So, I got sick this weekend. I'll get the new episode up as soon as I can.

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter Three part 2(ish)

Let's Brush Up on Our Anxieties

 

Bit of a small re-cap episode here. I’m still recovering from the last one, plus it’s a damn holiday again. People and their social obligations. I’m kidding. Happy 4th of July for any Americans listening. Happy Canada Day for the Canadians. Happy second week of July for everyone else.

What do I mean by re-cap, and why isn’t this a mini-sode? Well, I mean I’m going to brush up a few topics because that’s part of this chapter. The loose ends here are expansions and re-enforcements of things we already know, so I’ll just go over them fairly quickly because I want to acknowledge them rather than gloss right past them. There is at least one more episode and possibly two within this chapter, these are the fragments.

continued in podcast...

RESOURCES

Dune

The relevant book for the episode will always be in resources. If you haven't picked it up yet, you should.

Looking for the Hannibal Behind the Cannibal: Current Status of Case Research by Aina Gullhaugen, PhD and Jim Nottestad, dr. philos

Music Credits:

In the Hall of the Mountain King by Kevin McCloud (incompetech.com) Composed by Edvard GreigLicensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter Three part 1

I see That I Am Blind

 

Prediction, prophecy, psychic knowledge…These form a central theme to the Dune series. This is the first chapter to bring it up, and it does so through Paul’s dreams and in Mohaim’s predictions regarding the fate of The Atreides Family and humanity itself.

By what mechanism are these powers explained and is it possible for such a thing to happen? I believe that the explanation is possible, but the precision displayed relies on an idea that is unproven, possibly unprovable, but has some foundations in reality. In this episode we will discuss that premise, but also give a bit of a nod to a more reachable form of prediction.

First off, we need to discuss what we mean by prophecy. Prophecy is not, for instance, saying that you have the docs appointment next Tuesday at 2 o’clock. That’s merely the knowledge that you have an appointment. Prophecy is saying that not only will you definitely make that appointment, you will arrive in the office at 1:42:37 and the receptionist will be wearing a green shirt, the doctor will arrive and not have died in a horrible accident at some time within the next week, as will you.

Now, some of those predictions may seem a little obvious. Which ones, do you think, are obvious?

Personally, I think none of them are. The number of factors that go into that prediction are astronomical. The receptionist’s green shirt would require you to know the receptionist, know that she has a green shirt, and how she decides what to wear. Your arrival, and the time of it, is the only thing with which you would be able to have any type of control, but that is only if you manage to avoid accidental interference in your schedule.

For this prediction to come true all three people involved would have to avoid the chance of a serious accident. Again, you could lock yourself in a very safe room with pre-screened and analyzed water and food to help ensure your arrival, but chances are you won’t go through all that trouble and neither will the other two people.

The ability to say that an event is definitely going to happen is not dependent as much on a set of events that occurs, rather it is also dependent on a set of events that does not occur. The best you can come up with in predicting that you will be at your doctor appointment is “probably”.

Let’s make a thought experiment that is simpler, or at least has less movement. Two planets are in orbit around a star, and each is exactly 100 miles in diameter. The star is stable and does not have any indications that it will explode at any time in the near future, and for simplicity sake, entropy is not operating at all in this thought experiment. The orbits of the two planets are, at this moment, positioned so that one is directly in between the other planet and the star and orbit in opposite directions. Do you have that scenario? Good. Because we are going to add a complication.

At one point in their orbits the paths of the planets coincide, meaning that both planets are located in the same place at that point. Both planets have an orbit of one of our Earth years, with one exception. One planet revolves to the same point every 365 days exactly, and I mean 24 hour days exactly. The other planet revolves to the same point every 365 days minus one second.

I’ll explain the points at which these paths cross. Imagine the face of a clock and both planets are currently at 12 o’clock. The point at which the paths intersect is at 3 o’clock....

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Written in the Sand

Episode 10: There is a Harkonnen Among You

If you are just joining us today for the first time, I usually have something here to strongly hint that you should go back to the first episode and listen to them all in order. I’m not necessarily going to do that today because this is a minisode, a break in continuity where I talk about things that have to do with the podcast in general and so can be safely listened to out of order.

