The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz

0.2 Chris Hibbert The Great Divergence

Kenneth Pomeranz adds The Great Divergence to the growing list of books trying to shed some light on why the west has been so comparatively successful economically. His point of view is novel, and he does a good job of showing that there's something important missing from the other explanations: up to about the 1700s, the standard of living and growth trajectories of the economies of China, Japan, and India apparently were comparable to the economies of the strongest countries in western Europe.

That's not enough for Pomeranz, though; he wants to convince us that the important difference was Britain's access to coal deposits, and to the new world's agricultural productivity. Without coal, Pomeranz argues that Britain's technological growth would have been curtailed, and without access to the new world, Britain would have been subject to some kind of cross between a malthusian and a mercantilist disaster. Britain would have been unable to increase its agricultural productivity in order to free workers to move to the factories, and wouldn't have had a ready market for its growing manufactured goods.

The explanation falls short, however, since it doesn't seem likely that the east would have exploited these resources if they had discovered them. We need an explanation that starts a step earlier: why were the western countries racing to discover new markets and resources? Why were they poised to exploit foreign resources when they found them? Why were the asian countries so insular, and how long would it have taken for them to change if the western countries hadn't made contact first? It's possible that the lack of an external market would have slowed growth, but it seems likely that the technologocial growth path would have continued, albeit in some other direction. And the malthusian argument has lost most of its force. (See my previous post for agreement and disagrement.)

Even if you are interested in the argument, I don't recommend the book. Pomeranz goes into excrutiating detail to convince us that the eastern and western economies were comparable. I often found myself reading the third or fourth or tenth paragraph past any argument I could reconstruct trying to figure out why he was telling me how many calories peasants in some country had access to, or how many hours a day they had to work for a pair of pants. I'm really glad to see that someone has found access to a deep source of historical data about how ordinary people lived their lives in countries that haven't been described well in the history I've had access to. But Pomeranz is not the one to make it come alive. I needed more road signs as he was telling me all this so I could remember which economy he was talking about, and what part the details had to play in his larger argument.

And if you are interested in the argument, it looks like Brad DeLong is well tied into that community, and can both provide connections to the literature, and tell you which historians are onto a relevant lead. He has a detailed analysis of Pomeranz that simultaneously gives him more credit, and knocks down the argument that the New World is really the key.

Reviews

Population Growth still seen as a Liability

Tyler Cowen recommended an interview at the Richmond Fed of Robert Moffitt, a labor economist from Johns Hopkins. Most of the interview was about the surprisingly good (but unheralded) outcomes from welfare reform. Most of the interview was about the surprisingly good (but unheralded) outcomes from welfare reform. I was surprised to see Moffitt claim that the mainstream view (represented by the NAS) has moved to agreement with Julian Simon that population growth is actually beneficial in most cases:

RF: There are some who have argued that population growth will ultimately lead to severe social and economic problems. I'm thinking of people like Paul Ehrlich, for instance. And then there are others — Julian Simon probably being the most prominent example — who have argued that population growth has unambiguously positive effects. Let us assume that these two positions define the extreme positions of the debate. Which one do you find more consistent with the evidence?

Moffitt: Although I have done work on the economics of fertility, I have not done work on this specific question. However, I have followed the debate fairly closely. As far as I can tell, the best work on that issue can be found in a couple of volumes put out by the National Academy of Sciences that examined how population growth affects a whole host of issues, including the environment, health, per-capita income, and others. And when you look at the data, it's fairly hard to find major negative consequences of population growth. You can build models where this might be the case, but the empirical evidence seems fairly straightforward, and it is closer to Julian Simon's view than to Paul Ehrlich's.

I think that economists have generally been persuaded that population growth, on average, has positive effects — and so, too, have demographers, a group that used to include a pretty large number of population growth opponents. Also, I think most people would agree that we do not face a "population bomb" except, possibly, in Africa, and AIDS has changed things rather dramatically there. Quite the opposite: In many developed countries, population growth is now below the replacement rate.

So I went off to find the NAS studies Moffitt referred to. I was disappointed to find mostly articles reiterating scientists' concerns about the effects of population growth. Joint Statement by fifty-eight of the World's Scientific Academies:

Representatives of national academies of science from throughout the world met in New Delhi, India, from October 24-27, 1993, in a "Science Summit" on World Population. The conference grew out of two earlier meetings, one of the Royal Society of London and the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the other and international conference organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Statements published by both groups expressed a sense of urgent concern about the expansion of the world's population and concluded that if current predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human activity of the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent irreversible degradation of the natural environment and continued poverty for much of the world.

