John Holbo

Kevin Drum gives The Black Swan a fairly thumbs-downish review. I had a slightly more favorable reaction myself when I read it recently. I’ll add a comment and a question. Drum is right about the crankishness of the book’s tone. It’s impressive, isn’t it? How well ivory towers work as insanity field-generators? Everyone knows they make their inhabitants go crazy. But it’s also true that they drive everyone outside insane, who comes anywhere near.Those the gods would destroy, they first make really, really annoyed. To live just outside an ivory tower without going all cranky. That’s the trick.

Now, a question. Taleb claims in passing at various points that the modern world is Extremistan, and getting more so all the time. By constrast, our primitive ancestors lived in Mediocristan. As Drum summarizes: “[Taleb] writes about how humans are hardwired to be bad at estimating risks in the modern world.” Extremistan breeds more ‘black swans’: events that are, if I remember rightly, highly unpredictable; highly consequential; retroactively explicable. But it strikes me that animals – our ancestors in particular – probably never lived in Mediocristan. The Pleistocene wasn’t Mediocristan. Our ancestors were just as bad at estimating risks in their environments as we are in ours. Their black swans, the stuff that gave them fairly short lives, were just different. Mediocristan isn’t a time or a place, or a primitive development stage, it’s a projection of a confused form of cognition. It’s a place everyone acts as if they live in, but no one has lived there. Mediocristan is only a state of mind. This is the important thing, for Taleb, so I expect he would respond by saying – yeah, whatever. I didn’t write a history of the Pleistocene. But he does repeatedly imply that it’s a state of mind because, once upon a time, we really lived there. He talks as though it’s an adaptive trait that has become mal-adaptive. But that’s wrong, right?

Just thought I’d mention it. If you want free comics today without walking into the comics store nearest you, you might check these out. Free, copyright-cleared Golden Age stuff. Some of the best, worst stuff you’ll find anywhere. (You are probably going to need Comical, as a free reader, if you don’t have it.)

Or you could just check out my free Squid and Owl stuff. (Just in case you haven’t noticed.) Also, happy 1st 100 days to the Obama administration. Many happy returns of the day and all that. (Guess I missed it by a few days.)

I’m on this private list (a thing consisting of a set of private tubes or private trucks) on which the question arose: occult detectives? History of? I suppose it starts with Poe (where else?) Some interesting names were suggested. This site was linked.

But, tragically – sinisterly, even – no mention was made of possibly the greatest occult detective of all. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you …

He appeared in a 1940 issue of Jungle Stories, available in this volume [ amazon].

Not to give away the ending, but …

Fero, Planet Detective:

Turn-offs:
Long walks on the beach
Women

Turn-ons:
Detecting planets
Stamping out vampires of Pluto that have invaded the earth.

Great posts today. Welcome to our guests. But here’s something light, in case you need a break. Found photo, found on Flickr:

Larger version here.

I know, everyone read the New York Magazine piece with everyone singing Poor, Poor Pitiful Masters of the Universe. That was so a week ago. Thankfully, everything is back to normal. But let’s revisit ancient history. The following bit was especially wondered at (by Kevin Drum, for example): [click to continue…]

You’ve met The Girls From Planet 5. Now meet … [click to continue…]

I found this old photo on Flickr. (Click link, then click again, for larger image.)

Apparently it “was published by the Sydney firm Charles Kerry & Co. and is part of the Powerhouse Museum’s Tyrrell collection which contains over 2,900 glass plate negatives by Kerry & Co. Although a few appear to be from the 1880s most were produced between 1892 and 1917.”

I learned a new word today: periplum! From wikipedia: [click to continue…]

Now back to comics-related matters! Readers who missed last week’s thrilling installments should be made aware that I have started a webcomic of sorts, “Squid and Owl”, which I am updating weekdays as a Flickr set and at J&B. Naturally, I crave your attention. Today, for example, I make an Anthony Powell joke.

In other webcomics news, the first two chapters of Chris “the ISB” Sims’ “The Chronicles of Solomon Stone” are up. Half-vampire skate detective, with unsteadily Cockney sidekick/love interest vs. volcano island lair dinosaur ghost witches. I would say it is quite amusing.

In actual whatchamacallit comicscomics news, the Eisner nominees have been announced. [click to continue…]

Sigh.

You know what that means. I’ve been reading Jonah Goldberg again. Here we go, pondering the notion that a few of these teabag types might be right-wing extremists of a certain sort.

I wrote a book on fascism which tried to show that what everybody knows isn’t necessarily true. The idea that soldiers will return from war and become right-wing militants? Well, that has its roots in Fascist Italy, where veterans returned as black-shirted shock troops of “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini. The only problem with this theory is that what they clamored for was socialism — the socialism of the trenches! — and their leader had earned the title “Il Duce” as the leader of the Socialist Party.

Now obviously ‘socialism of the trenches’ means something like: recover that feeling of unity and common cause we had, in the immediate aftermath of that initial irruption of chaos and disaster, when everyone set aside petty class differences and stood, shoulder to shoulder, against a perceived external enemy.

And it’s obvious that nothing like that could be spiritually akin to – oh, say, Glenn Beck’s 9/12 project. Because Glenn Beck isn’t in favor of socialism.

Sigh.

Let’s talk Texas secession. Like I said, Belle bought me this stack of old paperbacks – because she loves me – and the whole mouldering lot are turning out to be weirdly prescient. First the beaver management, now this. [click to continue…]

We’ll just make it webcomics week for me, here at CT. If you don’t happen to know, “Hereville, How Mirka Got Her Sword” is a great read. It’s a complete story, nice art, peculiar setting, apparently part of a larger graphic novel in progress. (Page 36 is particularly nice, compositionally.)

On the other hand, if you are like me, you probably figured they’d done about as much damage to the Howard the Duck franchise as they were likely to do, at least by means of that 1986 movie. We were wrong. The DVD [amazon] just got released – and they Photoshopped the poor guy’s stogey off the cover. Compare: [click to continue…]

The scary thing about making jokes like that is … they’re true. Happy 40th B-day to the author of one of my very favorite webcomics that you may never have heard of: “Breakfast of the Gods”. Probably you should start at the beginning.

When a man gets to be around 40 – maybe a bit older – he starts to look back on life and wonder: what thing have I done for which I will be remembered? The next thing he does is start a webcomic. Maybe sell a few t-shirts, other Cafe Press-type stuff. Which brings us to:

No, really. I honestly don’t know whether it’s a comic or not. It’s an illustrated childrens book for adults, maybe. I’m planning to serialize it on Flickr. Here’s the set. Subscribe to the RSS feed! I decided to start things out by posting the first 21 pages. I’ll be adding a page a day, weekdays. (Not like there’s a story or anything, but it rhymes.)

Then it will become wildly popular. (Step 3: Profit!) Maybe I’ll be able to find a publisher, eh?

The only other really good idea I’ve had lately is … Bob, can we just show them the picture? [click to continue…]

You know me. I love ’em. The worse, the better.

Take the anti-same-sex-marriage stuff, for example. NRO has two perfect examples up right now: “The Future of Marriage”, signed by ‘the editors’. And Maggie Gallagher’s latest effort, “Married To Liberty?” [click to continue…]