/dev/chat

@Wildcard I would expect universities to be better.

derobert

@Jesse_b LOL

@FaheemMitha nope. Well, unless you want complete conformity of thought. For some definition of "better" they might be better.

No doubt one learns to bow down and worship the Constitution. And the wise and far-sighted men who wrote it. And the noble Presidents who protected it, and watched over this great nation, and watched it grow.

9:02 PM

@derobert That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes ever "Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth."

@Wildcard Well, mostly I did math in universities. And some statistics. So I wouldn't know.

Give me a bash shell and an editor to code and I will wrap your lines!

I learned about stuff by reading books, mostly. And thinking about it.

Oh, and by watching US television, sometimes.

The Iraq War was particularly instructive.

derobert

@Jesse_b And if you mess up, at least you'll get an Earth-shattering kaboom.

@derobert Well yeah, that too :p

9:04 PM

In random non-news Galileo was apparently an early recipient of miltary funding.

Which I did not previously know.

@FaheemMitha actually, that's pretty much the exact opposite of what you will learn in any modern U.S. university. Instead you will learn how the U.S. was founded on slavery and is basically the most evil country of all time, and should become socialist or communist so as to repent for its past sins.

And also that anyone who respects the achievements of the U.S. founding fathers is part of the problem.

@Wildcard Are you sure? That sounds rather unlikely.

And to be clear, I was talking about schools, not universities.

@FaheemMitha no, in schools (not universities) you're lucky if the students are even taught what the Bill of Rights was in the first place.

@Wildcard I think you mean genocide. Slavery was important too, yes.

It's amazingly dumbed down.

@FaheemMitha right. The brand-new idea that maybe we can let people choose their own religion, and not declare that they have to comply with the religious beliefs of whoever is running the government, is pretty much skipped over.

9:09 PM

@Wildcard Is it still the case that the US doesn't have a uniform end of school exam? Like the UK A levels, and India's SSC or ICSE.

@Wildcard I see.

@FaheemMitha definitely not a state-run one. Which is probably a good thing; I wouldn't trust the government to get that right in its current state. It would be all full of indoctrination points.

@Wildcard Are there any private ones?

@FaheemMitha well, the usual test people take after high school is the SAT, Scholastic Aptitude Test, which (last I checked) is required for most college applications.

@Wildcard Oh. No, that's not what I meant. I took the SAT too, once.

But that's not required to get a GED (general education diploma, a.k.a. high school completion certificate).

As for getting a GED, I think there are tests you can take directly, but if you're going to a normal school then you're done when you pass whatever tests they have.

9:12 PM

I meant an exam that is actually part of school, but which you take as a sort of finishing up thing. Sort of a culmination of everything you have learned. Supposedly.

I think the schools have to follow some type of requirements to be able to grant that diploma, but I've never really researched it.

@Wildcard Is a GED not a uniform test, then?

@Wildcard So you were home-schooled, or you just skipped a lot of grades?

@FaheemMitha it's not put out by some central body, if that's what you mean.

No, I finished 12 grades.

@Wildcard Yes, that's what I meant.

@Wildcard Oh. So how did you do it by 13, then?

I went to private schools where you could study at your own pace, and get help from the teacher as needed.

I went fast.

I didn't mess around, either. :D

9:14 PM

I see. So you did 12 years in less then 12 years?

I think a lot of time gets wasted by most students in high school, because they're at dating age and they don't just blast through their schoolwork. But then again, at most schools, they have to serve a particular length of time anyway, so what would be the point.

@FaheemMitha right.

@Wildcard No kidding. It's a sore spot with me. But perhaps you've already figured that out.

But I thought my schoolwork was boring rubbish, and I didn't want to blast through it. Though, truthfully, I don't remember much about it.

@FaheemMitha yeah, I hear you on that totally.

I do remember we had to do some Shakespeare plays. Also Hard Times.

A very poor choice, assuming one has to pick a Dickens novel.

United States Department of Education

@FaheemMitha by the way, the very fact of the U.S. having government-run anything to do with education is VERY recent, historically speaking.

The United States Department of Education (ED or DoED), also referred to as the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services by the Department of Education Organization Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on October 17, 1979.The Department of Education is administered by the United States secretary of education. It has under 4,000...

9:17 PM

And they're both odd choices for India.

@FaheemMitha yeah.

@Wildcard I see. I didn't know that.

And I think we had to study other books too. But I can't remember off-hand.

Funny story about Dickens: someone who grew up in the Soviet Union had read Oliver Twist, but had never even heard of A Christmas Carol. It wasn't authorized by the Soviet government.

Oliver Twist was. Which is sorta funny.

