The McWetlog

I learned last week that Victor Batzel, one of my history professors at the University of Winnipeg, died last year. It was only a one-line notice in the University’s alumni magazine, so I did a little investigating.

Dr. Batzel died of pulmonary fibrosis on January 1, 2009 at the age of 73; he was a smoker when I knew him. He taught me philosophy of history, a required course for honours history students, in the spring of 1992, when he was wrapping up his term as department chair. Having Vic Baztel as your teacher was fun. Voluble, personable, ebullient, and most of all alive, he was a teacher first and foremost, and a damn good one, in a department full of damn good teachers. “His lecture style was highly kinetic. We joked that if you cut off his arms he wouldn’t be able to say a thing,” says the knowing obituary, which details his volunteer life as much as, if not more than, his academic accomplishments, and nails his larger-than-life personality. (See also the University’s press release.)

Not only that, you knew he gave a shit about you. It was a point he made clear in a conversation we had outside on the campus grounds, where he, chatting with someone else, pointed at me and said, “he’s our graduate program” — making the point that, at the University of Winnipeg, almost entirely an undergraduate institution, majors and honours students got the attention that only graduate students would get elsewhere. If anything, he was understating things: nowhere else did I get the faculty attention and support I got during my undergrad years from the U of W’s history professors, even when I was a Ph.D. student. Professors like Batzel — and Bailey, and Stone, and Young, all now retired — did that for us.

The Ghibli Museum — essentially a theme park for Hayao Miyazaki movies, located in a suburb of Tokyo — sounds wonderful: Totoro’s at the ticket booth, there are Laputan robots on the rooftop garden, and the very-dangerous sounding gift shop is named Mamma Aiuto! Read Maki’s account of her visit; the museum prohibits indoor photography, but she has some photos on Flickr of places where she could take them. Too bad I don’t travel well, or speak Japanese: sigh. Via Rebecca Blood.

Modern snakes raid nests all the time, looking to make a meal of everything from bird and reptile eggs to baby rodents. It looks like they’ve been doing this for a while, if this fossil of a snake raiding a dinosaur nest is any indication. The 3.5-metre snake, a newly described species called Sanajeh indicus, was raiding a titanosaur nest 67 million years ago. Being sauropod dinosaurs, titanosaurs were quite large (some exceeded 100 tons), but the fossil titanosaur hatchling is only half a metre long, and quite manageable for a snake of Sanajeh’s size. The fossil was originally unearthed in 1984, but it was only later that the snake’s skeleton was identified for what it was — an intruder! — rather than more bones from a long-necked sauropod. (The article also discusses Sanajeh’s place in snake evolution, particularly in terms of the development of wide gapes.) Summary at New Scientist; via Clint.

Previously: Titanoboa, terror of the Eocene.

Author Catherynne M. Valente has just finished reading Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts, and she’s pissed off. “[L]iterally every cultural note in this entire novel is wrong,” she writes (her emphasis), and goes on to explain why, in telling and damning detail. Roberts, she argues, gets everything about Russia, Russians and Russian culture wrong (“the book would have been a lot more believable with all the names changed and set in England or America”). And, to top it all off, he gets a lot about the 1980s wrong, too: “One of the characters, Saltykov, has Asperger’s Syndrome. In 1986. Asperger’s was not diagnosed by that name in anyone until 1992. … Scientology and Asperger’s and alcoholism and the evils of tobacco are concerns of today, not of 1986.” Even the novel’s title, which is claimed to be a phonetic representation of saying “I love you” — that’s wrong, too.

It’s annoying for a reader who knows something about the subject matter to come across a work that is so egregiously wrong about it. It’s why writers worth their salt do their research. They have to, because there are too many people out there who can and will fact-check their lazy asses and call them out on it. Valente, a writer very much worth her salt, definitely does her research, and has been doing her research vis-à-vis Russia, and it’s obvious that she’s annoyed that another writer doesn’t seem to think it matters.

I’m an historian by training; of course I think research matters. When I set myself to writing a story, I assign myself so much research that you’d think I was writing a refereed journal article, not a fantasy or science fiction novelette. I kind of overdo it, but I can’t help it: I’ve been hard-wired. And when I finally get these damn stories written, I hope it shows.

It matters even more when you’re writing about a culture that isn’t yours. If you’re going to muck around in somebody else’s culture, be a dear and at least try to get it right. (Apropos of which, see Norman Spinrad’s books column in the just-arrived April/May 2010 Asimov’s, wherein he looks at SF novels set in the quote-unquote Third World written by authors in the quote-unquote First.)

