One of the nice things about working at JPL is once in a while I get interesting stuff in my e-mail.
Interesting stuff like this image of Saturn taken by Cassini just as the spacecraft was crossing the plane of Saturn’s rings.

Prince Caspian is Jane’s favorite Narnia book, but
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is mine. I remember reading
it for the first time, sitting in a little blue folding chair on the back
porch. What’s odd is that I have no idea why I was sitting on the back
porch; it wasn’t a very pleasant place for sitting (it still isn’t), and
I don’t remember doing such a thing at any other time. Out on the front
patio, sure, but the back porch never.

But I digress.

I just finished reading it to my
two boys, and while I’m not sure how much of the ending they really got,
I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s one of those books that deepens each time
I read it. The boys, for their part, were considerably amused by the
Dufflepuds.

I’ve just uploaded a new version of Notebook to the Notebook Wiki.

I finished this book almost two weeks ago, and I’ve been sitting on it
instead of writing a review…mostly because I’m not sure what I think
about it. It’s an Amelia Peabody novel, but with a difference.
Heretofor, every book in the series has represented a chronological
advance. In this case, Peters has jumped back to the years prior to the
first World War–which is to say, back to those years when Ramses was
still stressing over whether to tell Nefret how he felt. Not a time
period I was with child to revisit.

And then, it’s a direct sequel to Peters’ homage to
H. Rider Haggard, the very odd
The Last Camel Died At Noon. It’s been about ten years, and
the Emersons and sundry go back to the Lost Oasis and the lands beyond.
There’s bluster, derring do, adventures, arch comments, surly villains,
and all manner of colorful atmosphere–all very promising.

But it takes a long time to get started. And though there were bad guys
galore, there was never any great sense of danger. And the denoument
seemed both too simple and a little contrived.

I dunno. I suspect Peters had fun writing it, and I found it mildly
entertaining, but she’s capable of better than this.

This is the morning of the second day of our re-plumbing job; we have no water in the kitchen or in the kids’ bathroom, but the master bathroom is complete. We’ve got bright clean copper pipes running into the house in place of the rotten old congested galvanized we used to have, which means that the water runs more smoothly and more quietly, and I’m betting more expansively as well, which is not entirely a good thing. But it made for a nice shower this morning.

Today they are going to get the kitchen hooked up, and then they can get our pantry put back together so we can move the cans and bottles and bags out of our livingroom.

…are greatly exaggerated.

But gosh, it has been a while since I last posted anything, so I figured I’d jot down a few notes about what’s been going on.

Mostly, what’s been going on is work. Two weeks ago, I finished up a project I’d been working on for about seven years. I started on it as one of the developers, and ended up managing the darn thing (there’s glory for you–I don’t think). Now it’s over, and I’m a manager no longer (for which God be thanked) and I’ve started on a new project altogether. I’ve actually been transitioning on to it for the last six weeks or so, but I’ve only really clicked into high gear during the last two weeks.

I don’t know how your job works, but in my job my backbrain does most of the heavy lifting. It grinds away at problems while I’m eating and sleeping and driving and so forth, and it presents me with solutions when I need them. And sometimes my backbrain gets so caught up in what it’s doing that there’s no capacity left over anything else creative. So I’ve been doing a lot of reading over the last two weeks, I’ve played a game or two, and written almost nothing.

This weekend is a bit of a respite; given that it’s a three-day weekend I made sure I didn’t start anything today that I couldn’t finish. Otherwise my backbrain would chew on it all weekend. My backbrain is rather like a large puppy when it’s working hard; it chews and chews and every so often it barks and says “Come play with me!” And it won’t quit! So I took pains to let it go to sleep toward the end of the afternoon.

It’s bound to be an interesting weekend anyway; we’re getting our house replumbed. It’d be a great weekend go to somewhere special, except of course for everyone else doing the same thing. We’ll see how it goes.

But I digress. (Or do I? It’s hard to say.) I should have some time to blog this afternoon, and in particular I’ve got a stack of books awaiting review which I hope to get to. So watch this space!

I am not a historian, not even an amateur historian. What I am is a reader, and since I was little what I’ve liked to read is tales of the odd, the strange, the exotic, the interesting. Science fiction; fantasy; mysteries; this should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read this blog for even a couple of weeks.

Quite a long while ago now, though well after I completed my formal schooling, it struck me that the past contained thousands of times and places which are as odd, strange, exotic, and interesting as anything in literature. You’d think that this would lead me straight to historical fiction; perhaps surprisingly, it didn’t. Instead, it led me to “popular history“–the real stuff, packaged up for the layman.

I went to the public library, and checked out a copy of the first volume of Will Durant’s Story of Civilization, Our Oriental Heritage. Durant takes a great deal of abuse these days; apparently his books are just chock full of errors and inaccuracies. I wouldn’t know. I was after the general picture.

I don’t remember whether it was The Life of Greece (Durant’s second volume) or Caesar and Christ (the third) that our golden retriever devoured while Jane and I were out one evening. I do know that we caught him in the act, and that he was never again foolish enough to set tooth to page. Jane went to the library to pay the fine; “The dog ate it,” she said. The librarian didn’t believe it until Jane opened the bag and showed her the remains.

