Monday, October 24, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A Cultural Thought Experiment
[ed. I had never heard of Charlie Stross until today, but this is quite an amazing essay. If you read it be sure to check out some of the links he provides.]
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Charlie Stross goes on a tear with "A cultural thought experiment," looking at what the wealth of the 1 percent means, what it can't buy them, and how it might be viewed from a future society.
via:
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Charlie Stross goes on a tear with "A cultural thought experiment," looking at what the wealth of the 1 percent means, what it can't buy them, and how it might be viewed from a future society.
The diminishing marginal utility law dictates that the more money we have, the less utility we get from any additional incremental gain. And this bites the top 1% very hard indeed.
Examine the world around us from the point of view of someone with a net income of $5M/year ...
Food is essentially free; you can afford to spend $1000 per meal, three meals a day, in the most expensive restaurants in London or Tokyo or Manhattan, and not make a dent in your income. (Oddly, even the hyper-rich don't typically spend $1000 on lunch every day: a more realistic expectation might be to dine out expensively twice a week, for $100K/year, and have the best of everything in-house the rest of the time, with a live-in chef, for another $100K/year.)
Clothing is essentially free; want a different $5000 suit for every day of the week? That's going to set you back only $35K! Spouse wants a dozen designer evening gowns a year? That's still going to be on the low side of $200K.
Housing is essentially free; $1000/day will rent you a penthouse suite in a five star hotel in Manhattan, while your mortgageable income will let you buy a palace in the $5-20M range. (There are places where you may need to spend more than $20M to buy a house; but not many of them.)
You don't have to do housework, interior decorating, cooking, driving, DIY home improvements, flight booking, or shopping (unless you want to). People can be hired to do any of the above for rates ranging from $15K to $100K per year, depending on the complexity of the job. And you earn $100K per week.A cultural thought experiment [antipope.org]
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[ed. Who doesn't love diatoms?]
Diatoms are a major group of algae, and are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although they can exist as colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons (e.g.Fragillaria), fans (e.g. Meridion), zigzags (e.g. Tabellaria), or stellate colonies (e.g. Asterionella). Diatoms are producers within the food chain. A characteristic feature of diatom cells is that they are encased within a unique cell wall made of silica (hydrated silicon dioxide) called a frustule. These frustules show a wide diversity in form, but usually consist of two asymmetrical sides with a split between them, hence the group name. Fossil evidence suggests that they originated during, or before, the early Jurassic Period. Diatom communities are a popular tool for monitoring environmental conditions, past and present, and are commonly used in studies of water quality… (read more: Wikipedia)
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Bailing Out the Complex
by Tom Engelhardt
Think of Iraq as the AIG of wars—the only difference being that the bailout there didn’t involve just three payouts. More than eight years after the Bush administration invaded that country, the bailout is, unbelievably enough, still going. Even as the U.S. military withdraws, the State Department is planning to spend billions more in taxpayer dollars to field an army of hired-gun contractors to replace it. Afghanistan? It could have been the Lehman Brothers of conflicts, but when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office he chose the Citigroup model instead, and surged troops in twice in 2009. In other words, he double-TARPed that war, and ever since, the bailout money has been flooding in.
Until now—as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations make clear—“too big to fail” has meant only one set of institutions: the plundering financial outfits that played such a role in driving the U.S. economy off a cliff in 2008, looked like they might themselves collapse in a heap of bad deals and indebtedness, and were bailed out by Washington. Isn’t it finally time to expand the too-big-to-fail category to include the Pentagon, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and more generally the National Security Complex?
There is, of course, one major difference between those bailed-out financial institutions and the Complex: however powerful the banks may be, however much money financial outfits and Wall Street sink into K-Street lobbyists and the election campaigns of politicians, however much influence the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may wield, when too-big-to-fail financial institutions totter, they have to come to the federal government hat (and future bonuses) in hand.
For the Pentagon and the National Security Complex, it’s quite another matter. These days it’s only a slight exaggeration to claim that they are Washington and that their very size, influence, and power protects them from the consequences of failure.