For returning listeners, yes, I went with the mini episode option, and I have posted the entire transcript because I wanted this one fully available. The reason why I decided to do these things is actually multiple reasons, not the least of which is that shortly after posting this episode I will be knee-deep in forest, tent, and camp fires, rather than a couple of days to myself where I can refine the normal episode format, and then record and edit it.

There is a holiday for me and the rest of the US this weekend, and it occurs to me, and I'm not sure how I managed it -- although I assure you it was not intentional -- that the release of my episodes seems to coincide with a number of holidays, and at least one wedding, so far. I have to say it is amazing what one will subconsciously subject oneself to when plotting things out. But I still persevere in the happy thought that any day now will come a conveniently long stretch of peace and quiet where I will magically be able to get a lot of things done in a single go.

So what will I talk about in this shorter, non-canon episode? Happily, it will be a bit of this and a bit of that. Yes, quite definitely. Unfortunately, while doing the last two episodes I noticed a certain amount of dryness that distressed me, but of course not enough for me to not go ahead with them stubbornly. Of course, my subject matter was decidedly depressing, nonetheless I feel that I do want to take a bit of time to think about some questions of style.

I actually listen to a number of podcasts myself and I'm often quite envious of the more professional ones. Of course some of those podcasts, I suspect, are done in a nice quiet studio with expensive equipment and a team of people paid to make sure it all sounds good. I do not have that luxury, I am a single person, whose equipment is decidedly unprofessional. I am still inspired, however, by a few podcasts that I do listen to that I definitely know have none of those expensive advantages and manage quite well, so I do remain optimistic.

I have spent much my life teaching myself various things and becoming quite good at them over the years. There is always a chance -- and there are number of endeavors in my past that have failed utterly -- that becoming a one man public orator and sound production team will not be successful. But as I said just a few minutes ago I can be stubborn as all get out.

I am going to be upgrading some of my equipment, though. I realize that it is coming up on a year since I seriously started to plan out getting started and that some of the equipment that I bought at that time was more about frugality then quality. I think it may be time to correct that and also to pick up some other things that I want to bring to bear. One of those will most certainly be a potentially better microphone, as this one, while it works and was within budget at the time, also has to be kept distressingly close to the mouth necessitating a lot more editing of unpleasant noises then I really feel like doing anymore.

And while I'm at it,

 

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter Two part 2

Weaving a Tangle

 

What we’re doing today is looking at some of the dialogs and actions in Chapter Two and we’re going to talk about some of the underlying ideas. There will be a bit about the governing bodies of the Dune Universe, a bit about attitudes towards certain classes, a dash of this, and a pinch of that. What is being used here are tidbits, so they will be discussed briefly. These are parts that we will use to build bigger ideas with later on.

Shall we begin?

I think the best place to start is to discuss the Baron’s goals here. To understand what the Baron is going after you have to understand the political ladder he is trying to claw his way up. He is seeking power within the Landsraad.

What is the Landsraad? To put it simply, the Landsraad is the ruling body of the Galactic Empire. It is similar to a house of lords. The members of the Landsraad are the landed gentry. The word Landsraad is Norwegian and translates to country counsel. The Landsraad is a kind of Parliament where the ruling classes govern human affairs throughout the Galactic Empire, at least the big things. The small things are governed on a planetary level by the individual rulers. There are major houses, which control entire planets and even multiple planets, and there are minor houses which are very wealthy but do not control things on a worldwide level. The relative rank and power of its members is tracked by standing in CHOAM.

What is CHOAM?

Again we have an etymological puzzle to go through. CHOAM is an acronym that stands for Combined Honnet Ober Advancer Mercantile. Combined and Mercantile indicate that this is a corporation. Indeed, it is the corporation. Honnet is an interesting word because it translates, with different spellings, as Honesty in French, Swedish, and Japanese, a multi-sourced word with a single translation. It stands for trust and honesty and fairness no matter the source.

And then we have Ober, which I’m pronouncing wrong. It is a German word with the simple translation of Waiter. But it doesn’t just mean waiter. It is also the name of a playing card in German deck, where instead of a Queen you would have the Ober. If I had to guess at the etymology in this, the Ober is a servant of the king, indeed a second in command, who is only outranked by the king.