On the other hand, if you won’t try to get things right, at least have the good manners to go totally over the top. No one is going to fault Monty Python for historical inaccuracy in its movies. (“I have it on good authority that there was no such Roman as Biggus Dickus. And there is no evidence for a religious relic called the Holy Hand Grenade!”) Nor is there much point in going after Yahoo Serious’s Young Einstein (1988) because Einstein was not the son of a Tasmanian apple farmer. (Well, duh.) From the movie’s Wikipedia entry:

In this movie, Einstein splits a beer atom (with a chisel) in order to add bubbles to beer, discovers the theory of relativity and travels to Sydney to patent it. Here he invents the electric guitar and surfing, while romancing Marie Curie, who was in fact much older at the time and married. He invents rock and roll and uses it to save the world from being destroyed due to mis-use of a nuclear reactor under the watching eye of Charles Darwin, who had in fact died in 1882. The rest of the movie is somewhat less historically correct. [My emphasis.]

Of course, if the history and culture is something I know something about, I might have a different tolerance level. In that vein, I’m still trying to make sense of Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which is gloriously ahistorical, but, since it covers a period I’ve studied intensely, I can’t help but be jarred by little details, here and there. For example, I know exactly how many times Hitler visited Paris: once, in 1940. I also know that French adults don’t, as a rule, drink milk. If Tarantino is going to make a big deal over how Germans show three with fingers, these and other details are incongruous. It’s a crazy fantasy universe, to be sure, but why be so egregious when you don’t have to be?

Jennifer is apparently on a mission to ensure that I own the complete published works of one John Scalzi, blogger, science-fiction writer and putter of bacon on cats. So, for my birthday (this week), she provided me with copies of his latest.

The God Engines is a dark fantasy novella that mixes spaceships and gods in a deeply creepy and original manner. (I don’t want to give too much away; suffice to say that the title is literal.) At only 136 pages, it’s much too brief, and leaves the reader wanting more: the setting and plot could easily handle a quarter-million words. The diction doesn’t quite ring true, and comes across a little stilted; Scalzi doesn’t quite have the knack for this kind of voice. But impressive nonetheless, and it just made the Nebula final ballot this morning. Here’s the first chapter.

Judge Sn Goes Golfing, on the other hand, is pure fun, a short story (the chapbook is all of 32 pages) featuring my favourite character from The Android’s Dream, a profoundly profane and misanthropic alien judge. (I have simple tastes, which include judges who say “fuck” from the bench.) Here’s Scalzi reading a bowdlerized audio version.

The God Engines by John Scalzi

Amazon.ca • Amazon.com

Judge Sn Goes Golfing by John Scalzi

Amazon.ca • Amazon.com

Controlling a computerized telescope from a computer is not new; it usually requires compatible desktop planetarium software and a serial cable to connect the computer to the telescope mount. The only wireless option I was previously aware of was to use Starry Night Pro with a Bluetooth adapter — though it appears that that adapter is no longer available.

Enter Carina Software’s SkyFi Wireless Telescope Controller, which adds WiFi to a computerized telescope. It connects to most telescope mounts with serial (RS-232) interfaces, including the two I own (the Celestron NexStar 5 SE and the Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro). Ironically, it isn’t compatible with newer mounts with USB ports, though they’re working on that. As you might have guessed from their name, Carina Software also makes software, including SkyVoyager, a planetarium app for the iPhone and iPod touch. I’ve been using it for a while; it’s a nice app. SkyVoyager, by the by, includes telescope control. Until this gizmo, that meant connecting via WiFi to a computer running Voyager, Carina’s desktop application, that was plugged into the telescope mount in the usual manner. Now you can control a computerized telescope wirelessly from an iPhone or iPod touch — directly. Contemplate that for a moment: controlling a computerized telescope from a phone or an iPod.

This made a big splash at Macworld this month: see coverage at MacRumors and MacNN.

SkyFi costs $150; SkyVoyager costs $15; Voyager runs between $100 and $180.

Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw, the ability to speak, and the ability to eat except through a tube as a result of cancer treatment several years ago. Esquire’s Chris Jones has a profile of the Roger Ebert of today, who communicates through his computer’s speech synthesizer and a frankly brilliant and copious amount of online writing. Viz., Ebert’s response to the piece on his blog. The photos accompanying the piece are truly harrowing — Ebert is unrecognizable — but he’s fearless about his own appearance. Via Kottke.