Just about that time the Book-of-the-Month Club had a promotion in Smithsonian Magazine–they’d send you Durant’s complete series if you signed up. They’d been doing this for ages, but usually you had to promise to by four more books in the next year. That particular month, though, they waived the four book requirement. I jumped at it, got my set of books, and canceled my membership. (The requirement was back the next month, as it happens; clearly I wasn’t the only one to take advantage.)

After I tired of Durant (I gave up at the Enlightenment) I discovered Barbara Tuchman; I also read quite a bit about the Roman Empire. It was only after that that I discovered historical fiction–Patrick O’Brian, George MacDonald Fraser, Dorothy Dunnett. The former two led me to the history of the British Empire, and Fraser in particular to Central Asia and China. From there, my reading spread all over the place.

I owe it all to Durant and Tuchman; without them, or other writers like them, I’d never have gotten so far.

Kevin at Collected Miscellany has a nice post in reference to a snotty diatribe against “popular history” that appeared in Slate. Here’s what I had to say in the comments:

A good popular history can tell a story without becoming historical fiction; and telling history as a story is essential makes it much, much easier for the reader to build the conceptual framework on which more sophisticated reading depends.

For example, what point is there in reading an argument over what did or didn’t happen at the battle of Hattin if you don’t know that the battle of Hattin was a major defeat for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and and you don’t know that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established by the Crusaders, and you don’t know why the Crusaders were in the Middle East to begin with, and you don’t know anything about the rise of Islam or Christianity, or the later history of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, etc., etc.

Popular history helps you start building that skeleton, and gives you badly needed context. The little details may be inaccurate or “insufficiently nuanced”, but you’re not reading it for the little details; you’re reading it for the big ones.

Once you’ve got the broad sweep of things under your hat, then you can dig deeper into anything that interests you. But without that broad sweep you’re lost.

More to the point, while everyone would benefit from a general knowledge of history (and the republic not least) it’s absurd to think that the average citizen should act like a serious historical scholar. We have other things to be doing–and without those things, our culture wouldn’t be able to support the serious historical scholars we do have.

This is simply too cool for words.

The Mars Odyssey spacecraft is in orbit around Mars. The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft is in orbit around Mars. The two spacecraft are usually so close together (from the point of view of Earth) that they get tracked at the same time by the same DSN antenna–a relatively new capability, and one that was implemented precisely because of the number of spacecraft now in orbit around Mars.

So a few days ago, Mars Global Surveyor took a picture of Mars Odyssey–the first time one extraterrestrial orbiter has taken a picture of another. And here it is. In fact, there are two images of Mars Odyssey in the one picture, because of how MGS’ camera works and how the two spacecraft were moving. You can read about it on the picture page.

From the title, you’d think that this was a book about the “Great Game”
that I’ve mentioned several times over the last month or so–the
Anglo-Russian cold war of the 19th century. And it is, sort of, in an
alternate-history sort of way; but not really.

What it really is, is the story of our Harry Flashman caught smack in the
middle of the Sepoy Mutiny. The Mutiny was the watershed event in the
history of British India. Prior to the Mutiny, India was “ruled” by the
East India Company; after the Mutiny the British Government stepped in,
Queen Victoria became the Empress of India, and the classic Raj was born.

The Company had subdued the Indian subcontinent with a little scheming,
a little bribery, and the help of the Royal Army; but it had its own
armies as well, which but for a small corps of British officers were
composed entirely of native troops, both hindus and muslims. It was these
troops that mutinied, and horrible atrocities were committed upon British
men, women, and children all over India. These led to fierce reprisals
and counter atrocities, and eventually the Mutiny was put down.

The origins of the Mutiny are murky. There had been signs of unrest for
some months before the Mutiny began; indeed, these signs are the reason
Flashman is sent to India in the present book. Rumors had spread that
the British were going to require native troops to use gunpower
cartridges greased with cow or pig fat. This was untrue, but it was a
potent rumor nonetheless–anything related to pigs is anathema to
muslims, and cow fat was even more dangerous to devout hindus, as
touching it could break your caste.

Fraser works the Great Game in in two ways. First, the players of the
Great Game often traveled through Central Asia in native guise, and
though Flashman never gets anywhere near Central Asia in this particular
book (unlike Flashman at the Charge), he does spend
quite a bit of time in native guise. And second, Fraser feigns that the
Mutiny and related uprisings were fomented by Russia, and in particular
by the sinister Count Ignatiev, a Russian great-gamesman of note. And
that’s why I say this book is about the Great Game in an alternate-history
sort of way–it’s precisely the sort of thing the Russians would have done if
they could have. By this time they’d already launched a couple of
abortive strikes on India, never getting farther than Afghanistan, and in
each case their plans had included a native uprising which, with the help
of the Russian Army, would sweep the British out of India for ever.

But practically speaking, it’s not at all clear that the Russians were
involved in the run-up to actual event; and as for Count Ignatiev,
genuine historical figure that he is, I
believe he’s included in the current book mostly as a bogey-man for
Flashman, who had “met” him in Flashman at the Charge.

Anyway, this is a fascinating book, and worth reading…but I have to
admit, it’s not much fun–the Mutiny is just too grim a topic.