Blogs, Socials, Uncategorized

Are we all Ned Ludd now?

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When you do a web search for “Ned Ludd,” this is the only picture our computer overlords have to offer.

On Wednesday, my Close Personal Friend®, Gene Edward Veith, posted an article describing a recent report out of Microsoft Corporation, predicting which jobs are most threatened by Artificial Intelligence. Ed’s post is subscription only, but the report itself can be found here, if you care to read it. It includes the following list of endangered jobs, in order of endangerment:

  1. Interpreters and Translators
  2. Historians
  3. Passenger Attendants
  4. Sales Representatives of Services
  5. Writers and Authors
  6. Customer Service Representatives
  7. CNC Tool Programmers
  8. Telephone Operators
  9. Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
  10. Broadcast Announcers and Radio DJs
  11. Brokerage Clerks
  12. Photographers
  13. Technical Writers
  14. Tour Guides
  15. Copy Editors and Proofreaders
  16. Librarians
  17. Museum Technicians
  18. Archivists
  19. Event Planners
  20. Public Relations Specialists
  21. Marketing Coordinators
  22. Social Media Managers
  23. Conference Coordinators
  24. Advertising Sales Agents
  25. Travel Agents
  26. Court Reporters
  27. Paralegals
  28. Insurance Underwriters
  29. Claims Adjusters
  30. Survey Researchers
  31. Market Research Analysts
  32. Fundraisers
  33. Grant Writers
  34. Instructional Coordinators
  35. Human Resources Specialists
  36. Compensation and Benefits Analysts
  37. Training and Development Specialists
  38. Executive Assistants
  39. Office Managers
  40. Data Entry Keyers

This will be, of course, a troubling list for many people. For me, it’s already kind of old news, as I, in my old gig, translation, (Number One on the list), have already been “made redundant,” as the English say.

Nowadays I find myself in sympathy with the legendary Ned Ludd, an English weaver who supposedly broke up a “knitting frame” because the technology threatened his traditional job. (In fact, his legend seems to be older, going back to a boy who was disciplined for sloppy work and smashed the machinery in a fit of pique. Later on, when mechanization arrived, the people opposed to innovation were labeled “Luddites.”)

A better hero for us enemies of progress would probably be John Henry, the hero of the folk ballad, who raced a job-threatening steam drill and beat it, but worked himself to death in the effort. I remember that even as a boy I viewed John Henry as emblematic of something that was going on in the world – little did I guess how high the stakes would get in my own lifetime.

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Goofing, Music

‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’

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I have no real excuse for posting something fun and trivial tonight, except…

  • First of all, I don’t have a book finished for review;
  • Secondly, everything’s so sad today, and this clip amused me.

Above, a show-stopping number from the musical, “Kiss Me Kate.” The production, in its various manifestations, is a meta-narrative – a musical about a musical. It deals with a fictional musical production of a version of Shakespeare’s “The Taming Of the Shrew.” The producer and star is Fred Graham, played here by Howard Keel. The female lead is Lilli Vanessi, played by Kathryn Grayson. They are divorced, but still cherish suppressed feelings for one another, though each is now involved with someone else. Lilli’s guy is another actor in the play, who owes a large sum of money to a gangster, and has deviously signed Frank’s name to his IOU. The gangster sends two minions to collect from Frank; here they’re played by two of the great character actors of the 20th Century – Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore. Who knew they could dance like that?

(By the way, I have never seen “Kiss Me Kate” in any of its forms, and I get this information from the Wikipedia article. But I’ve long been familiar with the song.)

The lyrics are by Cole Porter, better than which you do not get.

The movie altered the plot somewhat from the stage version, so I don’t entirely understand what excuse they made for having the two goons encourage Frank with this number in the back alley. In the original play, they find themselves onstage alone before the audience, and improvise it.

Does quoting Shakespeare to women actually make a man interesting to them?

Not in my experience.

Music, Religion

Psalms on a day of sadness

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A dark day in Minneapolis. I used to live not far from where the atrocity happened. I could say a lot of bitter, partisan, thoughtless things, but best to keep my big mouth shut while people are grieving.

A friend alerted me to the clip above. I know nothing about Holy Groove, but it grabbed me right away. This (in my opinion) just works.

People who know me, know I don’t care much for contemporary Christian music. Based on how the controversy over CCM tends to run, I suppose they assume I don’t like new styles of music.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have no problem with guitars in the sanctuary. I have no problem with drums in the sanctuary. Saxophones and electronic synthesizers are cool as far as I’m concerned.

My objection is to bland, repetitive lyrics.

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I ever object to the Psalms. And the blues are so flexible that they adjust to the text with smoothness and elegance.

Maybe there’s comfort here for someone today…

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Ridge,’ by Michael Koryta

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At this point I’ll just cop to it – I’ve become a Michael Koryta junkie. I’m plowing through his books, one after the other, and when I run out I’ll probably have to check myself into a rehab center somewhere.

The Ridge is not my favorite of his books, but it kept me biting my nails. And Koryta’s great trademark – the head-fake, the illusionist’s trick of diverting the audience’s attention so they can be astonished when the rabbit (or, in this case, the cougar) emerges from the hat – is there in abundance. The wonderful thing about this artistic technique is that it increases verisimilitude (life is full of surprises like that) and offers plenty of opportunities for deeper, more complex characterization.

