About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

Odd Words: Asomatous

Posted on 14 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Page 15 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition gave me a lot to work with. But the words are hard. I think I need to get the Oxford Dictionary that has four pages per physical page along with a magnifying glass. As it is, Merriam-Webster wants to sell me a subscription so I can get the information that real word people need. Today, we have: asomatous.

Asomatous and So Much More

Before we move on to our word, there were a number of good ones. Because of yesterday, I couldn’t us “armomancy.” That is foretelling the future through the use of shoulder bones of animals. Who would have thought? I assume this was at one time even more popular than Taylor Swift. The word “arrack” is a group of hard liquors that are distilled from molasses. Didn’t even know there was such a thing. And here’s a word for our time: arriviste. That’s someone who became rich through unscrupulous means. So Donald Trump is not an arriviste, since he just inherited his money and then lost much of it considering opportunity costs.

Anyway, on to asomatous:

A·so·ma·tous adjective \ə-‘sō-mət-əs\

1. bodiless; incorporeal.

Date: mid 18th century.

Origin: late Latin from Greek, ασώματος, which means not (α) body (σώματος).

Example:

I looked to my left and saw a wan silhouette of an asomatous necromancer — whom I initially thought to be a crinose, bedraggled mendicant — practicing rhabdomancy. —Tom Edmondson

Image cropped from Halloween Ghost Cemetery Grave by AdinaVoicu. It is in the public domain.

Serial Comma: Just Use It and Stop Complaining!

Posted on 13 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Yes, I’m going to talk about the serial comma one more time. But this is it. After this, I’ll shut up and just let the rest of you sink or swim in the writing world. But just so you know: I warned you.

(Before I continue, please note, it is the “serial comma” and not the “Oxford comma.” Why? Because we speak American around here! Oxford comma, indeed!)

There are good writers who hate the serial comma. And there are bad writers who hate the serial comma. Given that there are far more bad writers than good writers, chances are, you are a bad writer. So you need the serial comma. Using it makes your life easier. If you just use it, you will never go wrong.

So how might you go wrong? Consider, “Speaking of pale people, have you seen the vampires, Taylor Swift and her newest boyfriend?” Maybe that’s not the best example, because there is a good chance that Taylor Swift and her newest boyfriend are, in fact, vampires. But you get my meaning.

The same thing is happening in the three examples in the image above. They come from a tweet by Blaw:

Among those interviewed were Merle Haggard’s two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
Highlights of Peter Ustinov’s global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.

I’m not sure if any of those is real, but the last one seems to be, given that it would be stronger without the “a” before “dildo collector.”

No Publisher Ever Gets Rid of the Serial Comma

You will occasionally hear of this or that publisher getting rid of the serial comma. This is not true. What they have done is gotten rid of the serial comma by default. So they will typeset a sentence, “The first three numbers are one, two and three.” But they will not typeset a sentence, “And then came the strippers, Dwight Eisenhower and Joseph Stalin” — unless I’m confused about 20th century history.

When a publisher decides to jettison the serial comma, it’s kind of like a make-work project for copy editors. Because this is my experience with writers: they don’t like the serial comma and they don’t know that they have to use it from time to time. Or maybe they do. The thing about professional writers is that in order to make any kind of living at all, they have to write fast. So you can see why they wouldn’t want to waste the time to type an extra character. And you can see why they really wouldn’t want to waste the time thinking about whether a sentence they just wrote said that Taylor Swift and her newest boyfriend were vampires.

A Matter of Space — We Don’t Need

So why is it that publishers make this decision? I blame The Associated Press. I think it is their effort to cut down on page space. Really! In the old days, with print newspapers, that was an issue. Any way you could save space was important. You will note that my preferred resources, The Chicago Manual of Style, does not agree with those newspaper mongers. It says:

Chicago strongly recommends this widely practiced usage, blessed by Fowler [Praise be thy name. -FM] and other authorities, since it prevents ambiguity.

So that’s the thing, all you writers out there: just use the serial comma and you will be fine. But I do understand how it is hard to change. When I was writing the examples above, I always put the comma in. It’s just habit. But people can change and learn. Even writers!

Comma image is in the public domain. Twitter image is licensed under fair use.

