Marcus' World

First SF Chronicle Book Review Published

Four months ago I had the pleasure of publishing a book review in Rain Taxi. 

Today I'm even more excited, because my first book review in the San Francisco Chronicle is online and will be in print in the May 16 edition.   The book under review: Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 (Sarah Lacy, 2008). 

I hope that this is the first of many reviews to come, in the Chronicle and elsewhere. Book reviewing is a modest public service, as well as an excellent way to force clarity and precision in thoughts and sentences.  Those are worthy goals for all essay writing, but the tight limits of a book review are particularly demanding.

One of my most worthwhile pursuits when we lived in New York was a six week course on the art and craft of writing book reviews, taught by Ben Downing.   I'm very grateful that the class is starting to pay off!

Robert Rauschenberg, Helen, and Functional Objects

My appreciation for 20th century American art is very shallow.  While I'd heard of Robert Rauschenberg, I really knew very little about him until reading the obituary today. 

Fortunately I don't need any expertise to observe that this quote from Rauschenberg made me smile: "I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable." Later in the article comes the more serious reason for Rauschenberg's dismay--he loved to make something out of (seemingly) nothing.

Helen is very talented at turning everyday goods into functional objects.  Just today I noticed that a jelly jar had become a vase. 

For a dessert exchange party last year she converted a cereal box into a makeshift container.  Everybody else brought Tupperware, and people marveled about the creativity of using a cereal box instead.  At the time I didn't know it, but now I do: Helen's talents would have made Rauschenberg smile.

Bring on $5.00 a Gallon

Today's report that many people are now taking public transportation to work, in response to high gas prices, is very welcome news indeed. There will be fewer pollutants in the air and more opportunity to show that public transit is (or should be) a very viable option for getting around. 

In Tokyo this year--and in Hong Kong, Paris, and London before that--I was once again struck by how far behind US public transit is from much of the rest of the world.  Buenos Aires and Sao Paolo also have decent train systems, and Argentina and Brazil are much poorer than us.

Gas at $3.25/gallon was merely a nuisance, while gas at $3.50-$4.00/gallon seems to be the tipping point in changing behavior.

Come on $5.00! Let's have a revolution.

My Bubbly Atheist

Growing up, I was a good Christian boy.  Before I was even 10 years old, I would only listen to Christian radio and watch religious television; and the Bible was my main reading matter. My grandma was very religious and this seemed to work for her. Whenever I spent the night at her house, I'd always read the 23rd and 91st Psalms aloud while sitting on her knee.

Around the age of 10, I started planning out sermons I would deliver when I became a minister someday.  (If only there had been blogs back then--I could have crafted some very interesting posts!)

At the age of 11, I took a more stern approach and figured out who at school needed "saving" from the fiery flames of Hell.  One person on the docket was a fellow sixth grader with the seemingly  Hell-proof name of Faith. Even back then I wasn't much of an activist; I pondered talking to Faith about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and how He should come into her heart, but never really did it.

By the time high school rolled around, I was a stalwart in the church youth group (a group known as "The Filling Station"--complete with a logo of a gas pump--because Jesus had the power to fill your formerly empty life up). I edited the youth group's newsletter. I went to Bible camps most summers, and was on the "Bible Bowl" trivia team (think Jeopardy, but with all questions coming from the Bible). I went to every single youth group meeting during my senior year in high school, and was rewarded with a trip to Niagara Falls. (Driving to church on the day of the trip, I went so fast that I got a speeding ticket.)

My early years at Northwestern were filled to the brim with Campus Crusade for Christ meetings, and twice-Sunday trips to the First Presbyterian Church of Evanston.  Eventually, though--as often happens in college--I had a crisis of faith. Sometime in the summer between freshman and sophomore year, I decided that the evangelical Christian notion that everyone must worship the same God or be damned to perdition made no sense at all. During sophomore  year I  half-heartedly attended various religious functions, and eventually stopped going altogether.

Almost 2 years after this break in faith, I met Helen.  Several things stood out about her--she was smart, she was sweet, she was sharp, she was attractive, she was funny.  Another thing that commanded attention: her proud declaration that she was an atheist, and not just a mushy agnostic who wanted to have it both ways.  Helen only believes in what she can see with her own eyes, and doesn't think that you have to be religious to care about making the world a better place.

For years after meeting Helen--for years after marrying her--I didn't know how to acknowledge her atheism to my family.   Obviously it didn't bother me that much, but I had years of  Filling  Station-inspired conditioning to contend with.  For all I know, nobody in my family would have cared. But because of our religious heritage, however attenuated it might be today, I never wanted to bring the topic up.

This morning I peeked at Helen's Facebook profile, and noted that she now lists her religious views as, "Bubbly atheist."  I thought this was awesome.

Helen is my bubbly atheist, and I love her.

Clinton Should Keep Running if She Wants To

The last few weeks have shown Hillary Clinton at her worst: peddling sham gas tax relief and beating the drums of war against Iran. A month or so ago I was wondering if perhaps I'd misjudged her.  Today I'm very happy to support Barack Obama.

That said, why should she bow out now?  Although the chattering class has declared her candidacy over, it's not.

Next week she's likely to prevail in West Virginia (a state with similar demographics to Pennsylvania, where she did very well).  Success is also waiting in Kentucky; if she's able to get the votes in Michigan and Florida counted (whatever you might think of that maneuver), Clinton is right back in the race.

This interminable campaign has had many inflection points when either Clinton or Obama were supposedly finished.  But it's not over yet.   

At the Movies: Tout est pardonne (All is Forgiven)

Today Helen and I ventured into San Francisco to watch Tout est pardonne (All is Forgiven), which is  enjoying its West Coast premiere as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. 