And later: The Earth Is Finite

The growth of population over the last half century was for a time matched by similar world-wide increases in utilizable resources. However, in the last decade food production from both land and sea has declined relative population growth. The area of agricultural land has shrunk, both through soil erosion and reduced possibilities of irrigation. The availability of water is already a constraint in some countries. These are warnings that the earth is finite, and that natural systems are being pushed ever closer to their limits.

The first pages of Google hits include a couple of copies of a 1997 Joint Statement by NAS and the Royal Society of London whose first paragraph ends with this:

It has often been assumed that population growth is the dominant problem we face. But what matters is not only the present and future number of people in the world, but also how poor or affluent they are, how much natural resource they utilize, and how much pollution and waste they generate. We must tackle population and consumption together.

Summary: Without evidence, many believe that population growth is a problem, but it's not the biggest part of the problem. Population growth remains a problem to be addressed.

The National Academies Press ties teaching about Population Growth to evolution (which it is trying to teach in a science based way). The main messages concern limits to growth and carrying capacity. Population growth is exponential. Living organisms have the capacity to produce populations of arbitrarily large size, but environments and resources are finite. No mention of the effects of increasing population on standards of living or development of new technology.

Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society) 1991: This forum concluded that global trends in population growth and environmental degradation are on an unsustainable course, but it's not too late to change direction.

Admittedly most of these references are 5-10 years old, but google couldn't find anything more recent, even when directed to the NAS site. Bottom line: I couldn't find any evidence to support Moffitt's claim. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

Reviews

RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone

0.2 Chris Hibbert RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone

RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone feels like a juvenile, in the sense of Heinlein's Juveniles, but that's mostly because the viewpoint character is a rebellious teenager. Jeremy wants to be a rock star, sculpting visual images for the audience while his favorite band sings about freedom. The major obstacle is that he lives in a repressive surveillance society that monitors people's movements, and controls what they buy, read, view, and ingest. Every facet of his life is monitored and controlled by one repressive bureaucracy or another.

In the style of all such juveniles, the band and all records of their existance disappear from sight, so Jeremy has to escape from his home town and undergo a harrowing journey in order to track them down. Along the way, he adopts a dog, and has the requisite eye-opening adventures in the big city. He joins up with the revolution, finds the band, and stares down some government goons, and joins the band.

I describe the book as formulaic, but Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman carry it all off quite well. Jeremy is quite sympathetic, and he does visibly mature through the story. The government is a lot scarier than anything that we've yet seen in America, but all their attitudes and prohibitions are straightforward extrapolations of current governments. As with Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, the point is that what enables the abuse is unprotesting acceptance by the populace.

RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone ends with Jeremy having a personal happy ending, able to live underground, having achieved his dream of joining the band, and (possibly) having gotten the girl. But nothing has really changed for the larger society. This is the one weak point of an otherwise strong candidate for this year's Prometheus award. Oh, and I prefer positive visions to dystopias when I'm voting, but dystopias aren't disqualified by any means.

Footnote: a couple of people suggested not listening to the CD before reading the book, since the clash with their musical tastes spoiled the effect for them. There are two cuts on the CD, representing "heavy metal" and "classic rock" versions of the song "Rebelfire". I didn't mind the classic rock version, and have added it to my iPod. Listening to it first wouldn't have spoiled anything for me. Caveat Auditor.

Filed in:

• Reviews
• Prometheus Nominee

Rocket Racing League

It sounds like science fiction, and I haven't read about it in the newspaper or any of the blogs I read regularly, but the BBC and several other media outlets are reporting on it, so it must be true. Peter Diamandis, the money behind the X-prize, which encouraged more than a half dozen teams to work on development of vehicles that could safely and repeatedly reach the edge of space, has announced the next step in private space development. He's starting the Rocket Racing League, a race series that will bring exciting competitive rocket races to airports around the country and eventually around the world.

They had a public demonstration at the X Prize Cup and Personal Spaceflight Expo in Las Cruces at the beginning of October, and later in the month showcased a test flight of the EZ-Rocket:

October 21, 2005 - The Rocket Racing League™, announced the successful completion of a detailed performance flight test research program for the EZ-Rocket rocket plane culminating in two exciting and aggressive public demonstration flights. The EZ-Rocket, precursor to the X-Racer™ now under development, made three flights out of Las Cruces, NM at the 2005 X PRIZE Cup events, two of these on the same day. The flights included three successful engine relights during flight and a maximum altitude reached of 8,756 feet. This accomplishment is a significant milestone for the vehicle and for the Rocket Racing League.