Odd Words: Arithmancy

Posted on 13 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Page 14 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition was hard. It wasn’t that there weren’t a lot of words that I didn’t know. But they were so obscure that they were hard to research. That was even true of today’s word: arithmancy.

I really wanted to go with “apposite” (an easy one) today. But that would require breaking the rules, since I am very much aware of the word. But I would never use it. I think it confuses people in conversation. Most think you have mispronounced “opposite.” And that isn’t apposite at all!

Beyond Arithmancy

One really cool word was “arcifinious.” It is a word that describes a location with geographical boundary that also serves as a defense. So, for example, a country might be acrifinious because of a mountain range or a river. Then there is a similar word that brings war to mind, “armipotent.” It means being powerful in battle. Neither of these words — nor a few others — are in regular online dictionaries.

But here is arithmancy:

Ar·ith·man·cy noun ar-‘ith-man-sē\

1. prophecy by numbers, especially the number of letters in names.

Date: unknown to me.

Origin: Greek, αριθμός (number) and μαντεία (divination).

Example: It’s almost impossible to find a reasonable sentence with the word “arithmancy” in it since it was used in the Harry Potter books. —Frank Moraes

Image cropped from Paper Stairs by Chrstphre Campbell. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Odd Words: Apodosis

Posted on 12 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Page 13 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition kind of sucked. I thought it might be a page where I knew all the words. But it turned out to be just a clump at the beginning of the page.

Just the same, there are already days that I think this series was a very bad idea. I’m pretty skeptical today because I didn’t have a great deal to work with. And today, we have a word that is about grammar. I suppose that isn’t such a bad thing. It’s helpful to me to know these obscure words to describe how sentences work. I’m just not sure how interested you all are. Then again, since when have I cared what you all think? (Actually: all the time — especially when I’m writing something I know you aren’t interested in. Sorry, but it’s for your own good!)

Beyond Apodosis

So what do we have besides “apodosis” to make your life interesting? There is “apopemptic,” which is an adjective that describes the act of leaving — apparently in an official sense. And there is “apothegm,” which is a pithy saying, which I guess makes it different enough from “aphorism” to make it worth while (it’s more general). Finally, there is “apperceive,” which is to be conscious of perception. That’s a good one because so much of my life is habit. Did I take my thyroid medication today? I try to be very conscious of it so I don’t wonder all day. Of course, I could buy one of those daily pill boxes, but why? I can just work on apperceiving it.

But here is apodosis:

A·pod·o·sis noun \ə-‘päd-ə-səs\

1. the consequence clause in a conditional sentence, beginning with “then.”

Date: early 17th century.

Origin: Greek, απόδοση, which means to return.

Example: Of course, not all conditions begin with the word “if” and end with a clause starting with “then.” Nor is the protasis always placed before the apodosis. —If… Then… Conditional Statements

You will note that the definition above is not correct. the apodosis usually starts with “then,” but not always. I just thought you would want to know, given how much you are likely to use the word.

Image of letter from 1942 is in the public domain.

Remember 9/11: 15 Yearly Missed Opportunities

Posted on 11 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Do you remember 11 September 2002? It was the first year that we got to remember 9/11. Ah, it was a good time. By that point, we had only lost 67 American troops in Afghanistan. No one was much thinking about Iraq, even though the Bush administration was already pushing hard for war. That’s not completely true, of course; Donald Trump told Howard Stern that day that he was for the new war. But overall, it truly was a good year to remember 9/11!

By 11 September 2003, it wasn’t quite so great to remember 9/11. By then, 342 American troops had died in Iraq. On the plus side, the number of American deaths in Afghanistan was down to only 54. The unemployment rate had gone up to 6.1 percent. Things certainly weren’t getting better, but times were nice enough to look back and remember 9/11.

On 11 September 2004, things were much the same as they had been in 2003. There were a few things that were worth celebrating. The unemployment rate had gone down to 5.4 percent. What’s more, Thomas Friedman had already started using what would later be called the Friedman Unit. On 30 November 2003, he wrote, “The next six months in Iraq… are the most important six months in US foreign policy in a long, long time.” Yes, it was still a good day to remember 9/11!