Aside from watching a powerful film, an ancillary benefit of the day was the opportunuty to explore the Pacific Heights neighborhood of SF.  Since we're in Berkeley most of the time, we're only slowly getting a handle on the quilt pieces that comprise the City by the Bay.  Someday we'll have it all figured out, even if takes a while.

In the meantime I can offer this brief report on All is Forgiven: It's about a heroin addict named Victor, who becomes awful to his wife Annette once he the throes of his addiction.  Eventually Annette cuts off contact between Victor and their young daughter Pamela, a terrible fate that estranges Victor from his daughter for 11 years.  Eventually father and daughter reunite during her teenage years.  They form a deep connection, because--in the long run--all is forgiven.

Rest assured that I'm not giving away too much. This is definitely a film to watch, both for its visual acuity and a sense of compassion that never lapses into maudlin posturing.

We all know people who never fully pull themselves together, and we all have traits that seem intractable no matter how much they can hurt those we love.  Few things are truly intractable, but change is hard.  So large measures of compassion are needed, for ourselves and for each other. 

All is Forgiven makes this case gracefully.  Afterwards, screenwriter and director Mia Hansen-Love answered audience questions. At one point she mentioned her initial impression of the "luminousness" and "darkness" within the presence of the actor who plays Victor (Paul Blain). We all have both impulses, and we all have the power to make sure that luminousness prevails in the end.

They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore

Today the library demoed a federated search product--a tool that searches many databases simultaneously, rather than requiring that researchers search each database individually. 

If I were a better librarian I would have diligently noted the strengths and weaknesses of the interface and pondered how to improve upon the product.  Instead, with a few errant keystrokes  I found myself reading an article about dental caries published in Scientific Monthly in 1931.

The thunderous opening sentence of this article reads thusly: "Dental caries is without doubt one of the very ancient diseases to which mankind has fallen heir."

My goodness gracious.  They don't write 'em like that any more!

Bloggers vs. Journalists (Sigh)

A few weeks ago the New Yorker published a probing article by Eric Alterman about the fate of American newspapers. These days I can't seem to read three straight paragraphs in the New Yorker, due to juggling multiple books and various other periodicals in my absurdly ambitious collection of reading materials.  So I was rather too proud of myself for reading Alterman's entire piece.

The sentence that sticks with me is: "But Huffington (as in Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post) fails to address the parasitical relationship that virtually all Internet news sites and blog commentators enjoy with newspapers." Alterman argues that--for all the talk of "citizen media" and "grass-roots journalism" at HuffPost and elsewhere--bloggers would be nowhere without easy access to the reports that traditional journalists post online.

Alterman makes a strong point. Score one for the mainstream media.

And so things  stood, to my mind at least, until I read Ezra Klein's blog post today.  Klein points out that being a full-time writer is a privileged position, and that traditional journalists who criticize political bloggers never acknowledge that most bloggers have day jobs (and thus are not able to do original reporting.)

The sentence that strikes me is: "If you've got the gig (as a full time writer), then pat yourself on the back, shut up, outcompete your competition, and be generous to those who steal time out of their workday in order to carve out a small space in the national conversation." (Emphasis mine).

Klein is a bit punchy here, but the point holds: Blogging can never replace full-time journalism (whatever some blog proponents might proclaim), but it does open space for more voices to be heard. Sure--many blogs are uninteresting or absurd; and many good blogs aren't updated often enough to be worthwhile.  But there is cream in this crop, just like in anything else.

So score one for the bloggers.  Fortunately this isn't a zero sum game.

Good Causes, Quick Rewards, Partial Solutions

Yesterday was World Malaria Day, and sadly I didn't realize this until today. So now it appears too late to play the "Deliver the Net" game, an interactive online game in which your success results in the delivery of free bednets to fight malaria in places where it is endemic.

One game that's always available is Free Rice, a vocabulary quiz in which each successful result yields 20 grains of rice for the UN World Food Program.  That's especially important right now, when the prices of many staples like rice are shooting up.

Let's not forget the Hunger Site, where one simple click yields 1.1 cups of food a day.

These are all quick and easy ways to make a difference. It's easy to forget that this is only part of the solution, though; tackling the systemic reasons for world hunger is  much harder and can quickly seem daunting.  But as we all play Free Rice, let's keep in mind the larger issues at stake.

The Campaign Rolls On

Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama in Pennsylvania today. She won by 10 percentage points, and raised $1 million online in the two hours immediately after declaring victory.  My inaccurate guess beforehand was that Clinton would win by 5 points--enough to keep going for a while, but not enough to stop the Obama juggernaut. 

It's anyone's ballgame, once again. Obama's bid to shift the focus to John McCain tonight will fail, because the Democratic campaign is far from over.

As the campaign rolls on, McCain will be the prime beneficiary of the foul mood. The 6 week  long Pennsylvania slog brought out the nastiness in both Clinton and Obama--especially Clinton, who peddled images of Osama bin Laden right before the Pennsylvania primary to show that she would be tougher on national security than Obama. 

In tonight's concession speech, Obama hopefully spoke about moving beyond the "silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics."  But he never should have gone to this level in the first place, and I don't see a way out of the muck now. I don't mean to be harsh; the turn of events only goes to show that interminable campaigns wear away at anyone's sense of civility.

On a practical level, therefore, Democrats have every reason to be concerned about how things are shaping up in what should be a landslide Democratic year. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with an epic campaign like this one.  Both Clinton and Obama are brilliant; both care about everyday Americans; and both would be good Presidents.  If our politics were less shallow, their jousting would be invigorating and informative. As it is, though, their skirmishes are only helping to ensure four more years of a Republican White House.