The federal Liberals are attacking the Harper government for failing, in their view, to deal with the medical isotope shortage. The shortage, which was triggered by the (second) shutdown of the Chalk River NRU reactor last May, will be exacerbated by the shutdown of the Dutch Petten reactor for repairs, which start this month and will run through the summer.

I didn’t say anything about the isotope issue while I was working for Health Canada (though, strictly speaking, Natural Resources is the lead department on this issue, I did edit some work on this issue), but I’m not working there any more — and I just figured out that I have direct experience with the medical isotopes that are now in short supply.

One of the isotopes produced by the NRU reactor is technetium-99m, which, among other things, is used in bone scans. In late 1997, it was a bone scan that revealed activity in my heels and sacroiliac joint and suggested the likelihood of ankylosing spondylitis. Had that bone scan not been available, I would not have received the right diagnosis as quickly, and I cannot imagine how things would have turned out then. Most people with my disease go years before getting the right diagnosis; I was damn lucky to get it only six months after the onset of severe symptoms.

If bone scans are harder to come by as a result of the isotope shortage, people like me will be considerably worse off.

I’ve since heard from the owner of the Gaboon viper that was seized in Toronto last week, who wrote to explain the situation from their point of view and their background and philosophy with respect to venomous snake keeping. I wrote back to say good luck sorting everything out, but also that I didn’t agree with keeping venomous snakes in an apartment in a large city.

Even though I think venomous snakes are very interesting, and have several friends and acquaintances who keep venomous snakes (“hot” snakes or “hots,” in herpers’ jargon), I will never keep any myself. Here are my reasons why.

1. They’re illegal. I try to stay on the right side of the law as much as possible. In Quebec, venomous snakes are illegal across the province; elsewhere in Canada, they may be subject to prohibitions at the municipal level; I can’t think of a major city that doesn’t ban them.

As a result, when people keep venomous snakes in defiance of the law, they have to be ridiculously secretive about it. They tend to be very coy about revealing their addresses or indeed the exact numbers and species they keep. They also tend to live in one of those few municipalities where venomous snakes aren’t banned, and to keep quiet about it for fear that they will be banned as soon as their presence is discovered. And they tend to socialize mostly with other venomous snake keepers, because anyone who knows what you keep and where you live is a security risk — someone who could rat you out later on if your relationship turns sour. Hanging out with people who also keep hots ensures trust in a mutually assured destruction kind of way.

If a venomous snake collection is discovered, as my correspondent found out, it’s guaranteed to get media attention. Technically, you’re in less legal trouble than if the authorities caught you with a grow op or a meth lab, but that’s not nearly as newsworthy, in a man-bites-dog sense, as someone who keeps cobras or puff adders in a small apartment. Those who claim that there’s no such thing as bad press has never found themselves tut-tutted on the national news because their saw-scaled viper got loose. And, by the way, I’ve observed that the people who tend to get into this kind of trouble do not do well with the media. (I have a media background, and even I wouldn’t be able to brazen my way out of this sort of thing.)

A substantial part of the enjoyment I get from snake-keeping is being able to share what I learn — to blog about them, to write articles, to post photos. I couldn’t do that nearly as easily if the snakes I kept were venomous. I’d certainly have to do it anonymously, or be invisible to my community. So there’s no point in doing so, from that point of view.

2. They’re fucking dangerous. I know, I know: duh. But it bears repeating and emphasizing, because I think a lot of people haven’t quite internalized just how dangerous they are. Like many exotic animals, venomous snakes can lull you into a false sense of security — by which I mean that because they don’t try to kill you at every opportunity, it’s possible for a beginning keeper to go some time before getting into trouble. You can make a mistake a dozen times before that same mistake gets you bitten (or, again to use the lingo, “tagged”). As any experienced hot keeper will tell you, it’s not a matter of if, but when. If you keep hots, you will, at some point, get bitten.

Then what? Antivenom costs thousands of dollars per vial, and it can take dozens of vials to treat a particularly nasty bite. And each vial has an expiry date, so this is an ongoing expenditure. This assumes, as well, that an effective antivenom exists for the weirdo exotic hot snake you keep: African bush vipers (Atheris), for example, have none, and antivenoms for other species aren’t necessarily effective.

