(Dr. Seuss & Alexan­der Abing­don) The Omnibus Boners:
. . . . 14638. (Dr. Seuss & Alexan­der Abing­don) Bon­ers, Being a Col­lec­tion of Schoolboy
. . . . . . . . . Wis­dom, or Knowl­edge as it is Some­times Writ­ten, Compiled
. . . . . . . . . from Class­rooms and Exam­i­na­tion Papers by Alexan­der Abingdon &
. . . . . . . . . Illus­trat­ed by Dr. Seuss
14639. (Dr. Seuss & Alexan­der Abing­don) More Boners
14640. (Dr. Seuss & Alexan­der Abing­don) Still More Boners
14641. (Osamu Tezu­ka) Phoenix ― A Tale of the Future [graph­ic novel]
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Giant hydro-elec­tric dams are not exact­ly a pop­u­lar sub­ject, these days, but, eco­log­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions aside, the build­ing of Man­ic 5 cer­tainly pro­vides a heavy dose of awe and romance. Few tourists take the trou­ble to jour­ney into the remote dis­trict in North­ern Que­bec where this huge struc­ture is. It’s not just the gigan­tic sta­tis­tics (even the 735,000-volt trans­mis­sion lines were an engi­neer­ing achieve­ment on an unprece­dented scale), but the human dra­ma of its con­struc­tion. The authors cap­ture this in both prose and about a hun­dred beau­ti­ful draw­ings. Lili Réthi, who looked some­thing like Miss Marple, was one of the great­est archi­tec­tural and engi­neer­ing artists, and she died short­ly after com­plet­ing the Man­ic 5 draw­ings. Her work, which is of great artis­tic val­ue in my view, is known only to archi­tects and engineers.

The reser­voir cre­ated by Man­ic 5 is even more inter­est­ing than the dam. Any­one who has spent any time in Earth orbit is quite famil­iar with it, since it stands out like a bull’s‑eye, seen from space. The project flood­ed the impact crater cre­ated by a five km wide aster­oid that struck Que­bec towards the end of the Tri­as­sic. The Man­i­coua­gan lake acts as a giant hydraulic bat­tery for Hydro-Que­bec. In the peak peri­od of the win­ter cold, the tur­bines are run all the time at peak load to meet the mas­sive elec­tri­cal heat­ing needs of the province. Dur­ing the sum­mer, the sur­plus is sold to the New Eng­land grid. The island inside the lake is larg­er than Rhode Island. Some of the lakes with­in the island with­in the lake have large islands in them. As far as I know, there are no inhabitants.

The Mabino­gion is a com­pi­la­tion of Welsh leg­end that we know from two medieval man­u­scripts, the Llyfr Gwyn Rhy­d­derch (White Book of Rhy­d­derch) and the Llyfr Coch Hergest (Red Book of Hergest). J. R. R. Tolkien was expert in these sources, and it’s not sur­pris­ing that there are echoes of the Mabino­gion in the Lord of the Rings. Evan­ge­line Wal­ton worked more direct­ly with the Welsh mate­r­ial. Prince of Annwn is pret­ty much a retelling of the first tale, “Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed”. She attempts to strike a bal­ance between the orig­i­nal myth­ic style of sto­ry-telling and mod­ern nov­el­is­tic tech­niques. The result is very sat­is­fy­ing. It doesn’t feel “mod­ern”, but it sat­is­fies the mod­ern taste for nar­ra­tive sur­prise and dra­ma. Her vocab­u­lary and phras­ing are well cho­sen: she uses an “ele­vated”, poet­ic prose with­out sound­ing sil­ly, a very dif­fi­cult trick indeed.

I’ve read two dif­fer­ent trans­la­tions of the Mabino­gion (the Ganz and the Jones & Jones ver­sions), so I’m not sure how it comes across to some­one who has nev­er known the mythol­ogy. Wal­ton stays rea­son­ably close to the orig­i­nal, though she throws in a few unre­lated bits from the Irish epics for dra­matic pur­poses. Welsh mythol­ogy is as misty and dis­con­cert­ing as the Welsh land­scape: you can nev­er tell what is sup­posed to be real or dream, nat­ural or super­nat­ural. I spent a week walk­ing through the Welsh moun­tains, and I’m still not sure what actu­al­ly hap­pened to me and what I halu­ci­nat­ed. Walton’s fan­tasy cap­tures that feeling.

The last pub­lic hang­ing in the U.S., in Owens­boro, Ken­tucky on June 7, 1936

David Row is a defense lawyer in Texas, the Amer­i­can State where the death penalty’s injus­tice and bar­barism are most glar­ingly evi­dent. The pic­ture of Texas “jus­tice” that he draws makes it clear that there is no more of a judi­cial sys­tem there than in any sleazy Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship. Since 1996, the Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has launched a suc­cess­ful assault on the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of com­mon law and lib­erty. Row is work­ing from with­in the sys­tem, and with­in his soci­ety, so his approach to the sub­ject seems rather timid to an out­sider. In his uni­verse, he is fight­ing an uphill bat­tle, like a doc­tor try­ing to con­vince a prim­i­tive tribe that dis­ease is caused by germs, not witch’s curs­es. For that is the real sit­u­a­tion. Eighty per­cent of Amer­i­cans are enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of the death penal­ty, not because of any rea­son­ed analy­sis, but because they are igno­rant sav­ages. They do it for the same rea­son that Aztecs ripped the hearts out of sac­ri­fi­cial vic­tims and the Tal­iban exe­cuted women in foot­ball fields. It is in that kind of social envi­ron­ment that the Con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da of destroy­ing free­dom and civ­i­liza­tion can run ram­pant. To some­one who lives out­side this back­ward world (and out­side the ram­page of crime and sense­less mur­ders that it per­pet­u­ates), it is just embarrass­ing to read a book that shouldn’t have to be written.

Gwynne Dyer is a Cana­dian jour­nal­ist (now based in the U.K.), and an expert on mil­i­tary sub­jects, who has had a glob­ally syn­di­cated col­umn for many years. I don’t always agree with him, but he is com­pe­tent, writes hon­estly, and doesn’t pre­var­i­cate. He’s gen­er­ally a voice of com­mon sense. Unfor­tu­nately, for the last decade, his col­umn hasn’t appeared in very many Cana­dian news­pa­pers. The major­ity of big Cana­dian papers have been under the con­trol of the malig­nant press bar­on, Con­rad Black, and his suc­ces­sor, in recent years. Dyer is per­sona non gra­ta. This book con­tains a selec­tion of the columns that most of us, here in his native land, have missed.

Dyer’s strong point is that, unlike most jour­nal­ists, he knows how the mil­i­tary works, how deci­sions get made in it, and what war real­ly involves. He also knows some­thing about the cul­ture and his­tory of the world in gen­eral. This puts him way ahead of most jour­nal­ists. He is weak­er when try­ing to sec­ond-guess the motives of politi­cians and the oli­garchs who wield real pow­er, a weak­ness which he very hon­estly admits. He calls atten­tion to the columns where he didn’t hit the mark. Read more »