In the last decade, as “the troops” became sacrosanct, the secular equivalent of religious icons, they also helped ensure that no Congress could afford not to pour money into the Pentagon. (Pay no attention to the much-touted $450 billion that institution is expected to trim over the next ten years. That sum will largely come from “cuts” in future projected growth and anything more will be strongly resisted.) In that same decade—thanks largely to two hijacked planes that damaged New York beyond al Qaeda’s wildest dreams—“American safety” (narrowly defined as “from terrorists”) became the mantra of the moment. Soon enough, it was the explanation of choice for any expenditure: the latest drones, surveillance equipment, high-tech motion sensors, or peeping-Tom technology at airports.
“The troops” translated into a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Pentagon, and it worked like a charm. In the three years since the economy melted down, when so much that mattered to most Americans was being cut back or deep-sixed, that budget was still merrily expanding. In the meantime, there were those constant infusions of fear for “American safety,” helped along by terror plots generally too inept to do the slightest damage. All this ensured that an already massive crew of intelligence outfits would morph into a labyrinthine bureaucracy of stupefying proportions.
That same phrase fertilized the Department of Homeland Security, the homeland security state that went with it, and an immensely lucrative homeland-security-industrial complex that went with that—all growing at a remarkable clip.
Read more:
Think of Iraq as the AIG of wars—the only difference being that the bailout there didn’t involve just three payouts. More than eight years after the Bush administration invaded that country, the bailout is, unbelievably enough, still going. Even as the U.S. military withdraws, the State Department is planning to spend billions more in taxpayer dollars to field an army of hired-gun contractors to replace it. Afghanistan? It could have been the Lehman Brothers of conflicts, but when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office he chose the Citigroup model instead, and surged troops in twice in 2009. In other words, he double-TARPed that war, and ever since, the bailout money has been flooding in.
Until now—as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations make clear—“too big to fail” has meant only one set of institutions: the plundering financial outfits that played such a role in driving the U.S. economy off a cliff in 2008, looked like they might themselves collapse in a heap of bad deals and indebtedness, and were bailed out by Washington. Isn’t it finally time to expand the too-big-to-fail category to include the Pentagon, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and more generally the National Security Complex?There is, of course, one major difference between those bailed-out financial institutions and the Complex: however powerful the banks may be, however much money financial outfits and Wall Street sink into K-Street lobbyists and the election campaigns of politicians, however much influence the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may wield, when too-big-to-fail financial institutions totter, they have to come to the federal government hat (and future bonuses) in hand.
For the Pentagon and the National Security Complex, it’s quite another matter. These days it’s only a slight exaggeration to claim that they are Washington and that their very size, influence, and power protects them from the consequences of failure.
In the last decade, as “the troops” became sacrosanct, the secular equivalent of religious icons, they also helped ensure that no Congress could afford not to pour money into the Pentagon. (Pay no attention to the much-touted $450 billion that institution is expected to trim over the next ten years. That sum will largely come from “cuts” in future projected growth and anything more will be strongly resisted.) In that same decade—thanks largely to two hijacked planes that damaged New York beyond al Qaeda’s wildest dreams—“American safety” (narrowly defined as “from terrorists”) became the mantra of the moment. Soon enough, it was the explanation of choice for any expenditure: the latest drones, surveillance equipment, high-tech motion sensors, or peeping-Tom technology at airports.
“The troops” translated into a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Pentagon, and it worked like a charm. In the three years since the economy melted down, when so much that mattered to most Americans was being cut back or deep-sixed, that budget was still merrily expanding. In the meantime, there were those constant infusions of fear for “American safety,” helped along by terror plots generally too inept to do the slightest damage. All this ensured that an already massive crew of intelligence outfits would morph into a labyrinthine bureaucracy of stupefying proportions.
That same phrase fertilized the Department of Homeland Security, the homeland security state that went with it, and an immensely lucrative homeland-security-industrial complex that went with that—all growing at a remarkable clip.
Read more:
The Wild Ride of the 1%
[ed. It's not just the poor and middle class; the rich are suffering too, you know.]
by Robert Frank, WSJ
Jacqueline Siegel paces the floor of her unfinished 7,200-square-foot ballroom. The former beauty queen, with platinum-blond hair, blue eye shadow and a white minidress, clacks along the plywood construction boards in her high heels trailed by a small entourage of helpers and staff.
"This is the grand hall," she says, opening her arms to a space the size of a concert hall and surrounded by balconies. "It will fit 500 people comfortably, probably more. The problem with our place now is that when we have parties with, like, 400 people, it gets too crowded."