You also have to own your own antivenom, because you can’t expect your local hospital to keep exotic antivenoms for snakes found halfway around the world. In Canada, the only hospitals to keep antivenom in stock are those where rattlesnakes are found; they’re meant for people who get tagged by a massasauga at the cottage, not people who had an oopsie with their pet fer-de-lance. So unless you have your own, they have to fly it in from another location, and try, in the meantime, to prevent you from dying on them. This is exciting enough with neurotoxic venom, which shuts down your autonomic systems and puts you on a ventilator; it’s a lot more fun with hemotoxic venom, which melts the flesh off your bones.

And then, when you’ve fully recovered, you discover that your health insurance, public or otherwise, doesn’t cover some or all of your medical costs (such as, for example, that $25,000 in antivenom). And that doesn’t even cover the liability you face if your snake bites someone else. (Which happens more often than you might think: “Hey, check out my viper!” NOM! “Oh, shit!”)

Me, I’m kind of averse to pain, mutilation, death, spending tens thousands of dollars on antivenom, and getting sued for every penny I own.

3. I don’t need to do it. A lot of snake keepers have this funny idea that keeping hots is something you graduate to — that keeping non-venomous snakes is only something you do for practice until you get to the main event. This is not helped by certain hot keepers who act like they’re God’s gift, lording it over the rest of us chickenshits who stick to colubrids and pythons.

Seriously, guys: you’re not helping the rest of us. Bad enough that the first question we always get is whether what we keep is poisonous. (Answer: “Of course not. We’re crazy, not stupid.”) It’s not fun having to reassure friends, landlords, building inspectors, town councillors and the like that everything we have is safe, friendly and tame — and that that’s all we’re interested in.

Honestly, we need to get over this fascination with deadly snakes simply because they are deadly. There are plenty of interesting snakes out there that not only can’t hurt you, they wouldn’t want to if they could. There are snakes out there that are the tamest animals you could ever encounter in the wild. The fact that they’re tame and safe does not make them uninteresting. But, unfortunately, the people making wildlife documentaries don’t seem to agree — and I have to admit that a snake just sitting there, hanging out, doesn’t make for great television. But you know what else makes for great television? Awesome explosions (see also: half of the Discovery Channel’s prime time programming). Thing is, I don’t necessarily want some of that in my spare bedroom. See what I mean?

If you get off on facing death, I’d rather you do something else. Get a motorcycle or something.

Now, as I said earlier, I have several friends and acquaintances who keep venomous snakes. What do I have to say about that?

I’m reassured by the fact that the hot keepers I know well are extremely responsible and careful about it — not least because any mistake they make could be terminal for them, and make things difficult for their friends. While they’d be the first to advocate a permit system like Florida’s, they self-regulate as best as they can. Experienced keepers mentor the beginners to make sure they learn the proper procedures, which include the right way to use hooks, grab sticks, restraining tubes and trap boxes, and proper caging and security (i.e., “an escape-proof cage in an escape-proof room,” as one put it).

The problem is that not everyone gets into this mentoring system. Experienced hot keepers will be the first to tell you that it’s too damn easy to get a deadly snake. A few years ago, when I was paying closer attention to such things, I knew where to go and who to talk to if I wanted to buy a cobra, mamba or bushmaster. Young hotshots who don’t want to learn from their elders, or who aren’t willing to wait, don’t have to. The mentoring system only works if the experienced hot keepers are the gatekeepers who can determine who gets access to the hots. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It’s more democratic — who appointed these guys as arbiters of who does and doesn’t play with deadly snakes? — but it means that a lot of dolts get in over their heads.

In the absence of a permit system for venomous snake keeping that is legally enforceable, our choice is between unfettered access, mitigated somewhat by municipal ordinances, and a complete and total ban. Truth be told, there isn’t much political capital to be had in creating a permit system — there just aren’t enough people doing it. (What can I say? More people smoke pot than keep copperheads.) But enough people do it that occasionally one of them, whether they’re a n00b or someone a bit more experienced and responsible — which, to be fair, is what my correspondent sounds like — gets in the news.

Five and a half years (and two cameras) ago, I went down to Smiths Falls to watch the arrival of Canadian Pacific #2816, an H1b 4-6-4 Hudson steam locomotive built in 1930. After its restoration, CP ran it as a public relations and excursion train between 2001 and 2008; it’s been in storage since. Here, at last, are the photos from my trip to Smiths Falls on June 11, 2004, where I jostled with about a hundred other railfans as we took picture after picture of that rarity of rarities, a steam locomotive operating on a Class I main line.

(One thing I remember from that day was just how quiet a steam locomotive is: at rest, it’s basically a big kettle, pinging away. They’re much quieter than diesels.)