The Unwinding

Still, things had started to unwind a bit. By 11 September 2005, every person I knew who had voted for George W Bush the year before claimed to regret it. How could they have known that the Iraq War was a sham — something the Bush administration had wanted to do from the moment they got into office? Certainly reading a book was out of the question! This was the Bush era: real Americans didn’t read! In 2005, it was not a good day to remember 9/11.

So much had changed. But I wondered from the start exactly what we were remembering. It’s not that I don’t accept that 9/11 was a huge tragedy. But it was also a great gift to the war mongers. I doubt that Bush would have gotten his Iraq War if everyone didn’t remember 9/11. We wouldn’t have seen the huge increase in the security state. We wouldn’t be flying unmanned death machines all over the world and killing children because some set of criteria indicate that maybe someone in the vicinity kinda seems like maybe they are sorta terrorish.

Remember 9/11: In Your Own Way

Every year that we remember 9/11, we get yet more reruns of documentaries about what happened that day. I don’t think anyone has to be reminded. We all remember. But I think “Remember 9/11” is kind of like “Remember the Maine.” It’s just a call for war. We were attacked and therefore anything we do is okay. “They raped our queen, so we raped their city, and we were right!”

Now I know: everyone remembers 9/11 in their own way. But as a society, I think we remember the attack. Many remember the rescue, which was both heroic and incredibly successful. (Pretty much everyone who could get out did.) But overall, I’m not sure what we are remembering. It seems that too much of it is remembering that we were wronged. Well, even if you accept that simplistic analysis, what did we learn?

What Are We Learning?

As we remember 9/11 for the 15th year, what are we getting for it? As a country, we are just as likely to resist democratic movements and support autocrats. We have normalized continuous war. Jihadism seems to be alive and well. We haven’t accepted a lick of responsibility for the blowback of our meddlesome foreign policy.

So when we remember 9/11, just what are we remembering? It doesn’t seem to be anything deep. It seems to be like the frat boys partying on the announcement of Osama bin Laden death. “We’re number one! We’re number one!” It means nothing to remember something if you don’t learn from it. And I don’t think that our country has learned anything. We will remember the attacks on 9/11 until the next attack. And we will respond to that attack in the same way we always do.

On this 15th remembrance of 9/11, I think we should remember that responding to tragedies like this should be done in a mature way — and not as a child would. But we won’t. We never do. Humans never have. “They raped our queen, so we raped their city, and we were right!”

Image cropped from 9/11 WTC Photo by 9/11 WTC. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Odd Words: Anthropophagi

Posted on 11 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Page 12 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition was even worse than page 11. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Page 11 had the ante- words; page 12 thus had the anti- words. But I picked a word that came in between: anthropophagi.

Not Really Anthropophagi

Before we get to the word, I suppose I should point out that the word should not be “anthropophagi.” It should be “anthropophaguses.” This business has got to stop! We take English language words that are based on Greek words and create plurals based on Latin grammar?! What’s with that?! The Greek word isn’t “anthropophagus” anyway; it is “ανθρωποφάγος”! And where Latin fits in, I can’t say.

An unrelated issue: “antihero” is on the same page. The book claims that such a character lacks all heroic attributes and noble qualities. That was doubtless how the word was originally used. But by the time this dictionary came out, it was not used in that way at all.

Anyway, on to anthropophagi:

An·thro·poph·a·gi noun \an-thrə-‘päf-ə-jē\

1. cannibals.

Date: mid 16th century.

Origin: Greek, άνθρωπος (man) and φάγος (eat).

Example:

It was my hint to speak, such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

—William Shakespeare (Othello)

Note that anthropophagus is normally used for folklore cannibals, as in the image above.

Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya is in the public domain.

Joe Don Baker Is a Terrible Actor: Charley Varrick Edition

Posted on 10 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Joe Don Baker is one of the worst actors who ever lived. But let’s hold that thought.

For Labor Day, I treated myself to a video. I made my way over the last remaining video store in town and picked up Charley Varrick. It’s interesting that this video store is the one that all these years was the only one that stocked classic, cult, and psychotronic films. Funny that! But anyway, I remember first seeing it in 1995 on late night television and being very excited that it contained the line A Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch. I’m pretty sure it is where Quentin Tarantino got the line for Pulp Fiction.