The Siegels' dream home, called "Versailles," after its French inspiration, is still a work in progress. Its steel-and-wood frame rises from the tropical suburbs of Orlando, Fla., like a skeleton from the Jurassic age of real estate. Ms. Siegel shows off the future bowling alley, indoor relaxing pools, five kitchens, 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms, two elevators, two movie theaters (one for kids and one for adults, each modeled after a French opera theater), 20-car garage and wine cellar built for 20,000 bottles.
At 90,000 square feet, the Siegels' Versailles is believed to be the largest private home in America. (The Vanderbilt family's Biltmore house in North Carolina is bigger at 135,000 square feet, but it's now a hotel and tourist attraction). The Siegels' home is so big that they bought 10 Segways to get around—one for each of their eight children.
After touring the house, Ms. Siegel walks out to the deck, with its Olympic-size pool, future rock grotto, three hot tubs and 80-foot waterfall overlooking Lake Butler. Her eyes well up with tears.
Versailles was supposed to be done by now. The Siegels were supposed to be living their dream life—throwing charity balls and getting spa treatments downstairs after a long flight on their Gulfstream. The home was the culmination of David Siegel's Horatio Alger story, from TV repairman to chief executive and owner of America's largest time-share company, Westgate Resorts, with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and $200 million in profits.
Yet today, Versailles sits half-finished and up for sale. The privately owned Westgate Resorts was battered by the 2008 credit crunch and real-estate crash. It had about $1 billion in debt—much of it co-signed by the Siegels.
The banks that had loans on Versailles gave the Siegels an ultimatum: Either pay off the loans or sell the house. So it's now on the market for $75 million, or $100 million if the buyer wants it finished.
As she stands on her deck in the Florida sun, Ms. Siegel wipes away her tears. "Maybe it will still work out," she says. "It always does, right?"
Read more:
by Robert Frank, WSJ
Jacqueline Siegel paces the floor of her unfinished 7,200-square-foot ballroom. The former beauty queen, with platinum-blond hair, blue eye shadow and a white minidress, clacks along the plywood construction boards in her high heels trailed by a small entourage of helpers and staff.
"This is the grand hall," she says, opening her arms to a space the size of a concert hall and surrounded by balconies. "It will fit 500 people comfortably, probably more. The problem with our place now is that when we have parties with, like, 400 people, it gets too crowded." The Siegels' dream home, called "Versailles," after its French inspiration, is still a work in progress. Its steel-and-wood frame rises from the tropical suburbs of Orlando, Fla., like a skeleton from the Jurassic age of real estate. Ms. Siegel shows off the future bowling alley, indoor relaxing pools, five kitchens, 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms, two elevators, two movie theaters (one for kids and one for adults, each modeled after a French opera theater), 20-car garage and wine cellar built for 20,000 bottles.
At 90,000 square feet, the Siegels' Versailles is believed to be the largest private home in America. (The Vanderbilt family's Biltmore house in North Carolina is bigger at 135,000 square feet, but it's now a hotel and tourist attraction). The Siegels' home is so big that they bought 10 Segways to get around—one for each of their eight children.
After touring the house, Ms. Siegel walks out to the deck, with its Olympic-size pool, future rock grotto, three hot tubs and 80-foot waterfall overlooking Lake Butler. Her eyes well up with tears.
Versailles was supposed to be done by now. The Siegels were supposed to be living their dream life—throwing charity balls and getting spa treatments downstairs after a long flight on their Gulfstream. The home was the culmination of David Siegel's Horatio Alger story, from TV repairman to chief executive and owner of America's largest time-share company, Westgate Resorts, with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and $200 million in profits.
Yet today, Versailles sits half-finished and up for sale. The privately owned Westgate Resorts was battered by the 2008 credit crunch and real-estate crash. It had about $1 billion in debt—much of it co-signed by the Siegels.
The banks that had loans on Versailles gave the Siegels an ultimatum: Either pay off the loans or sell the house. So it's now on the market for $75 million, or $100 million if the buyer wants it finished.
As she stands on her deck in the Florida sun, Ms. Siegel wipes away her tears. "Maybe it will still work out," she says. "It always does, right?"