And the result of this stellar education is that most of my class-mates never read another book again, willingly, in their lives. Certainly not Shakespeare or Dickens.

@FaheemMitha I'm guessing you left out the word "never."

9:19 PM

@Wildcard Actually, Oliver Twist is not a bad novel. A bit grim, perhaps.

@FaheemMitha exactly my point.

Fits right in with Soviet propaganda.

@Wildcard Yes. Corrected.

A generous rich person, not so much.

@Wildcard Right. The vile capitalist system.

Though Oliver Twist has a generous rich person too. That was sort of a Dickens staple.

@FaheemMitha I had a list of "required books" to choose from, but I didn't have to read all of them. I had to read at least some certain number of them.

9:20 PM

The Orwell essay on Dickens is actually quite insightful.

So I never read most of the hard classics until many years later, when I got curious about them and read them.

@FaheemMitha oh? I haven't seen that one.

My reading has always been very spotty.

Certainly not systematic in any way.

I will step away again, but I'd like to read that essay if you link to it.

@Wildcard orwell.ru/library/reviews/dickens/english/e_chd

But my excuse is that I have been very poorly educated.

Eric was an insightful essayist. A bit erratic at times. I also recommend Adam Cadre's hilarious review of "A Road to Wigan Pier".

adamcadre.ac/calendar/12/12353.html

I think he's right about Dickens using benevolent rich gentlemen as a sort of god in the machine, because he doesn't really have any solutions to offer.

@Wildcard Sample from the Cadre review:

> The most typical socialist, Orwell contends, is "a prim little man with a white-collar job" who, worse yet, is a "teetotaller with vegetarian leanings." Hey, he's me! Holy crow, I'm the one holding socialism back! I haven't felt so guilty since a girl in Orange County told me that after I died Jesus would take over the world.

And yes, Orwell really did write stuff like that.

(Anyway, rambling as usual. I should try to get to sleep, because clearly I'm not going to get anything done now.)

@FaheemMitha: Are you into gangster rap yet?

9:27 PM

@FaheemMitha that's an interesting point.

I think the best stories DO show at least plausible solutions to the problems they pose.

I have many examples of those.

@Jesse_b Not yet. But I'm sure you'll convert me any time now.

@FaheemMitha :) Nipsey Hussle is another good artist to look into

@Wildcard Like?

@FaheemMitha Final Blackout is an excellent example.

Another one, in a surprising genre to find such realism, is "Princess Academy."

(and its sequels).

@Wildcard Hubbard? Yuck.

9:30 PM

@FaheemMitha eh, I've heard it all before. The negativity is a lot of nonsense. Actually read the guy's books and make up your own mind.

Heinlein said Final Blackout was as perfect a piece of science fiction as has ever been written. :)

@Wildcard Well, I've certainly heard a lot of negative things about him. Never actually read any of his stuff, though.

But a lot of sf is very substandard. I did read it avidly as a child, though.

I find it harder to read now.

@FaheemMitha yeah, I had good taste in books as a kid. It was years before I realized how much better the books I read actually were, than the typical books on the shelf.

@Wildcard Sounds like a modern Disney film.

But I've definitely seen sub-standard sf.

@FaheemMitha right? :D

I don't think I had good taste as a kid. I used to read everything I could get my hands on. Including some real tripe.

9:34 PM

@FaheemMitha here's a review of the book - this is what first got me interested, then I saw it in a used bookstore and picked it up based on the review: hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2005-07-17.shtml

A lot of British popular fiction. Some of it really terrible.

@FaheemMitha to be fair, I might have done that also, I just only remember the good books. :D

Like Bruce Coville, Beverly Cleary, Orson Scott Card, Diana Wynne Jones.

@Wildcard Thanks for the link. Reading now.

And yes, Hubbard. Final Blackout is excellent and relatively short. Battlefield Earth is one of my favorite books, but it's pretty long, so I point people to Final Blackout first. :)

@Wildcard Oh, you read DWJ? She was my favorite author as a child.

I read "Enders Game" too. But not much else.

9:36 PM

@FaheemMitha I have about 4 1/2 linear feet of shelf space full of her books next to me as I write this. :)

@Wildcard Heh. I only have a few. :-)

Oh, and Animorphs.

I think I have a copy of "Fire and Hemlock" buried somewhere on my desk right now.

@Wildcard Yes, I liked that too. Though I thought that Everworld was even better.

In fact, very good for a genre writer writing at high speed.

@FaheemMitha definitely.

I have very old copies of "Charmed Life" and "The Ogre Downstairs" from when I was a child. Though they are probably falling to pieces now.

9:38 PM

Did you ever read Harry Potter, or hear the audiobooks?