In the hills of eastern Kentucky an idealistic young couple has established a sanctuary for exotic cats. They are full of hopes and love for the animals, but they dislike their closest neighbor, a crazy old man who has built an actual lighthouse nearby, and keeps telling them this is a bad place for them to set up.

The same old man has been warning Deputy Sheriff Kevin Kimble about some weird danger that he can’t define. Kimble pays the old drunk little attention, but when the old hermit suddenly kills himself, Kimble finds a number of mysterious newspaper articles and photographs tacked up in his house. They all relate to accidents and murders that happened at , or to people who’d been at, the ridge. As he investigates, Kimble grows increasingly convinced that there is evil at work up there, and it’s his job to figure out how to fight forces not of this world.

The Ridge was a pretty complex story – perhaps a little too complex. It must have been a challenge to plot. But all the thrills were earned, and the the ending was dramatically satisfying. Think Dean Koontz, if you’re looking for a comparison.

Recommended. Cautions for grownup stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mean Business On North Ganson Street,’ by S. Craig Zahler

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Someone suggested I read an S. Craig Zahler novel, just to see what I thought of it.

So I went and bought Mean Business On North Ganson Street.

There are many good things I could say about this book. First of all, it’s well written. Author Zahler is a very good stylist. He turns out punchy, neo-hardboiled prose, with a razor edge: “The silver luxury car rolled past a street that was blocked off by an overturned pickup truck, which had been torn open like a zebra on the plain.” “The windshield wipers shoved powder across the glass, and through the opening, Bettinger saw Victory. Covered with snow and viewed from a distance, the city resembled a mildewed autopsy.”

Also, the characters are vivid and the plotting propulsive. This is very good writing.

But the reading experience provided? That’s a whole other thing.

Jules Bettinger is a police detective in Arizona. His record is good, but his customer service attitude isn’t, and he gets himself fired. His only option to stay on the job is a transfer to the city of Victory, Missouri, notorious for having the worst crime rate in the country.

When he gets there, he finds his fellow detectives brutal and probably corrupt. He observes clear violations of suspects’ rights. Then he learns more, and discovers why the cops are acting the way they are – in Victory, the situation has gone far beyond law enforcement. It’s now total war. When his own family gets pulled into the violence, Jules takes the gloves off and enters fully into the battle.

And that battle will lead from the better parts of Victory, which are merely blighted, to the worst parts, which are post-apocalyptic.

It’s a descent into Hell.

Reading Mean Business On North Ganson Street was an uncomfortable experience. Shocking, offensive, full of disillusionment. This is Nietzche’s world; the cops are just patrolling it.

I can’t really recommend the book, unless you have a taste for scenarios out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

I also thought the sex scenes were unnecessarily explicit.

I fear I am not going to be a S. Craig Zahler fan.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Fiction Throwdown: Can Chat GPT Tell a Better Short Story?

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Bestselling fantasy author Mark Lawrence asked three established fantasy authors to write 350-word short stories along with him and let his blog readers compare them to four similar stories produced by ChatGPT. He ran this experiment two years ago and concluded Team Human still had the edge. This year, not so much.

Read the eight stories here and keep your own tally on whether a story is written by AI or author and what rating you would give it out of five stars.

I read through them today and had hoped for better results at picking out the AI writing. I picked half of them correctly: two human written, two AI. I didn’t score the stories high in general, giving only one five stars and another four. Three I gave three stars. The remaining three earned twos and a one. It’s a little embarrassing to say my two high ranking stories were AI written. Two of the ones I disliked the most were manmade.

Jon Del Arroz, another fantasy author, reacts to the poll in this video.

Music, Religion

Friday hymn: ‘Built on a Rock the Church Shall Stand’

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Health update: I still feel lousy.

Tonight, another Scandinavian hymn. It was written by N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), a controversial Danish pastor who adjusted his theology several times over his career, but rarely lowered his voice. (I think he believed – wrongly – that the origin of the Creeds preceded the writing of the New Testament and therefore they had greater authority. My Haugean forebears always considered him a dangerous thinker.) He also had the delusion that the ancient Vikings were some kind of proto-Protestants, and invented the term “Asatru” (popular among reenactors today) for worshipers of the old gods. You may remember a mention of him in Catherine Marshall’s novel Christy, which praises his development of the Folk High School movement in Scandinavia – one of the roots, I believe, of modern alternative education systems.

His followers were known as “the Glad Danes,” while the Pietists were called “the Sad Danes.”

What we have here is a hymn I remember well from childhood (we may have suspected Grundtvig’s theology in my home church, but we were fine with his hymns): “Built on a Rock the Church Shall Stand.” The original Danish text says “The Church, It Is an Ancient House.”

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Prophet,’ by Michael Koryta

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There is no God.

You walk alone in the darkness.

To prove this, to imprint it in the mind so deeply that no alternative can so much as flicker, is the goal. This is power, pure as it comes….

