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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4489 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 5, 2023

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So, what are you reading?

I'm flipping through Simmel's The Philosophy of Money. The only thing I know about Simmel is that he wrote an influential paper on secrecy and secret societies. The book's a tome, and quite dense, but I've been looking for a while now for an economics-related tome that actually clicks. Perhaps this will be it.

Conor Cruise O'Brien's States of Ireland (I might have mentioned this book in response before, it's a short book but I took a break and got distracted).

It was first published in 1972, just as the Troubles were getting out of hand, and while it therefore lacks hindsight on some things the foreword shows such a good grasp on the fundamental issues that I'm expecting it to be very good (and I haven't been disappointed by the first few chapters). O'Brien was an Irish Labour politician and as far as I can tell also a Marxist, but so far that hasn't lead him to saying anything I disagree with. He criticises Marxist analysts for ignoring the role religion and ethnicity play in the conflict and he even picks apart socialist and hero of the 1916 Rising James Connolly's Labour in Irish History for being unacceptably vague on where the Protestant worker who rejected Irish nationalism stood in his analysis of class conflict (Connolly disappointed many contemporary Marxists by becoming more nationalist as time went on). Though O'Brien would later become a unionist, it's obvious that in this book he fits comfortably in neither the nationalist nor unionist camp. Neither side would be entirely happy with this summary of the situation in the foreword but I think it's a very perceptive one:

Specifically: The population of Northern Ireland consists of about two-thirds Protestants to one-third Catholics. But Protestant fear and suspicion of Catholics in Northern Ireland do not correspond to these proportions, but to the proportions between Catholic and Protestant in the entire island of Ireland, in which Protestants are outnumbered by Catholics by more than three to one. And Catholics in Northern Ireland are also strongly conscious of this proportion, and of rights which they believe it to imply.

Also: The manner in which the island is divided - with the "Protestant' area of Northern Ireland including cities, towns and counties with Catholic majorities, while the 'Catholic' republic includes no city, town or county with a Protestant majority - does not reflect a 'natural' balance between the communities that make up the population of Ireland; it reflects the different historical relations between these communities and the people of Great Britain. The British Government of 1920 did not create – nor does the British Government today artificially preserve – the relations between the two communities in Ireland which resulted in the partition of the island, but when partition became inevitable, the British Government of 1920 ensured that the benefits of all doubts went to one community: the Protestant community descended from settlers from Britain.

Oddly enough he spends a few chapters analysing the history of Ireland through his own family history, but given that his was an influential family and he himself had some influence on the later development of the situation (as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs he was responsible for banning spokespersons for Sinn Féin from appearing on the national broadcaster RTÉ) this doesn't seem out of place. I read this excerpt a few weeks ago and it struck me today as something worth going back to, in one short account from one person's family history nearly all of the conflicting loyalties of early 20th century Ireland are touched upon:

Tom Kettle came back to Dublin, on leave from the Western front, in the early summer of 1916. He went to the house of his sister-in-law, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, where his daughter Betty was playing with her cousin Owen. When the children saw him coming they ran away. He was in uniform.

Men in that same uniform had ransacked that house in April. They had been looking – unsuccessfully – for evidence, which could be used to justify the murder by firing-squad in Portobello Barracks, Dublin, of Tom Kettle's brother-in-law Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Skeffington, as a pacifist, and also as a socialist and a nationalist, had opposed the war, and his anti-recruiting activities had naturally made him unpopular with the military authorities. He was picked up as a hostage and then shot on the orders of an officer named Bowen-Colthurst. He had earlier witnessed a murder committed by the same officer, and had said he would denounce the murder. Bowen-Colthurst was found 'guilty but insane', and released after some months in Broadmoor. Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington went to America, to tell the story of her husband's death, and to rouse Irish-American opinion against America's entry into the war as England's ally. . . The men who, like Redmond and Kettle, had favoured 'fighting for England' began to look like traitors, or at best dupes. Tom Kettle was killed at Guinchy in the autumn of 1916. If he had come back he would have been rejected, for essentially the same reason that made his daughter run away: his uniform.

I'm about to pop open the Crying of Lot 49 today. Short book, should finish it in a day or two. I'm woefully poorly read on all sorts of 20th century classics, so I'm making an effort to get through more of them this year.

Im reading Red Rising. One of my friends said it was one of the best books/series he’s ever read, so I told him I’d give it a shot. It’s not my usual fare, though I did enjoy GoT and The Name of the Wind, which are of a similar style.

I have a few more books on my list. My obsession with drug crime and Baltimore continues with Ghettoside (about LA not Baltimore). Looking forward to that. My white whale, The Power Broker, also awaits me. I know that book is going to take me several months, so I’m knocking out a few shorter books before beginning that endeavor.

Second my endorsement! It’s fun although I put it down since it’s unfinished.

That's a fun series. It's certainly not the best series ever written, but the pacing is good, the action is fun, and there are satisfying twists and turns in the plot. The second book, Golden Son, is particularly fun to read, but all three I thoroughly enjoyed.