So I was excited to see it again. And it is a fine film. Yes, there are problems. It was made in 1973, and the sexism is striking. The soundtrack makes the film sound like a generic cop show from two years later. It also tries too hard to humanize the main character by having him twice kiss his dead wife and then look at her picture mournfully. Just the same, Walter Matthau does a great job of projecting his loss right up to the point where there is the semi-obligatory moment at the end of second act where he has sex with the executive secretary and girlfriend of the bad guy.

Joe Don Baker Harms Charley Varrick

But what most hurts Charley Varrick is Joe Don Baker. Throughout the film, he smokes a pipe. This is an old director’s trick. “The guy can’t act?! Well give him a prop to play with!” Baker plays the “tough” guy. He finds things amusing, except when he doesn’t. He “don’t sleep with whores”; but he does apparently beat up women so they will sleep with him. Like I said: the film is sexist — often in a very creepy way. But Baker’s performance from scene to scene could easily be for totally different movies.

There is a key moment in the film where Joe Don Baker is torturing Andrew Robinson. It’s really amazing because it’s just the two of them. Robinson is a fine actor. He’s fully engaged with the role. And there’s Joe Don Baker who floats through the scene, because — What the hell?! — there’s blood and stunts. Who’s going to notice? And Baker has no clue who his character is anyway. And given his other work, it’s hard to believe Baker would be able to do anything with a well-formed character anyway.

There Is a Character There

Don’t get me wrong: I understand what the screenwriters were going for. The character needs to be cocky to set up the end. But it it isn’t difficult to establish cockiness. And Joe Don Baker doesn’t establish cockiness so much as emptiness. There is nothing under the surface. Normally, I blame directors for bad cinematic acting. But in this case, I suspect that Baker was just part of the deal. (I don’t know if Baker was on-board before Walking Tall became a hit.) Almost no directors can simply fire a “star.” And I suspect that the great Don Siegel had lots on his mind.

Still, Joe Don Baker does almost ruin the film. I really want to re-cut Charley Varrick. I suspect that you could cut most of his character’s scenes out of the film. After all, early on, it is established that he is a Badass™. There’s no need to establish him as a man of principle or a man that any woman outside a mental ward would find attractive. Just establish that he’s a force to be reckoned with by having him punch the black guy, then have him on the trail of Varrick, and then (Thank you, Jesus!) show him blown up.

I think ultimately, that’s all we can ask of any action film: that it show Joe Don Baker being blown up.

Image of Charley Varrick poster licensed under Fair Use, via Wikipedia.

Odd Words: Anomie

Posted on 10 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Page 11 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition is another with a lot of known prefixes and thus not a lot of unknown words. Still, I found an interesting one: anomie.

Beyond Anomie: The Ante- Words

There were a couple of words that I knew on seeing them, but didn’t know existed. One was “antepartum” — the other side of postpartum. Although it doesn’t just mean before childbirth, but right before childbirth. I suppose that is because we have a general word for before childbirth: pregnant.

Another such word was “antepenult.” Since penultimate is the second to the last, antepenult is the one before that: the third to the last. I might have grabbed that word, but it is specially used to refer to syllables in a word. And I don’t want to make this series about odd words just odd words about words.

Thus, I picked anomie:

An·o·mie noun \‘an-ə-mē\

1. the condition of an uprooted race of individuals, or of their society, characterized by a breakdown of accepted values.

Date: 1930s.

Origin: Greek: ανομία, which means “lawlessness.”

Example: These all jostle for space under the banner of After Belonging, a theme evoking property loss, late-capitalist anomie, and the unshakable placelessness resulting from living most of our lives online or in “a time defined by mobility and transit.” —Samuel Medina

Most definitions do not mention an “uprooted” people. And thus, it seems like like a great word for modern America — and to a lesser degree the western world. I blame it on Ayn Rand and the Masters of the Universe who came after — the whole “greed is good” crowd. People who think they own nothing to their society will eventually tear it apart.

The Scream by Edvard Munch is in the public domain.

Anthony Furey: Stupid, Evil, or Both?