I was very disappointed with how Everworld ended, though.

Just left us all hanging. Bummer.

@Wildcard Yes, I've read them all. Why?

@FaheemMitha a full-cast audiobook was recently made for Final Blackout, and the narrator is Jim Dale. :)

@Wildcard Should I know who Jim Dale is?

@FaheemMitha he did all the Harry Potter audiobooks. With different voices for all the characters. (Not a full cast production, but wonderful fun.)

That's what got me into audiobooks in the first place, really.

@Wildcard Oh. I don't think I've ever listened to any audiobooks.

Do you listen to them in the car?

9:42 PM

@FaheemMitha reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gzhau/…

@FaheemMitha mostly, yeah.

@Wildcard I haven't looked at the link, but yes, I know nobody else was happy, either.

Including Applegate, herself, probably.

@FaheemMitha that's the author's answer about it.

@Wildcard Yes, I think I've read that AMA at some point.

She seems like a pretty cool lady.

@FaheemMitha funny, too. But then she had to be, to write Marco.

Did you like Everworld too?

9:44 PM

@FaheemMitha hell yes. Though some of the language kinda shocked me. I was pretty young at the time.

@Wildcard I read it as an adult. Still found it riveting, though.

@FaheemMitha yeah, I foolishly sold off my collection, so now I'll have to buy it again.

:)

Surprisingly powerful, too. Considering the conditions under which it was probably written. And the genre.

Still annoyed about that ending, though.

Even the Animorphs ending was better.

@FaheemMitha yeah, like I said, I read excellent books and then it was years before I learned that a lot of books out there are pure crap.

@FaheemMitha which is saying something.

@Wildcard Yes, there are lot of books. And most of them blow.

@Wildcard Indeed. The Animorphs ending was pretty much pure tosh.

I actually went and watched Rent, because of Rachel.

9:47 PM

Ha!

Don't quite see what she saw in it, though.

You mean April?

@Wildcard Yes, April. sorry. Got my series mixed up there.

Really liked April as a character, too.

@FaheemMitha yeah.

Actually, the Everworld children were a pretty sympathetic lot, overall. Except Senna, obviously.

And they coped very well with being thrust into a nightmare scenario.

And relatively realistically, too.

9:49 PM

I'm actually in progress re-reading the Animorphs series. My wife never read it, so we're reading through it together. (Not literally at the same time, but staying within 1 book of each other.)

@FaheemMitha yeah.

@Wildcard Does she like it too?

@FaheemMitha completely loves it.

Except book 28 which we both agree is pretty ridiculous.

That's in the early stages of KAA's ghost writer use.

BTW, that's a very flattering review of "Princess Academy". Is it really so good?

@Wildcard Yes, things tailed off rather in the later parts of the series.

@FaheemMitha it really is. Totally worth buying new. I bought both the sequels new (after getting the first book used), and they are both excellent.

@Wildcard Ok. Well, I'll put them in my to-read-someday list. Though I don't read much these days. Except stuff online, really fast.

9:51 PM

@FaheemMitha yeah, I hear you. :)

The thing about books is, there are so many of them.

And more coming out all the time.

BTW, if you had a favorite DWJ, what would it be?

On that note about book reviews—Final Blackout is pretty much THE original "futuristic war story." I doubt that a single futuristic war story has been written since then that wasn't influenced either directly or indirectly by that one.

And unusual for the prototype of a genre—I don't think it's ever been outdone.

@Wildcard I see.

@FaheemMitha let me think about that. :)

@Wildcard BTW, since it sounds like we have similar tastes, here are a couple of random recommendations, if you haven't read them already.

9:53 PM

Sorry, premature send. Probably the Pinhoe Egg, except that you have to have read all the earlier books in the series to appreciate it to the fullest.

"The Game" is a surprise contender. I hadn't even read it until like a year ago.

"Memoirs of An Invisible Man", and Antonio Barber's "The Ghosts". The latter was filmed as "The Amazing Mr. Blunden".

It might well be my favorite DWJ. For strange reasons, though.

The former is a brilliant thriller.

@Wildcard Isn't that a novella? I think I've read it.

@FaheemMitha it's about the mythosphere. If that rings a bell you probably have.

@Wildcard That's a very late book, isn't it? I think I might have read it. But she was fading out rather towards the end, I thought.

@Wildcard Yes, sounds about right.

Possibly the Chrestomanci universe.

Yes, looks like it is.

9:56 PM

@FaheemMitha I never thought so. I think she was going strong the whole time. But like I said, my reasons for liking that book so much are peculiar. I like it because of how thoroughly it departs from the normal routine of life.

2006, so yes.