The point (obviously?) is to get people excited about space development. The league will fund develpment and production of ten initial rockets. The first few should be able to start racing in 2006, and the full fleet should be going in 2007. Diamandis hopes that other groups will develop their own rockets and enter them in the series. The rockets will be operated by independent companies, and will compete for a final cup annually in New Mexico.

I think these guys have the right idea. It will only take a few billionaires to put enough money into developing visible civilian applications of space to move development forward far enough that space development will be commercially viable. And making it sexy and exciting, and apparently dangerous will attract attention. The Rocket Races will look edge-of-your-seat scary, but if they can keep it actually safe, people will be happy to take trips to space, and spend time in space hotels.

And that'll lead to enough serious development that more commercial applications will become affordable, and other uses will drive development of yet more vehicles and technology.

Filed in: Space

Lincoln's Dreams, by Connie Willis

0.2 Chris Hibbert Lincoln's Dreams

Lincoln's Dreams, by Connie Willis, is a well-constructed story, with multiple levels of parallel meaning on display simultaneously. It reminds me strongly of one of my Dad's photos of leaves floating on the surface of a pond, with the trees reflecting off the surface in some places, and the rocks on the bottom showing through in others. Jeff Johnston does research for Broun, a writer of civil war novels, whose current project has gotten him involved in the dreams Lincoln suffered from after losing his son. Annie, a beautiful young woman who has been having nightmares full of civil war imagery comes hoping for an explanation from Broun after not getting help from a sleep clinic. Jeff takes her under his wing after recognizing a few of the particular battles that appear symbolicly in her dreams.

Willis weaves together the draft of Broun's latest civil war novel, snippets of history that Jeff and Annie find while clarifying the images in the dreams and chasing down leads for Broun, and Jeff and Annie's disturbing trips to the Virginia battlefield memorials that confirm that the dreams are rooted in history. The pair come to trust and care about each other as they slowly uncover the clues that may have mortal consequences in the present, while the civil war soldiers in the draft novel simultaneously cross and re-cross the same battlefields looking for their units or waiting for the next skirmish.

The whole thing was made just a little more resonant for me because I read the book while on a quick trip to Virginia. I was driving my own circles daily between Alexandria (where I was staying with my sister) and the Arlington and Fairfax campuses where the George Mason economists I'm working with have their offices and run their experiments. I've spent enough time in the area that the occasional memorial sign I drove past reinforced the familiarity of all the infamous battlefields the characters visited awake, asleep, and fictional within the story.

Filed in: Reviews

New propulsion form for tiny creatures

Science News reports that some MIT mathematicians videotaped tiny water-walking insects using surface tension to draw themselves toward the edges of water surfaces without moving their legs.

For the same reason that cereal clumps together in a bowl full of milk, or bubbles gather at the edges of a drink, surface tension pulls together deformations on the surface of any liquid. The insects stop walking when they near an edge (where the sloping meniscus can create a hill they'd be unable to climb) and instead take a posture that deforms the surface, drawing them toward the nearest edge. The article concludes by saying

The new results and related research may have important applications not only for understanding biolocomotion but also potentially in nanotechnology.

Filed in: Nanotech

Accelerando, by Charles Stross

0.2 Chris Hibbert Accelerando

Charlie Stross has been hanging around the extropians email lists and it shows. His latest book, Accelerando, (like his earlier book Singularity Sky) is replete with matrioshka brains, characters who live out at least portions of their lives in simulations, people who fork their identities across multiple bodies or software agents and reintegrate the separated memory streams, planet terraforming, and AIs with undiscernible motivations. He weaves it all together into a rousing tale.

The apparent popularity of the novel (the short stories that comprise the sequential vignettes of Accelerando were nominated for quite a few awards) makes me think there's a chance that all the inside references and barely expanded concepts might be familiar enough to most SF readers. To me, it read as a novelization of the best years of the extropians list. All the things that people worried about and all the possible scenarios that people worked through in great detail are visible in at least passing views in the final fleshed-out forms they reached on the list. If the concepts he relies on aren't too SL4 for most readers, it should do quite well, because it's a fun read.