Much like the word valet could refer to a trusted servant of a nobleman, but also refer to the person who parks your car for you, I think that Ober has similar origins. If you think about it, at one time the person who served the king his food, his personal waiter or cup-bearer, was the most trusted and possibly the most powerful person in the kingdom, aside from the king.

So you could translate CHOAM as the association of honest service for the advancement of trade. Which sounds a little corny, but it is what it is.

CHOAM is a massive corporation. What CHOAM does is keep track of the intricate network of exchange of goods. It is the corporation of the movement of merchandise. Advancing Mercantile, if you will. Every transaction in the Galactic Empire goes through CHOAM. Much like how in our current society almost anything can be bought through an Amazon.com style of website. Imagine if one of these type of online marketplaces had a monopoly on all commercial transactions, and the number of shares you own of this company would be how much political power you have. That would be similar to what CHOAM is.

It is an oligarchy,

 

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter Two part 1

And in this Corner, Floating like a Bumblebee

 

At the end of our last episode we completed Chapter One. It was a Five parter with one Mini-sode in the middle. As I said, some chapters are going to take longer than others. One thing I’m planning to do sometime this week is synopsize the the meta points we went over and post them in a list for the chapter for easy reference. I know in the mini-episode I talked about other plans and those are still in the works, I beg your patience on those. It should be obvious by now I don’t do frivolous and simple, and things will come as I feel they’re ready. I think it’ll be worth it.

Today, in this installment, we’re going to concentrate primarily on the Baron Harkonnen and his immediate associates, but that will be through a lens on the nature of evil, and a specific breed of evil. I’m breaking this chapter into only two installments. One on the character of the personalities in it, and another about the allegories present in some of the comments. This chapter does not entail one of those long analysis that requires many installments – and that surprised me just as much as I'm sure that it surprises you. What topic could be more complex than evil and the main villain of the first book? Shouldn't that deserve multiple installments?

The answer to both those questions is yes. Unfortunately, because we are going chapter by chapter this particular piece happens to be about the Harkonnens and I hate to break it to anyone who is a "fan" of the baron's villainous status but, Baron Harkonnen is boring. Baron Harkonnen is simply just obvious as a villain. Like black hat levels of bad guy. No pun intended, he's the type of villain you can see coming from a mile away. Dune isn't exactly about the obvious enemy. We're definitely going to talk about him, but there is no warning needed for someone like the Baron.

Regarding this chapter, what the Harkonnens are is an opposite of the Atreides. The Weaknesses of the Harkonnens are the Strengths in the Atreides, and vice versa. The Harkonnens are repulsive and scary, but they are not as dangerous as one would think. Not quite. They are close, but they are too petty and emotional to be a primary evil.

If, in this episode, it seems like I'm getting irritable, it is because I seem to have reached a point where power plays and politics have become repellent to me. Perhaps it's the current political landscape, and by current I mean the past decade or two. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but there is a part of me that has reached an almost unbearable level of, how should I put this, impatience with people from all different groups and in all levels of power who would gladly watch the world burn for a tiny morsel of personal advancement.

What I am going to do with this chapter is take this opportunity to discuss certain personality types which are relevant here. These tend to fall under the psychological diagnosis of antisocial personality disorders. Bear in mind that I am not a mental health professional, so my descriptions will not necessarily be entirely kosher. What I'm trying to do is define terminology at this point. In layman's terms we are more familiar with sociopath, psychopath, and narcissist. Depending on who you ask, narcissism and socio-pathology are interchangeable; I want to keep them separate for my own perceptions of subtle differences.

With some variations on behavior, as well as differences in causes,

 

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter One part 5

A Society of Problems

 

This is part two of our look at men and women, the differences and the stereotypes. This episode will add to the foundation we’ve already established and we will get to the point of why this topic needs to be here.

Just to recap, in part one I presented some general stereotypes of both men and women and then took a look at the merits and shortcomings of those stereotypes. To re-emphasize, I want to make clear that such stereotypes are not going to be true for everyone, but they are going to be true for someone.

The dangers of stereotypes is that they create an expectation, sometimes it is one of standards that one must live up to and at other times the expectation that one is no better than the stereotype. These expectations come from outside and also from within. Men setting expectations for other men, women setting expectations for men, men setting them for women, and women setting standards for other women. And last, but not least, we expect them from ourselves.