Posted on 09 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

I don’t want to talk about libertarians, but I was running errands and happened upon this “debate” between Anthony Furey and Sam Seder that was on Majority Report about two years ago. It wasn’t really a debate. Seder mostly lets libertarians talk and tries to get them to be clear about what they think. So the vast majority of the time was spent with Anthony Furey doing the libertarian two-step. This is when they talk theory when the issue is practical, and practical when the issue is theory.

Question: “So you are against government funding higher education?”
Libertarian: “I just think that the government is to big…”

Question: “Isn’t there an implicit contract between the individual and the society?”
Libertarian: “Think about the [proposed and never enacted] soda size limit in New York City…”

Libertarians Have Something on Their Minds

It’s frustrating to listen to because you know the libertarian thinks something very concrete. They are just afraid to come out and say it because they know how awful it will sound. So we hear from Anthony Furey that he’s socially liberal. We’re supposed to believe that he’s a Good Guy Libertarian™, just looking out after the poor and oppressed. Yet when we had as close to the libertarian utopia that we will ever get — in the early days of the industrial revolution — life was horrible. It was largely because of the conditions that people lived in that we got the laws that that the Anthony Fureys of the world so hate.

There was a very telling exchange about food security. Of course, Anthony Furey would never quite say what he meant because he is a Good Guy Libertarian™. But it was clear enough. If only we got rid of taxes and “onerous” regulations then people would all have jobs and food would be cheap and each and every one of us would have our own pony! It was crystal clear that for Furey, just like for almost all other libertarians, his belief is faith-based. It’s like that old cartoon, “And then a miracle occurs…” I’m always struck that libertarians know just enough economics to be dangerous. They know about the invisible hand of the market and they pray to it daily.

Anthony Furey Turned Evil

But the more Anthony Furey talked, the less he seemed like Good Guy Libertarian™. The more he talked, the more he seemed like an angry conservative. He returned again and again to the idea of a “culture of dependency.” Furey is Canadian, so it didn’t sound racist coming from him. But it did sound very social Darwinian. This is, of course, the new way for conservatives to push their vile policies and not sound like the evil bastards that they are. It isn’t the fault of the poor that they are lazy! It’s the fault of the government!

There are very few libertarians who believe in no government at all. Therefore, arguments with libertarians aren’t about anything but how much government there should be. But libertarians like Anthony Furey put on airs with their philosophy.

Another telling point during the “debate” was when Anthony Furey started claiming the subprime mortgage crisis was caused by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Again, this is one of those wonderful conservative arguments that blame poor people without looking like it: “Isn’t it terrible that the government forced all those poor people to wreck the economy!” But, of course, the CRA did not cause the financial crisis. Repeating this in 2014 (when the “debate” took place) shows that Furey only listens to the kind of media that will feed his faith-based opinions.

Just Arguing Government Levels

But there is a broader analysis here. Whenever Seder probed too deeply into Anthony Furey’s thinking, the libertarian would jump back to the idea that he wasn’t for getting rid of the government altogether; he just wanted it to do the things it properly did. It was funny that the one thing he kept bring up was public transit. Why that?! Why is that a social good and healthcare is not? And that is what makes talking to libertarians so exasperating.

There are very few libertarians who believe in no government at all. Therefore, arguments with libertarians aren’t about anything but how much government there should be. But libertarians like Anthony Furey put on airs with their philosophy. They are nothing more than conservatives complaining that the government is too big. Okay! So how does that make them any less evil than Louie Gohmert? Because of their faith that giving rich people more money will help the poor?

I wouldn’t say that Anthony Furey is stupid. He’s a subgenius: smart enough to be dangerous. I would definitely say he is evil. And that’s especially so because of all the crocodile tears that stream from his arguments. So I suppose the title of this article should be, “Anthony Furey: Not Nearly as Bright as He Thinks, Evil, or Both?” But that’s too long. “Anthony Furey: Stupid, Evil, or Both?” gets the point across well enough. And the answer is: both.

Image of Anthony Furey cropped from one taken from The Robb Company. Licensed under Fair Use. It was either that, or a free image of a jackal.

Odd Words: Analects

Posted on 09 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Onward to page ten of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition! There were a number of good words on this page. But I picked the very first one: analects.