The first part ("Lobster", "Troubadour", and "Tourist") follows the adventures of the peripatetic Manfred Macx as he flits around the world economy, inventing wildly and giving away his patents to deserving charities, or whatever custodian will most piss off his various creditors. In later chapters, the various members of his household and its progeny scatter to the distant corners of the universe along with the rest of expansive humanity. Macx's is not a nuclear family in the conventional sense, so the splintered factions head off in many directions and several combinations, which enables them to be present as humanity and post-humanity inhabit near-earth space, explore farther out, begin turning most of the solar system into computronium, and become less and less recognizable. Necessarily, the story mostly follows characters who have opted to remain more or less human, though, as in Marc Stiegler's Gentle Seduction, the gradual changes accumulate rapidly.

The book is nominated for the Prometheus award, but any libertarianism it displays is subtle enough that some on the nominating committee, while admitting that it's a good read, have whether it deserves a place as a finalist. The book has an air of freedom, and I'd like to argue that, though the libertarianism isn't front-and-center, the book presents a society that works without any central government, and that shows its characters and political factions getting along without resorting to governmental force.

In the first three chapters, we see a fair amount of commerce and crime, and most of the enforcement is privatized, or limited to (threatened) court enforcement of contractual terms. The subplot in which Manfred frees the music is about changing the rules for ownership of property, which some may see as akin to theft, but it seems to me that it's a sensible exploration of alternative choices. If technology makes the old schemes unenforceable, ceding increasing amounts of force to the state (or to property owners) in order to maintain rights that have always been inventions of the state in any case (patent, copyright, trademark) is probably the wrong approach from a libertarian point of view.

Chapter 4 ("Halo", ") starts out with Manfred's daughter, Amber, escaping the clutches of her mother by emigrating to the asteroid belt. She ends up the head of a voluntary justice association that people subscribe to because it's better situated to their problems. The characters refer back to this period throughout the rest of the story, and it's clear that it serves as a reminder that voluntary arrangements work better.

The story ends with a transhuman superintelligence (the cat, Aineko) needing something from Manfred, and having to negotiate with him to get it. It's clear from the power arrangements that Aineko is used to manipulating events so people want to help her, but in this case, she needs a willing assistant, so she offers Manfred something he's wanted all along: to be left alone to live his own life. It seems plenty libertarian to me.

Filed in: Reviews

Mandelbrot: The (mis)Behavior of Markets

Benoit Mandelbrot's latest book is on finance, which is apparently where he started. The book's argument is that markets are less well-behaved than we've been led to believe by the standard financial theories. And by this he means that the "Random Walk" approach, even as it tries to tell us that we can improve our returns by reducing our risk profile, is leaving us open to crashes that happen far more often than the standard theory says. The book presents a pretty convincing case that fractals (what else were you expecting?) are a better model for the behavior of markets than the normal distribution and its bell curve. If market behavior is fractal, then large upswings and large downturns happen much more frequently than you would expect from a normal distribution.

I expected the book to include some hint of how to structure an investment profile for those who bought the basic argument, but that was completely missing. There were hints that major investment firms can find ways to take advantage of Mandelbrot's claim that good and bad events come in bunches, but no indication of how an individual investor with a modest portfolio could do the same, or even where an individual should look for shelter from wild events once you are convinced that they are more frequent than the standard theories say. Modern Portfolio Theory, even while cautioning individual investors that the market is unpredictable, tells you how to allocate your funds to weather the storms.

To some extent, I read the theory as telling us that wild ups and downs are common enough that the gambler's ruin will overtake you much sooner than you would expect even though markets generally trend up, and you can arbitrage away a fair amount of risk by spreading out your bets. If the fractal argument is correct, you need three or four times as many (uncorrelated) stocks in your portfolio in order to average out the expected downturns that can wipe you out. Since the standard model suggests 10 to 30 stocks, the numbers quickly get prohibitive for individual investors to do anything other than invest in diversified mutual funds.

I'm happy to say that this lack of direction doesn't bug me as much this year as it would have a year or two ago. I'm moving most of my investments out of mutual funds and into investment real estate. It does take a fair amount of time to learn how to find, evaluate, and manage properties, but my current belief is that the returns will be better, and that volatility is much lower in real estate than in stocks or mutual funds. But that's not the subject of this review.

If your investments are in the stock market, even if they are in diversified mutual funds, even if they are in broad-based index funds, you should read and understand Mandelbrot's argument. The bottom line is that modern portfolio theory's recommendation to diversify and rebalance regularly is more important than ever.

Filed in: Reviews

Spirochete Genes are Everywhere!