The next books (Iron Gold and Dark Age) are also good reads, although I can't recommend them to you until I read the sixth (Lightbringer), which is supposed to come out this year.

Is it a trilogy? Or is it a series? After the Name of the Wind fiasco, I swore I'd never start an unfinished series again...

There is a completed trilogy, and there is an as yet uncompleted sequel trilogy, with what should be the last book out this summer.

I've heard that those two are all the author will write in this world, which I doubt. I've also heard that maybe the sequel trilogy will actually be four, which is completely speculative.

There's no reason to wait on reading Red Rising, Golden Son, and Morning Star. You might want to hold off on Iron Gold and Dark Age, at least until Lightbringer is released. The first three form a complete story arc.

Oh man lightbringer by Brent Weeks is a damn good series on its own.

I just finished David Simon's Homicide, and looking to read The Corner next.

I enjoyed it and found it easy to get through. It's notable IMO that it's really more of a slice of the lives and culture of the Baltimore Homicide unit rather than a proper true crime story. As an accurate slice of real life, there's no particular rhyme or reason to which crimes get solved and how fast. Some get solved right away, some after weeks or months of careful investigation, and a number never get solved at all, and there's not much relation to what extent you might say the victim had it coming.

IMO the most interesting aspect was how certain aspects of the system seem to work against itself. For ex, why are police and forensics people so reluctant to ever admit any sort of error or mistake? According to the characters in the book at least, it's not so much because they're arrogant jerks, but because any admitted error or mistake will be brought up by defense attorneys in any future case they're involved in, which will leave the jury less inclined to believe them.

Really good book. David Simon has an incredible knack for getting inside his subject's heads. He's almost so good that you have to wonder if he's making up at least some of his subjects thoughts.

I also found the murder clearance rate very interesting. Even though they targeted a 70% clearance rate, it turned out that only about four in ten murderers ever actually spent long periods of time in prison. I found that number a bit surprising, because it's really quite low. Just for kicks, I googled the clearance rate in 2020 and it's dropped even further since the 1980s. It's at around 50% nationwide and 40% in Baltimore! Quite a precipitous fall. If you're interested in some of the theories why it's fallen, Plain English did a fairly good podcast on it:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RZOSNqfvod10uM7rgqeI8

I hope you hear your thoughts on the Corner! And I'm sure you've already watched The Wire, but there's also We Own This City on HBO. It's about corrupt police in Baltimore, particularly after the murder of Freddie Gray. An outstanding show.

I did watch both The Wire and We Own This City. I enjoyed WOTC, but I think it's definitely a step behind The Wire.

IMO, part of what made The Wire great is it showed the good and bad of everything and everyone. Some cops are dirty or assholes, but others are good police, working hard to take bad people off the street. The urban drug dealers might be being subjected to some level of abuse by the police, and sometimes actually do good deeds, but they really are murdering people in their own neighborhoods by the dozens and employing children to sell basically poison on the streets. Some of the parents in these neighborhoods are good people trying to get by in a tough neighborhood, while others are willing to sell their childrens' food for more drugs or demand that their children become drug dealers to bring in money for them while they do no work. Criminal defense lawyers are of course necessary, but damn sure they knowingly pocket a whole lot of drug money, help out with money laundering, and basically request people to be murdered.

WOTC over-focuses on how bad the GTTF and a few specific cops are and basically ignores everything that caused them to be that way. Okay, they're corrupt and abusive, but most of their targets really are drug dealers, and we don't get to see what other bad stuff these drug dealers do. Arresting actual bad guys who don't want to go to jail is necessarily violent and unpredictable, but if you show the police that they will be randomly fired and prosecuted for any violence that doesn't go perfectly right, then of course they'll start refusing to do anything. But the show pays no attention to this dynamic and just portrays the cops as lazy jerks for not wanting to get out of their cars. The Feds are of course perfect angels trying to root out the evil police corruption, but who cares that they aren't really doing anything about the 300+ murders a year and rampant drug dealing.

Jung's Man and His Symbols. Interesting read so far!

Ooh this is going on my list.

I am on a bar patio right now, reading John Ball's Miss One Thousand Spring Blossoms, a novel from the 60s about an awkward American engineer who goes to Japan and gets caught up in love with a geisha.

I am still reading it so I can't comment overly much beyond that, except to say that it's written with real heart and skill, and the writer's sense of humor is amazing.

Is there anything better than a fine kölsch on a patio in the sunshine, with a nice book to read? I can't imagine.

I'm pretty partial to a hammock with your favorite cold beverage, warm sunshine, cool breeze, birds chirping and a good book or some music you like.

Is there anything better than a fine kölsch on a patio in the sunshine, with a nice book to read? I can't imagine.

I'd have to put in a good word for iced tea under the shade of an oak tree with a nice book to read. Though actually a kölsch might be even better in that scenario...

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