World's Worst Persons in the World, February 25, 2009

From Huffington Post, I caught a video of Keith Olbermann having one of his best World's Worst segments that I've ever seen. It's just funny. To Billo: "You're full of crap". To Sean Hannity: "You don't know your ass from your elbow". Exquisite. Keith still has his mojo. I'd thought it might have been waning.

Ian McEwan

Since reading Atonement during my trip to the UK, I've all of a sudden become fascinated by Ian McEwan. And coincidentally, the New Yorker just recently had a very good and lengthy profile of McEwan. He's at the top of the literary world right now, and I hadn't realized how far back his relative prominence in that world existed. He's been friends with Christopher Hitchens (of political talk show fame) and Martin Amis since the 70's.

He's apparently quite a thinker, interested in science, and does a quite bit of research before writing his books (What good author doesn't?). McEwan also has an interesting family history which includes discovering just a few years ago that he has an older brother born from his mother and father, but when his mother was still married to another man (or was it his father still married to another woman? already mixed up on that).

I see his name quite often now. Maybe he's just high on my radar. He's given some thoughts on John Updike, had his endorsement on the front cover of the Roman Republic history book Rubicon by Tom Holland (another book I picked up during my UK trip), and has been interviewed by Richard Dawkins on being an atheist. Here's McEwan's website, and the Richard Dawkins interview:

The man's all over the place. Err...will he get overexposed??

Atonement by Ian McEwan

It's slow at work and so another book review submitted to Amazon. I don't get enough time to read that many books, but the long plane rides on my UK trip (and no TV at my grandmother's) afforded me the time. I picked up Atonement and McCarthy's The Road at DFW airport while awaiting my departing flight. I almost selected McEwan's Saturday instead but thought perhaps I should read the book that's brought him his recent fame. As I mention in my review, I hadn't yet read any of his work yet. Saturday may be my next novel to read though there are some non-fiction books at the front of my queue. Here's the review:

This was my first Ian McEwan read, and it was a good one. This was an interesting story though not really a whole lot happened in it, and somehow it went for a few hundred pages. The reason for that was McEwan's precise and extensive descriptions of characters' thoughts and the story's various settings. McEwan is rather amazing at imagining the possible details of a one's thoughts, details that most people might not ordinarily be conscious of, but upon reading them ring true. The limited plot is lengthened also by the story being told from several viewpoints, particularly in Part 1. It was all very intelligently done.

But was there really any atonement in this story? At least atonement when it counted? I don't know if the title really applies considering how things turned out.

I hadn't ever planned to see the movie. Seemed to be a chic flick, but after this reading, I plan to rent/on demand it. I guess by being from the England and reading it while on my recent trip there, I appreciated an English story.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I just submitted a book review at Amazon for Cormac McCarthy's book The Road. I had a chance to read it during my trip to the UK recently. Here it is:

I'll confirm what I've read elsewhere here that The Road is dark. And it's almost unrelentingly dark. I won't go any further in that descriptive direction lest I get into giving too much of the sense of the story away. It's not an easy read, but it's a memorable one. I haven't read anything else like it. The Road was my first Cormac McCarthy book. So I don't know if his others are in anyway similar. Also, the writing style is unique and took getting used to early on. I gave it four stars, because it is well written, a deep story in terms of the characters's thoughts and their relationships, and I was kept interested in how the story would turn out. I held off giving it five stars, because the story was a bit limited.

A Nation of Cowards?

Charles Blow, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, had a column today on racism. It was an interesting column and worth reading, but it bothered me that he only focused on white racism towards blacks and ignored a near similar amount of racism by Asians and Hispanics towards blacks. This is at least according to the charts presented. So I submitted a comment criticizing Blow for this. It was an Editor's Selection, and it received 14 reader recommendations. Woo hoo! It's amazing that there are people who read that far into the comments. There were 300+, mine being a little over the 100th. Here it is:

It is bothersome to me that whites apparently have a hidden bias, but it bothers me as well that Mr. Blow in this piece glaringly omits the bias of Asians and Hispanics. According to the Project Implicit graphic, Asians and Hispanics are not far behind whites in their bias and so almost as vastly different as whites are from blacks in a lack of bias. So why does Mr. Blow just focus on whites? It is unfair to focus just on whites when Asians and Hispanics are almost as bad in their bias. Mr. Blow wants to talk about the facts. Well, he should then acknowledge the bias in Asians and Hispanics as well. Focusing just on whites can create a resentment among whites and lead to a less constructive discussion.

I went to the Project Implicit website that Blow references, and it's quite an interesting site. One can take a number of rather fun tests. I took three tests, one about political preference, one I've already forgotten, and the one on racial bias. For anyone reading the above comment, it should come as no surprise that the racial bias test results had me having a strong automatic preference for whites over blacks. The results were based upon how quickly I related photos of black and white people with favorable and unfavorable words. The test started with whites and good words grouped together and blacks and bad words grouped together. Then the groupings were swapped. The website determined that I was slower associating the good words with blacks than I had with whites. I don't know. I thought the switching of the groupings may have messed me up and not made me more neutral. However, I did answer one question on I think it was comfortableness where I as neutral for blacks and had a slight positive towards whites. I was just being honest, but that may have been the key to the results.

I don't think of myself as being racist, but perhaps there is some bias. The question is is bias the same as racism, or is bias a step towards racism. Bias can result from just what one is used to. I grew up in a white neighborhood, went to white schools, and pretty much have white friends. I get along with blacks at work, but admittedly, I don't have any black friends with whom I socialize. I have dated black women and even had a black girlfriend for about a year. I also voted for Barack Obama. Take that, Project Implicit! Anyway, view the test results with what you think they're worth.