Read more:
For the Perfect Martini, Wetter Is Better
by Rosie Schapp, NY Times
(...) I’ve spent more of my life in bars — on both sides — than I ought to admit. An ice-cold bottle of pilsner or a whiskey on the rocks can make me just as happy as a great cocktail, but my first column is an occasion to honor a classic. I take a pretty hard line on the martini. I prefer gin because, unlike vodka, which is valued for its neutrality, it’s packed with flavor. The taste we most strongly associate with gin is the juniper berry, which is reminiscent of pine and faintly citrusy. Beefeater, my favorite for a classic martini, also includes Seville orange peel, coriander seed and almond, among other ingredients. It’s assertive but beautifully balanced.
Still, drinking should be a pleasure, not a chore. If gin isn’t your poison, go with vodka. If you can’t imagine a martini without an olive, have an olive (I find the saltiness too much). But if you’ve never had a martini any way but bone dry, I implore you to give a wetter version a chance: vermouth — fortified wine flavored with botanicals — adds depth and imparts a spicy, subtly fruity quality. It’s what makes a martini a cocktail rather than just a chilled spirit.
Read more:
Photo: Victor Schrager for The New York Times. Prop stylist: Angharad Bailey
4 parts Beefeater gin
1 part Noilly Prat dry vermouth
1 small strip of lemon peel.
1. Fill a mixing glass with ice.
2. Pour in the gin and vermouth.
3. Stir for 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled coupe.
4. Twist the lemon peel over the drink, then place it on the coupe’s edge. The mildly adventurous can garnish with a fresh sage leaf instead.
Still, drinking should be a pleasure, not a chore. If gin isn’t your poison, go with vodka. If you can’t imagine a martini without an olive, have an olive (I find the saltiness too much). But if you’ve never had a martini any way but bone dry, I implore you to give a wetter version a chance: vermouth — fortified wine flavored with botanicals — adds depth and imparts a spicy, subtly fruity quality. It’s what makes a martini a cocktail rather than just a chilled spirit.
Read more:
Photo: Victor Schrager for The New York Times. Prop stylist: Angharad Bailey
4 parts Beefeater gin
1 part Noilly Prat dry vermouth
1 small strip of lemon peel.
1. Fill a mixing glass with ice.
2. Pour in the gin and vermouth.
3. Stir for 30 seconds, then strain into a chilled coupe.
4. Twist the lemon peel over the drink, then place it on the coupe’s edge. The mildly adventurous can garnish with a fresh sage leaf instead.
The Little State With a Big Mess
[ed. This is a story that will likely engulf many other states and municipalities soon, involving the legal validity of contractual obligations (and the potential suffering pensioners are likely to face) vs. political can-kicking over decades of budget and labor negotiations, unrealistic expectations for return on investments (8.25 percent?), and protection of bond holders at all costs.]
by Mary Williams Walsh, NY Times
On the night of Sept. 8, Gina M. Raimondo, a financier by trade, rolled up here with news no one wanted to hear: Rhode Island, she declared, was going broke.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But if current trends held, Ms. Raimondo warned, the Ocean State would soon look like Athens on the Narragansett: undersized and overextended. Its economy would wither. Jobs would vanish. The state would be hollowed out. (...)
After decades of drift, denial and inaction, Rhode Island’s $14.8 billion pension system is in crisis. Ten cents of every state tax dollar now goes to retired public workers. Before long, Ms. Raimondo has been cautioning in whistle-stops here and across the state, that figure will climb perilously toward 20 cents. But the scary thing is that no one really knows. The Providence Journal recently tried to count all the municipal pension plans outside the state system and stopped at 155, conceding that it might have missed some. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission is asking questions, including the big one: Are these numbers for real?
“We’re in the fight of our lives for the future of this state,” Ms. Raimondo said in a recent interview. And if the fight is lost? “Either the pension fund runs out of money or cities go bankrupt.”
All of this might seem small in the scheme of national affairs. After all, this is Little Rhody (population: 1,052,567). But the nightmare scenario is that Ms. Raimondo has seen the future of America, and it is Rhode Island. As Wall Street fixates on the financial disaster in Greece, a fiscal wreck is playing out right here. And the odds are that it won’t be the last. Before this is over, many Americans may be forced to rethink what government means at the state and local level.
Economists have talked endlessly about a financial reckoning for the United States, of a moment in the not-so-far-away when the nation’s profligate ways catch up with it. But for Rhode Island, that moment is now. The state has moved to safeguard its bond investors, to avoid being locked out of the credit markets. Last week, the General Assembly went into special session and proposed rolling back benefits for public employees, including those who have already retired. Whether the plan will succeed is anyone’s guess.
