the hell is this idiot trying to say?"

Moore has already demonstrated that he is a highly skilled filmmaker, on the order of Leni Reifenstahl. But surely, by now, Moore and his distributors have recouped the cost of producing and distributing this film. If Moore is genuinely interested in promoting public discussion of the charges he makes in it, then let him donate the broadcast rights to PBS so that we can all see it for free and make up our own minds.

Until he does so, though, I feel no need to spend $8 from my entertainment budget to watch Michael "Barnum" Moore's latest carnival geek act.