The prophet’s goal is simple. When the final scream in the night comes, whoever issues it will be certain of one thing.

No one hears.

Reading fiction is an activity entailing many pleasures; among them is the constant possibility of discovering a truly wonderful book. I had that pleasure – in a big way – in reading Michael Koryta’s The Prophet. It’s a book that has a lot to do with football, and it hit me with the impact of a linebacker.

In 1989, brothers Adam and Kent Austin of Chalmers, Ohio were both on a winning high school football team in that football-obsessed part of the country. But Adam made a mistake on the night of their greatest victory, a mistake that destroyed their family. Today, Adam is a bail bondsman, still living in Chalmers, in the old family house. His brother Kent is the local football coach, a much-respected figure. He’s a devout Christian, and regularly leads Bible studies in a nearby prison.

The brothers almost never speak to one another.

When Adam now makes a second mistake, resulting in a young girl’s death, he is overwhelmed with guilt. He makes a promise to the girl’s mother – he will find the murderer, and he will not turn him over to the police. He will kill him.

Adam has no intention of letting this ugly business slop over into his brother’s life – but it does. It turns out that Kent was part of the plan from the beginning – innocently and unintentionally, but he and his family will be drawn inexorably into a drama scripted by the killer.

In a separate plot thread, we follow the progress of Kent’s high school football team, as they surmount one obstacle after another (not least survivor’s grief) to pursue a championship they’ve never won before. This theme provides a sort of harmonic counterpoint to the main plot, revealing character and illuminating the narrative.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel that impressed me as The Prophet did. (And I’m not even interested in football). In addition, the book surprised me though describing the struggles of a sincere, decent Christian – not in an evangelistic way, but honestly and with sympathy. This is something you don’t see often in mainstream literature.

I could go on and on. Drop whatever you’re doing and buy The Prophet. You’ll thank me.

Cautions for adult stuff.

Religion

An older brother ponders the Prodigal Son

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“Return of the Prodigal Son,” by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1668. Public domain.

No review tonight; I’m reading a book that’s taking me a while, but is very well worth the time. I’m looking forward to reviewing it, probably tomorrow.

My summer cold persists in my head. It’s not as bad as it was at its peak, but this sucker has settled in for the duration. Today I actually dug out the old leftover Covid test I still had laying around. Negative. This means little, of course, as the virus has probably mutated, and the test kit has probably passed its expiration date. Nevertheless, I choose to believe it. As far as I know, that plague passed over my house like the Angel of Death over the homes of the Israelites in Exodus.

So here I sit. Of what shall I write? One racks the brain and furrows the brow (or wrinkles a stamp and thoughtfully licks the brow, like the absent-minded character in one of Ogden Nash’s poems). What do I have an opinion on, which I can inflict on my readers?

How about something inspirational? The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke 15: 11-32.

I think that, even in our time, a lot of Americans are somewhat familiar with the story. A younger son persuades his father to give him the wealth he would have inherited right now, then grabs the proceeds and runs to a far country, where he lives large until the money runs out. He is then reduced to working as a swineherd (a particularly shameful job for a Jew), and finally reaches the point where he’s sufficiently broken to go home and beg forgiveness, offering to become a hired servant. His father receives him with joy, orders a feast prepared, and returns him to his former status as a son of the house.

That’s the story most people know. And it’s perfectly good as such. It’s often cited by evangelists, which is appropriate.

But a lot of people aren’t aware of the rest of the story – the behavior of the Older Brother. When I look at the context, I note that Jesus tells this parable directly to the Scribes and Pharisees, in response to their criticism of his socializing with disreputable social elements.
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Fiction, Reviews

‘Hard Count,’ by David Chill

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I’ve read and reviewed a few of David Chill’s Burnside (he’s one of those fictional detectives who apparently has no first name) novels in the past. I liked them okay, but had a few quibbles. Hard Count comes several volumes along in the series from the ones I’ve read before, and I thought the writing was better this time, so kudos to the author for learning his craft.

Burnside, our hero, is a former pro football prospect and a former cop, now a Los Angeles private eye. His private life has improved to the point where he has a live-in partner, who has a young son on whom he dotes. Gail, his partner, works in the City Attorney’s office and is running for the top job. Burnside’s not-entirely-shining past is not helping her campaign, so he’s trying to be on his best behavior.

But it’s difficult. An insurance company hires him to check out a murder attempt on one of their high-end clients, a former pro football star, now a restaurateur. Somebody took some potshots at the man in his back yard, while he was in his hot tub with his trophy wife. But the investigation gets pulled inevitably toward the insured guy’s son, a college football player who’s a hot prospect for the NFL draft, and who’s already living the celebrity life.

I found Hard Count a competently written PI story, mostly in the classical tradition. The modern shamus, of course, is more feminist and sensitive than Philip Marlowe was. Though politics were involved in this book, and we’re told that Burnside’s partner is a Democrat, there’s no real political slant here (indeed, it seemed as if they were living in another decade, when prosecutors in LA still believed in arresting people).

In the past I noted certain stylistic and grammar weaknesses in the Burnside books, but I do not see them now. Hard Count didn’t stand out from the crowd of competing detective series, but it made the cut.