In any case, the apparent burden of an entire group is placed on the shoulders of individuals and the truth is that it’s an impossible burden to carry. And yet, people do try to take on these stereotypes not just by self imposition but by promoting the expectation.

Some of the places that this presents itself is in the topics we covered last episode, and also in this one as well. It will be one of our continuing themes throughout the podcast. What we will begin with today is how it presents itself in the rites of passage we have practiced throughout history, sometimes with innocuous consequences and other times with with brutal, even deadly, results.

On the topic of rites of passage, one thing I’ve heard over and over again is that women have their menses to mark a transition into adulthood, while men do not. Which is why men never mature and need to have rites of manhood and it is the lack of these in the modern west which has led to our social problems.

But these rituals did exist for both sexes and some still do. Some will be different and the difference shows a difference in focus. The tests seem to be the same — endurance and survival, the facing of fear,etc, but the methods and rituals codify certain social expectations. Some examples of  Initiation rites have been used in the past and have now been largely abandoned. Others are still practiced. We will start this time with the men.

continued in podcast...

RESOURCES

Dune

The relevant book for the episode will always be in resources. If you haven't picked it up yet, you should.

THE POWER OF MYTH Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers DVD BOOK

Joseph Campbell was an amazing man who sought to talk about the stories humanity has created. He delved into the social environments of myths and the commonality of our cherished legends. This interview series with Bill Moyer is a good starting place as it's very accessible. Highly recommended.

The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldûn

This is the version I have. It has a lot of good insights, although there are some downsides. It’s a little wordy (like I'm one to talk) and it suffers from the author assuming that his audience would know common stories from Islam. Nothing some patience and some extra research won’t fix.

 

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chapter One part 4

Reconcilable Differences

Welcome back to Written in the Sand. As promised, this episode is a bit big. I wanted to make it bigger, truth be told, I’m a little sick of being in Chapter one. Unfortunately, because of time and hosting limits, I had to break the episode up. Sorry. So, one more episode exists in this chapter.

This was a hard one to write. As I begin, I hope you’ll understand why it took so many delays to get to this one. I’ll be addressing men and women, the differences of the sexes, and I’m going to irritate a lot of people as I go along. I am requesting that you get through the tough parts. I feel this episode has to go through its stages, from beginning to end.

One of the criticisms of Dune that bothers me most is that it is anti-feminist. For one thing, such accusers had to have not finished the series. For another, I’m convinced that to truly be pro-feminism cannot be accomplished by a man, any man, just as feminism cannot truly be pro-men. We can try to refute that with platitudes, but if feminism was pro-male, it wouldn’t really be feminism. We all make allowances for our side of the equation. Men may support women but they will still reserve privileges for themselves, and women will do the same. It is an understandable thing and one that is possibly too hard to overcome, but important to keep in mind.

As I established in our second episode, we must remember that Frank Herbert, for all his careful planning and study, was still a man of his time and culture, as you and I are a part of our time and culture. The social norms of our current time would not be the same as the norms of his time. His understanding of the differences between men and women would be overgeneralized towards an understanding of gender roles for his time. But, I don’t think that’s true enough to make his thoughts completely dismiss-able.

I see many things here that are still true, or concepts that are true now that were not true then. He did try very hard to differentiate between cultural constructs and actual identity. We will continue this here. I am going to speak in generalities, but I will try to show my work, as it were.

Again, we may be looking at possibly offensive topics, and if I judge correctly, no one will really be happy with me about this. Which is actually okay with me. I am presenting thoughts, and I allow that they may be wrong. Just don’t confuse that allowance with the certainty that I am incorrect.

I will speak of things that lead me to present the concepts I’m going to touch on. Understand why I am presenting them, and if they conflict with how you view yourself, or your role in society, that is perfectly fine. If you are upset by that and want to reject it, that’s fine, also. At the very least take a bit of time to wonder why my thoughts should have any bearing on your sense of self. That is far more important a thing to address than what I may think of generalized concepts that you may have some opinion about.

Differences between men and women are more than just outward features. They are more than outward, physical differences between genitalia. This is a scientific fact. I know it is fashionable in our current society to think that this is not so, but it really is, and I’m not intending to debate it here. What I am going to do is post links in the resource section. They deal with testosterone and estrogen’s effects on the human body. These hormones cause mental changes just as much as physical changes.