Edge's John Brockman likes to ask provocative questions. At the beginning of this year, he asked "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" He got many interesting answers from many interesting people, but two were good enough that I edited them down to be short enough to use in my signature line. The precis for Lynn Margulis' answer looked like this in my signature:

All sensory cells [in all animals] have in common the presence of
... cilia [with a constant] structure.  It provides a strong
argument for common ancestry.  The common ancestor ... was a
spirochete bacterium. 
  --Lynn Margulis (http://edge.org/q2005/q05_7.html#margulis) 

The blog gives me the opportunity to quote the whole thing where a few more people might read it. Margulis wrote:

Our ability to perceive signals in the environment evolved directly from our bacterial ancestors. That is, we, like all other mammals including our apish brothers detect odors, distinguish tastes, hear bird song and drum beats and we too feel the vibrations of the drums. With our eyes closed we detect the light of the rising sun. These abilities to sense our surroundings are a heritage that preceded the evolution of all primates, all vertebrate animals, indeed all animals. Such sensitivities to wafting plant scents, tasty salted mixtures, police cruiser sirens, loving touches and star light register because of our "sensory cells".

These avant guard cells of the nasal passages, the taste buds, the inner ear, the touch receptors in the skin and the retinal rods and cones all have in common the presence at their tips of projections ("cell processes") called cilia. Cilia have a recognizable fine structure. With a very high power ("electron") microscope a precise array of protein tubules, nine, exactly nine pairs of tubules are arranged in a circular array and two singlet tubules are in the center of this array. All sensory cells have this common feature whether in the light-sensitive retina of the eye or the balance-sensitive semicircular canals of the inner ear. Cross-section slices of the tails of human, mouse and even insect (fruit-fly) sperm all share this same instantly recognizable structure too. Why this peculiar pattern? No one knows for sure but it provides the evolutionist with a strong argument for common ancestry. The size (diameter) of the circle (0.25 micrometers) and of the constituent tubules (0.024 micrometers) aligned in the circle is identical in the touch receptors of the human finger and the taste buds of the elephant.

What do I feel that I know, what Oscar Wilde said (that "even true things can be proved")?

Not only that the sensory cilia derive from these exact 9-fold symmetrical structures in protists such as the "waving feet" of the paramecium or the tail of the vaginal-itch protist called Trichomonas vaginalis. Indeed, all biologists agree with the claim that sperm tails and all these forms of sensory cilia share a common ancestry.

But I go much farther. I think the the common ancestor of the cilium, but not the rest of the cell, was a free-swimming entity, a skinny snake-like bacterium that, 1500 million years ago squiggled through muds in a frantic search for food. Attracted by some smells and repelled by others the bacteria, by themselves, already enjoyed a repertoire of sensory abilities that remain with their descendants to this day. In fact, this bacterial ancestor of the cilium never went extinct, rather some of its descendants are uncomfortably close to us today. This hypothetical bacterium, ancestor to all the cilia, was no ordinary rod-shaped little dot.

No, this bacterium who still has many live relatives, entered into symbiotic partnerships with other very different kinds of bacteria. Together this two component partnership swam and stuck together both persisted. What kind of bacterium became an attached symbiont that impelled its partner forward? None other than a squirming spirochete bacterium.

The spirochete group of bacteria includes many harmless mud-dwellers but it also contains a few scary freaks: the treponeme of syphilis and the borrelias of Lyme disease. We animals got our exquisite ability to sense our surroundings—to tell light from dark, noise from silence, motion from stillness and fresh water from brackish brine—from a kind of bacterium whose relatives we despise. Cilia were once free-agents but they became an integral part of all animal cells. Even though the concept that cilia evolved from spirochetes has not been proved I think it is true. Not only is it true but, given the powerfulnew techniques of molecular biology I think the hypothesis will be conclusively proved. In the not-too-distant future people will wonder why so many scientists were so against my idea for so long!

Filed in:

• Evolution
• BigIdeas

Cell Phones and Economic Growth

There was an article in the Sunday New York Times on the rapid expansion of cell phone use in Africa. (Thanks to Norm Hardy for the pointer.) Many people have commented on the implications of cell phones vs. land lines in developing countries, but a new implication struck me on reading this one.

The general background is that in many developing countries, it's easier to install the infrastructure for cell phones than for land lines. No copper wires required, just occasional cell towers. That makes a huge difference when the consumer uptake at the beginning will be sparse, and will grow over time. Many things make installing the copper wires problematic, including political instability, lack of property rights (whose permission do you need in order to put up a line of phone poles or to dig a trench?), spotty infrastructure (roads, for instance) as well as the overall expense.