But first, let’s take a quick look at some of the other words. There was “anamnesis.” This is memories of a past life. Like I remember when I was Mary Wollstonecraft, and just as I finished A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, I thought, “They’re only going to remember Tommy Paine!” There was also “anchorite,” which is a religious recluse. On seeing it, I knew what “androcracy” meant. But I don’t remember ever seeing it. Why would we need it? It’s like a fish needing a word for water. There’s also “anechoic,” which is something that is very important in building stadiums and such. There were also some medical words, which I would describe, but I just can’t stop yawning.

Analects

This is another literary word, which does not make me yawn. Other than being a word that I have a hard time imagining ever needing, it’s interesting in that it is almost always used as a plural. “Analect” is also a word. But it is almost never used. I assume that this is because one would just use the word “quotation.” Oh my! Did I just spoil the surprise? Well, read on anyway.

Here’s the definition of “analects”:

An·a·lects noun \a’-nə-lek(t)s\

1. selected passages or extracts from the writings of one or more authors.

Date: it really depends (circa 15th century).

Origin: this one is bizarre. It is Middle English. But it comes from a Latin word that comes from a Greek word: ανάλεκτα, which means “a group of things brought together.”

Example: “Self-improvement to bring peace to others,” from the Analects of Confucius of the Ancient China, is the quote I live by. —Yoo Jeong-bok

And just because of the assonance, I thought of this song:

Image from 2008 Summer Olympics is in the public domain.

State of Fear: Excellent New Short Story Collection

Posted on 08 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Paul Bibeau has a new collection of short stories, State of Fear. It’s 99¢ on the Kindle, and worth quite a lot more than every penny.

It’s easy to be disappointed by Paul Bibeau. After all, most people discovered him from things like I Was Shitting You People — A Message From Ayn Rand and “Help Me Hide These Bodies” By Willy Wonka. They are laugh-out-loud funny stories, so you figure that he’s a comedy writer. And then you pick up The Black Book Of Children’s Bible Stories or Trump Tales Of Terror, and you discover a very different writer.

I remember when I first got The Black Book. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. But I was soon won over by its clear, exacting style and implied horror. Bibeau is not a writer to jump out at you and yell, “Boo!” His approach is to inject you with a slow-acting neurotoxin until you’re afraid to move. He combines the Victorian ghost story’s precision with a postmodern sensibility. The writer and reader are partners. Bibeau rarely comes right out and tells you anything. He renders. What Anaïs Nin was for erotica, Paul Bibeau is for horror.

State of Fear

State of Fear is not horror. It’s much worse than that. The stories are about isolation. More specifically, they are about how isolation and fear feed each other. I’ve written before about watching schizophrenics and how terrified they are so much of the time because they just don’t know where the inside and the outside meet. Bibeau captures that sense fully. Mostly, he is fine with leaving it to the reader to decide what the reality is. This is most true of the highlight of this collection, “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.”

In that story, Charles “Charlie” Franck is a government interrogator — torturer, actually. And he snaps. Or does he? The truth is that not knowing is what makes the story so chilling. It’s also what makes it profound, because it doesn’t matter. Is there a vast conspiracy to keep us all at war with each other? Or does our civilization drive us all mad?

How are you going to get me to murder more than 300 people at the Lakeview Mall? That’s what I thought.

But the prisoner hadn’t said “Lakeview Mall.” He’d talked about an unnamed shopping center, and mentioned a nearby parking garage. And I’d immediately sketched out a picture in my mind of the shopping center that I would pick. If I did it.

Bibeau’s Thematic Clarity

It’s pretty clear where Paul Bibeau comes down on the question of the actual reality, however. He deals with the question more directly in, “The American Terror.” It is half essay and half narrative. The essay focuses on The Trial as well as Václav Havel’s experiences in communist Czechoslovakia. The narrative tells the story of a man trying to find his way to court on his bicycle for a minor matter, which literally becomes more grave as he cycles. It reminded me of Robert Cormier’s novel, I Am the Cheese, but in this endless bike ride, the world presses down harder and harder on the cyclist, and we know that his end will be the same as that of Josef K.