Read more:
Illustration: Tim Durning
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Facebook’s Gone Rogue
[ed. Pretty much sums up my reasons for dropping out of FB. After a while I couldn't keep up with all the 'enhancements' Facebook kept implementing. So, I decided the best way to accomplish what I wanted to do i.e. share things that I find interesting, was to start this blog. Now friends can stop by if they want to, and I don't have to plaster everybody's walls with posts. It's much better and I don't need to rely on an intermediary with an evolving and confusing agenda. Still, the Facebook experience is worthwhile, if only to better understand how social media functions these days.]
by Ryan Singel, Wired
Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed.
Facebook used to be a place to share photos and thoughts with friends and family and maybe play a few stupid games that let you pretend you were a mafia don or a homesteader. It became a very useful way to connect with your friends, long-lost friends and family members. Even if you didn’t really want to keep up with them.
Soon everybody — including your uncle Louie and that guy you hated from your last job — had a profile.
And Facebook realized it owned the network.
Then Facebook decided to turn “your” profile page into your identity online — figuring, rightly, that there’s money and power in being the place where people define themselves. But to do that, the folks at Facebook had to make sure that the information you give it was public.
So in December, with the help of newly hired Beltway privacy experts, it reneged on its privacy promises and made much of your profile information public by default. That includes the city that you live in, your name, your photo, the names of your friends and the causes you’ve signed onto.
This spring Facebook took that even further. All the items you list as things you like must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don’t want them linked and made public, then you don’t get them — though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.
This includes your music preferences, employment information, reading preferences, schools, etc. All the things that make up your profile. They all must be public — and linked to public pages for each of those bits of info — or you don’t get them at all. That’s hardly a choice, and the whole system is maddeningly complex.
Simultaneously, the company began shipping your profile information off pre-emptively to Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft — so that if you show up there while already logged into Facebook, the sites can “personalize” your experience when you show up. You can try to opt out after the fact, but you’ll need a master’s in Facebook bureaucracy to stop it permanently.
Care to write a status update to your friends? Facebook sets the default for those messages to be published to the entire internet through direct funnels to the net’s top search engines. You can use a dropdown field to restrict your publishing, but it’s seemingly too hard for Facebook to actually remember that’s what you do. (Google Buzz, for all the criticism it has taken, remembers your setting from your last post and uses that as the new default.)
Now, say you you write a public update, saying, “My boss had a crazy great idea for a new product!” Now, you might not know it, but there is a Facebook page for “My Crazy Boss” and because your post had all the right words, your post now shows up on that page. Include the words “FBI” or “CIA,” and you show up on the FBI or CIA page.
Then there’s the new Facebook “Like” button littering the internet. It’s a great idea, in theory — but it’s completely tied to your Facebook account, and you have no control over how it is used. (No, you can’t like something and not have it be totally public.)
Read more:
by Ryan Singel, Wired
Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed.
Facebook used to be a place to share photos and thoughts with friends and family and maybe play a few stupid games that let you pretend you were a mafia don or a homesteader. It became a very useful way to connect with your friends, long-lost friends and family members. Even if you didn’t really want to keep up with them.Soon everybody — including your uncle Louie and that guy you hated from your last job — had a profile.
And Facebook realized it owned the network.
Then Facebook decided to turn “your” profile page into your identity online — figuring, rightly, that there’s money and power in being the place where people define themselves. But to do that, the folks at Facebook had to make sure that the information you give it was public.
So in December, with the help of newly hired Beltway privacy experts, it reneged on its privacy promises and made much of your profile information public by default. That includes the city that you live in, your name, your photo, the names of your friends and the causes you’ve signed onto.
This spring Facebook took that even further. All the items you list as things you like must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don’t want them linked and made public, then you don’t get them — though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.
This includes your music preferences, employment information, reading preferences, schools, etc. All the things that make up your profile. They all must be public — and linked to public pages for each of those bits of info — or you don’t get them at all. That’s hardly a choice, and the whole system is maddeningly complex.
Simultaneously, the company began shipping your profile information off pre-emptively to Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft — so that if you show up there while already logged into Facebook, the sites can “personalize” your experience when you show up. You can try to opt out after the fact, but you’ll need a master’s in Facebook bureaucracy to stop it permanently.