Norm commented on the possible applications for micro-currencies (think DSR) based on the fact that the phones have the ability to transfer prepaid air minutes phone-to-phone. But what I saw was a rapid ramp on person to person commerce that can grease the wheels to growing trade at the grass roots level. For many years, I have been contributing to Trickle Up, a charity (like Grameen Bank) that makes microfinance loans to the poorest of the poor all over the world. The promise of these organizations is that they give people a chance to start a business, which gives them money to send their children to school, or patronize other tiny local businesses, which ought to be able to kick a tiny local economy in may places.

The NYT article mentions one particular case where access to cell phones improves the prospects for very small scale entrepreneurs: fishermen who are able to choose the best market for their catch before heading to a particular port. It's easy to imagine that coordination on that scale: choosing markets, deciding what to harvest or when, taking orders for build-to-suit could help many small businesses to run more efficiently, which would make it more attractive to operate a business, and could inject more money into a local economy, providing an opportunity for organic local growth.

According to the article, cell phone use is exploding even more than the (presumably optimistic) providers' projections indicated. They calibrated their estimates according to official GDP numbers, not realizing that cell phones would make an even bigger difference in the heretofore informal economy, which the official numbers don't include.

Filed in: Technology

Catalogues I Regularly Read

I thought I'd mention two catalogues that I actually read cover-to-cover whenever they arrive. I get plenty of catalogues that I file for when I need something (Mac stuff, cameras, fruit and nuts, hot sauces), and several that I throw away without opening. These two have a high enough hit rate that I actually page through the whole thing seeing what's interesting and new. I'm not going to mention things like Laissez Faire Books that everyone already knows about.

One is Levenger, "Tools for Serious Readers". They have furniture, innovative office supplies, stationary, carrying cases and more. I've probably purchased things from them a dozen times. Before the era of the Palm, I used their note cards and carrying case for my calendar, contact list, todos, etc. They have wonderful variations on paperclips, papercutters, and notepads that are the perfect answer to many minor problems. Their bags are well-designed (need a computer carrying case?), they have great side tables for books, as well as lap desks to make working in an easy chair more comfortable. They spend too many pages on fancy fountain pens, but their reading lights can't be matched in any of the lighting stores I've looked in over the years.

The other catalogue I read is Daedalus Books. They sell remainders, and seem to have good taste. I regularly find interesting history, science, occasionally science fiction, and general non-fiction. For many years, I carefully read all the pages of children's books looking for good new stuff to read to the nieces and nephews, but they're mostly past that age at this point. A few years ago, Ted Kaehler mentioned that he'd been reading a lot about the history of espionage in WW II, and I found that Daedalus had one or two of those most months, so I've been reading them as well.

When you know what you're looking for, searching on-line works well enough, but when you want someone to recommend things that you hadn't realized you needed, there's still no substitute for a paper catalogue. I can do a much more thorough job of perusing the pages of Daedalus than any book store or library I've ever been in, and I don't know of any stores that can change their inventory every month, or have as high a hit rate as Levenger.

Joss Whedon's Serenity

0.2 Chris Hibbert Serenity

We went to see Serenity last night with some friends. Half of the group had seen all the episodes of the TV show from the DVDs, and half hadn't seen any. (I'm in the latter group.) All of us were familiar with Joss Whedon's work from Buffy and Angel. Everyone enjoyed the movie, so if anyone was worried that the movie might not have been able to reach those who hadn't seen the TV show, this may be a relevant datapoint. Of course, all of us are libertarian or somewhat libertarian, so that may skew the sample some.

What a good movie! I thought the story was very well told. Joss included enough information to catch us all up with the characters and the milieu, and the action came fast and furious. The characters were well motivated; we were quickly shown who had a crush on whom, which characters had long standing friendships, and so on. The conflict was interesting, the antagonists were powerful, but beatable, and there were plenty of mysteries to solve.

I'm not going to try to do an in-depth review of the themes and subtexts. There are people who are far more into this than I, and I'm sure there were subtleties in the interactions between characters that weren't apparent from the movie. But it was still fun to watch, and the themes that Julian Sanchez Reason described were apparent even though I wasn't already immersed in the canon. River Tam voices the laissez-faire creed in the movie's preface: "People don't like to be meddled with." It's clear that that's the conflict right from the start, and keeping out of the way of a meddlesome government is Mal's goal. When he finds out that he's gotten hold of something with deeper implications, he struggles with it, but finds that the only way to live with himself is to do what he can to ensure that the alliance won't continue meddling.

Filed in: Reviews