I could go on and on. Every story is a winner. “The Exceptions Virus” chronicles of spread of fear and isolation, but in the Bibeau world where the external and internal intersect in a most discomfiting way. Even when Bibeau is being blunt, as in “The Dream Wayne LaPierre Has Every Night,” the results are chilling. And the book ends with a poem, “Thanks for the Last and Greatest Betrayal…” It’s a history lesson — a reminder of who we are. But it’s also a prophecy: describing our dead future where all that is left are our Hollywood fantasies, beaming through space: “only ghosts and aliens will watch it go.”

State of Fear is very much worth checking out. It’s short — just 54 Kindle pages. But it’s easily worth ten times its 99¢ asking price. It gave me chills at least a dozen times.

State of Fear cover used with permission from the author.

Why We Think Nothing Is More Natural Than Something

Posted on 07 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

I am going to follow up on my last post about ontology, Atheists Need to Understand Theology. In that article, I argued that most atheists didn’t understand the concept of God well enough to claim to be against it. They are more areligious, because their real interest is in looking at silly religious beliefs and mocking them. Along with this is a total disregard for ontology: the nature of existence and why this is something rather than nothing. Well, maybe it is time that I discuss what I think about such matters.

I’ve long been fascinated by the question of why anything exists at all. This question has a long and distinguished pedigree. But it annoys me that people think it is a question that can be answered by science. This is because it is the ultimate question. It’s very nature is an infinite regression. The most simple form of it can be found in this short dialog:

Child: why does the universe exist?
Adult: because God created it.
Child: what created God?
Adult: uh…

On a more substantial level, we have Lawrence Krauss playing “Adult” in that dialog in his book, A Universe From Nothing. In that book, he claims the reason that there is something rather than nothing is because, “Nothing is unstable.” What makes that a particularly silly explanation for existence is that he really seems to think he’s got it all figured out. When theologians point out that it’s a mighty special kind of nothing that has all these properties, he really doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about. (This is not my opinion; he says this explicitly in the book.)

People normally make the mistake of thinking that science is designed to answer questions. It is not. It is designed to create questions.

Just in case there is anyone as brilliant as Krauss reading, let me explain. If something has a property, it isn’t nothing. It doesn’t have to be matter. An idea is something. A physical law is something. So if “nothing” has the property of being unstable and occasionally spitting out universes, then it is “something.” This may seem like a semantic game, but it isn’t. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine a “nothing” that does not spit out universes. Thus, why do we happen to have this particular kind of “nothing” that does.

Does “Nothing” Even Make Sense?

More and more, I find myself with Henri-Louis Bergson and other philosophers who find the question of existence absurd. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do you think that nothing is more natural than something? And I believe the reason that it feels like there should be nothing is because of the nature of our existence. At one time, we didn’t exist; now we do. So it seems as though the natural state of things is to not exist because that was our own natural state.

But how could there be nothing? It seems to me that ideas exist without having to be thought. That is to say that we discover ideas rather than invent them. But I’m hardly certain of that. However, it is clear that the problem is internal and not external. That is: it isn’t the fault of “something” that it isn’t nothing. I’m the one at fault because I can’t get past thinking about my existence and existence itself as the same thing.

Brute Facts and Better Questions

This all makes me land in the company of Bertrand Russell, “I should say that the universe is just there, and that is all.” But I don’t like being in this company because it feels too dismissive. To claim that existence is a brute fact is unsatisfying. And the truth is that I don’t share this way of looking at ontology. Because existence is still mystical.

People normally make the mistake of thinking that science is designed to answer questions. It is not. It is designed to create questions. The scientific revolution has greatly expanded the number of questions we have not answered. This is because every answer creates a multitude of new questions. But that doesn’t mean that science is bad. Hardly! Science allows us to ask better and better questions.

The Journey Continues

Existence is not a puzzle where we are moving to the point where the last piece is fitted and all is known. It is more like a Jackson Pollock painting that just gets more complex and lovely with each splash of paint. But unlike a painting, this goes on and on. Knowledge is a work in progress and it will be for humans right up to the point that we go extinct.

And so I will continue to think about the nature of existence until I go extinct. Of course, I’m not entirely sure I will go extinct, because I have some curious thoughts about time too. But we will have to leave that for another day.

Jackson Pollock, White Light, 1954 by Sharon Mollerus, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Frankly Curious

Everything interesting for everyone interesting…

Author Archives: Frank Moraes