Care to write a status update to your friends? Facebook sets the default for those messages to be published to the entire internet through direct funnels to the net’s top search engines. You can use a dropdown field to restrict your publishing, but it’s seemingly too hard for Facebook to actually remember that’s what you do. (Google Buzz, for all the criticism it has taken, remembers your setting from your last post and uses that as the new default.)
Now, say you you write a public update, saying, “My boss had a crazy great idea for a new product!” Now, you might not know it, but there is a Facebook page for “My Crazy Boss” and because your post had all the right words, your post now shows up on that page. Include the words “FBI” or “CIA,” and you show up on the FBI or CIA page.
Then there’s the new Facebook “Like” button littering the internet. It’s a great idea, in theory — but it’s completely tied to your Facebook account, and you have no control over how it is used. (No, you can’t like something and not have it be totally public.)
Read more:
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Waterboys
And I will stroll the merry way and jump the hedges first
And I will drink the clear clean water for to quench my thirst
And I shall watch the ferry-boats and they’ll get high
On a blue ocean, against tomorrow’s sky
And I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain
And I will never grow so old again
Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
My, my, my, my, my sweet thing
And I shall drive my chariot down your streets and cry
Hey, it’s me! I’m dynamite and I don’t know why
And you shall take me warm in your arms again
And I will not remember that I ever felt the pain
And I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain
And never ever ever ever ever get so old again
more:
The Road to Melville
Even though I hadn’t read a word of it, I grew up hating Moby-Dick. My father was an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh with a specialty in American maritime literature, and that big, battle-scarred book came to represent everything I resented about his job: all the hours he spent in his attic study, relentlessly reading and writing, more often than not with Moby-Dick spread out before him.
Sometimes he even dared talk about the novel, inevitably in an excited, reverential tone that only exasperated me all the more. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school, when my English teacher made it clear that I had no choice in the matter, that I finally read Moby-Dick . I soon found myself in the worst position an adolescent male can ever know: having to admit that maybe, just maybe, his father had been right all along.
The voice of Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, caught me completely by surprise. I had expected to be bored to death, but Ishmael sounded like the best friend I had not yet managed to find. Thirty-seven years later, after reading Moby-Dick cover to cover at least a dozen times, I still count Ishmael as a beloved soulmate and spiritual adviser. Not only is he funny, wise, and bighearted, he is the consummate survivor, for it is he and he alone who lives to tell about Ahab’s encounter with the White Whale. For me, Moby-Dick is more than the greatest American novel ever written; it is a metaphysical survival manual—the best guidebook there is for a literate man or woman facing an impenetrable unknown: the future of civilization in this storm-tossed 21st century. (...)
Melville’s intense imaginative engagement with these forces of turmoil and change meant that the novel he wrote and re-wrote over the course of a year beginning in September 1850 would be about much more than a whaling voyage to the Pacific. Indeed, contained in the pages of Moby-Dick is nothing less than the genetic code of America: all the promises, problems, conflicts, and ideals that had contributed to the outbreak of a revolution in 1775 and were about to precipitate a civil war in 1861, and that have continued to drive this country’s ever contentious march across 160 years, up through the current “war on terror.” This means that whenever a new crisis grips this country, Moby-Dick becomes newly important. It is why subsequent generations of readers have seen Ahab as Hitler during World War II or, closer to our own day, as a profit-mad, deep-drilling oil company in 2010, or as one of several power-crazed Middle Eastern dictators in 2011.
The irony is that when Moby-Dick was first published, in the fall of 1851, virtually no one, except for the author to whom the novel was dedicated, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his wife, Sophia, seems to have taken much notice. By the time of Melville’s death, in 1891, Moby-Dick had sold a grand total of 3,715 copies—a third of the total that his first novel, Typee, had sold. It wasn’t until after World War I that what had begun as a few belated plaudits became a virtual tidal wave of praise. There were still some naysayers (Joseph Conrad ridiculed Moby-Dick for its romantic, overblown prose), but the vast majority of writers who first encountered the book were stunned and deeply influenced by how Melville conveyed the specifics of a past world even as he communicated an unmatched sense of what it is like, in any age, to be alive. What Moby-Dick had needed, it turned out, was space—the distance required for its themes and images to resonate, unfettered by the passions that had inspired them. Once free of its own time, the novel was on its way to becoming the seemingly timeless source of meaning that it is today.
By Nathaniel Philbrick, Vanity Fair | Read more:
Illustration: Moby-Dick and Ahab, Claus Hoie, 1911- Norwegian/American
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