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Written in the Sand

Dune, Book One, Chaper One part 3

Welcome back to Written in the Sand. I’m Patrick. Thank you for your patience in waiting for this episode. I think the extended breaks may be over for a little while. I did pick up some software that is helping in organizing and plotting, so that’s a bit of good news. In looking over my material, I realized that I’ve written so much, I might as well be writing a book, you'd be surprised how many words can be spoken in a minute. So that’s how I’m approaching this project now, as a serialized book..

I’m actually liking this method. It’s so much easier than thinking I must cram everything in. While completing this episode I have written almost all of the next and the one following, so we should be back to a regular schedule shortly.

This is a short episode. There is a big one coming up that is almost complete to finish off Chapter One, but I forgot this part and exploring it separately buys me more time. And it also means I don’t have to get a headache trying to force fit it in.

What I want to address today is the manipulation of Paul Atreides in the first chapter. It is a very subtle form of manipulation, and my interpretation is somewhat speculative, but it’s Dune, so plans within plans within plans is par for the course. Now, I did mention this manipulation previously with regards to family, but there is another aspect to it that is used more than once. Paul is the son of a Duke. He has rank and his commitment to his role in society, what we call duty, is called into question here.

He is basically told that if he fails to comply with Mohaim’s wishes, he has failed his lineage, and failed at life — which is actually true because she’ll kill him, but even before she makes that obvious, she is goading him into compliance, and Jessica may be helping her.

The first indication of this manipulation is when Mohaim catches Paul pretending to be asleep.

continued in podcast...

RESOURCES

Dune

The relevant book for the episode will always be in resources. If you haven't picked it up yet, you should.

The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard

I read this as a kid. As I recall, I was looking to do a science report on lab rats and instead I rabbit holed into behavioral psychology. As I’ve mentioned before, I was a strange kid. This sparked an early fascination with looking into deeper meanings. I became more interested in the techniques of creating commercials rather than in buying what the commercial was hawking. I looked for the things that were implied rather than spoken, critiquing because it was fun. Needless to say the desired results don’t usually pan out very well with me — I buy from convenience or research, not commercials — but I do enjoy watching and listening to the advertising efforts.

Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key

No longer in print, unfortunately, but another book I came across that sparked my interest in the manipulations of advertising. It road a certain wave of paranoia that swept the nation in the 1970’s. Most of it was eventually dismissed, but I’m not entirely convinced it was complete hogwash. As my next link suggests, there is some renewed interest in some of the techniques described.

Subliminal Seduction gets a Second Glance by Julie Sedivy Ph.D.

Just an article that came up as I was browsing along.

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Written in the Sand

Episode 4: A Bit of a Break

Hello again and welcome to Written in the Sand. I am Patrick Anthony. It's going to be a lot shorter than other episodes have been so far, which is actually nice as far as the muscles I use for speech are concerned. Last episode I started to slur words after the umpteenth recording.

I happen to have an interesting news announcement relevant to our last episode, and it thankfully came after I posted the episode, sometimes the real world steals my idea before I’ve even written them down, which is just annoying, but I have a theory on that which I'll explain some time.

So, a European parliamentary committee has drafted a proposal regarding robots that I found very interesting. I'm linking the article on the resources so you can read it yourself but the main gist is a recognition of rights for artificial intelligence should it ever come and also a recommendation to implement Asimov's zeroth law. I'm really hoping that's how the word is pronounced. My dictation program recognized it, so I'm fairly confident, but given some of the words it thinks I say, you never know.

I actually didn't cover that law in our last episode. It was one attempt by Asimov to try and cover the gaps in the laws of robotics. The law is almost identical to the first law accept it substitutes the word humanity rather than referring to a single human. It is called zeroth law because it is meant to come before and take precedence over all the other laws. It still isn't a perfect law, but I find it interesting that a real world legal body has started to use the language of Asimov's laws in establishing actual legal precedents.

In other news I'm going to take a bit of a break from the subject matter this time around to go over a few things, including why I'm doing that.

continued in podcast...

RESOURCES

One lonely link to a cool article about robotic law