@Wildcard Ok. I definitely think her strongest stuff was in the 70s and 80s.

E.g. Dogsbody. Which is probably one of my favorite novels, ever.

By normal routine I mean: you're born, you have to eat and drink and sleep and breathe, and then you die. And nearly everything is oriented around doing stuff to improve your body one way or another, or keep it alive. You have a house and a bed and all that.

And "The Game" just departs from that completely.

@Wildcard Oh?

@FaheemMitha yeah, but the ending just made me so sad.

@Wildcard Well now I've lost the game :(

9:58 PM

@FaheemMitha yeah. Like one character is happy at the end because now she can be a comet as often as she likes.

@Wildcard Yes, it's a sad ending. But open ended. I think people hoped for a sequel. Or at least kind of resolution, but it didn't happen.

@FaheemMitha yeah. It's sorta hinted at there in the last few lines. So I finally decided to just assume that finally happened, in my mind.

There's actually a fairly strong international DWJ fanbase out there, I believe. Though it's not exactly visible.

And it's apparently quite unusual, in that people don't grow out of her books.

@FaheemMitha well a ton of her books recently got brought back into print.

They read her when they're 8. They're still reading her when they're 80. They give her books to their children, and their friends, and so on.

10:00 PM

@FaheemMitha I think she's among the best fantasy authors of all time, if not THE best. Certainly she's the best children's fantasy author.

@Wildcard No argument here. She doesn't have much competition in her weight class, though.

@FaheemMitha yeah, but I think she outdoes even the epic fantasy authors.

Children's fantasy, I mean.

@Wildcard Possibly. I'm not that familiar with epic fantasy.

@FaheemMitha I mean like Tolkien, Martin, etc.

I did read and enjoy the two volumes of "Mordant's Need", though. Donaldson.

10:02 PM

And here's what DWJ said through one of her characters:

@Wildcard I've read LOTR, of course. But I don't know Martin's stuff.

> "There goes Mig with here happy endings again," Chris said. But I don't care. I like happy endings. And I asked Chris why something should be truer just because it's unhappy. He couldn't answer.

@FaheemMitha Game of Thrones, you know.

@Wildcard She does like happy endings.

@Wildcard Yes, I know. But I think I've read some of his horror fiction a while back.

He seems to have written a lot of stuff.

The Dalemark quartet is also very strong, though relatively obscure.

Though the 4th book isn't that good. Sort of a mish-mash.

Sort of a mashup of the first three.

Drowned Ammet is an excellent read, though.

The other two are very good too.

I think I have "Card and Cwidder" and "The Spellcoats" here somewhere.

Maybe you read people writing about her when she died. That was also quite unusual.

I was quite upset myself.

Apparently everyone thought of her as a personal friend. A cross between the Delphic Oracle and a favorite aunt.

@FaheemMitha I quite liked the 4th book, but not so much on first read. It's a wonderful love story, though.

Q: The ending of Fire and Hemlock

@Wildcard Meaning Mitt and Maewen?

If so, I didn't really believe it.

I don't think DWJ can really do romance. As the Americans say, it's not in her wheelhouse.

I did find the implied romance in Fire and Hemlock relatively convincing, though.

But that's a generally very strong book. Though confusing in parts.

For example

4

If there is anyone out there that understands the ending of Fire and Hemlock, I'd be very grateful for a detailed explanation. The ending corresponds approximately to Part 4 (Nowhere), Section 6, where I think I first read that section 20 years ago, but I still don't really know what happens h...

Though no answers, still.

10:36 PM

@FaheemMitha I'll say. I read that book twice but I think I was too young and also I skimmed a few parts. Next time I reread it I'll see if I can answer your question. :)

@FaheemMitha I dunno. Have you read "Deep Secret"? Or "A Sudden Wild Magic"?

Or even "Howl's Moving Castle."

They're not "romance" books per se, but I think the romance is well done.

@Wildcard I think I've read them, but I don't remember much about them.

@Wildcard Again, that's sort of "implied" romance.

I think her more "adult" books are among her less successful.

I'm sure many will disagree.

@FaheemMitha eh, I think most "romance" books today are pretty much porn, but I haven't really read them deeply so that may be unfair. I think showing a real affection between people building up is properly done romance, and that's what DWJ does.

@FaheemMitha I think that's true, especially commercially. But I like them.

@Wildcard That's certainly one way to look at it.

Much of her strongest stuff was definitely written for children.

E.g. Archer's Goon, Homeward Bounders.

Homeward Bounders is relatively dark, but personally I think that only makes it better.

It's also got a satirical edge which isn't that common in her books.

Mostly coming from Jamie's viewpoint, I suppose.