How half a tonne of hard drives and a PhD student delivered our first-ever image of a black hole
The problem with satire is not that it mocks and belittles; that's the point. The problem is that social media has rendered it both quaint and futile
The bursting, beautiful shelves of famous bibliophile:
Washington Post – “Amid the decluttering craze, we asked José Andrés, Andrew Sean Greer and other famous book lovers for the stories behind their collections.”The Complete Review at twenty
The site went live 31 March 1999, but the first reviews (i.e. actual content) were posted at the complete review on 5 April 1999, which makes that the official start date/anniversary of the site -- yes, twenty years ago today. A relic from the previous millennium, the site has puttered along steadily ever since, with over 4300 titles now under review and (more or less -- sorry, not tomorrow) daily coverage at this Literary Saloon (that since August 2002 -- the weblog was a later addition).
I suppose I should note and comment on the occasion -- though it's hard for me to think of it as an occasion: not much changes hereabouts, and hitting twenty doesn't come with a new batch of grand insights (even as the internet, and the literary scene and literary coverage on it, have of course been transformed over the course of these two decades). Part of what I like about the site, and what I do, is that it's more or less exactly like it always was (just with evermore reviews ...).
The fundamentals of the site remain unchanged: aggregating and providing links to as many available book reviews, as well collecting representatiGve quotes (as opposed to what winds up getting used for back-cover blurbs) from various review-sources; my own reviews; as well as (at this Literary Saloon), pointers to and occasional commentary about the literary news of the day.
For a while I also maintained the complete review Quarterly, but that was impossible to sustain in any meaningful form. In particular, I soon found that that I had little interest in functioning in any sort of editorial capacity -- hence also the site has become even more 'my' site: my reviews, my interests, my voice. I believe (in other words: tell myself) the site has benefitted from the narrower (and, I suppose, more personal) focus.
When I started the site, it seemed to me that coverage of and interest in fiction in translation had diminished to ridiculously low levels in the US (and probably the UK, too), and I did shift the original, more general focus of the site more in that direction; I note with relief that ca. 2000 was probably the nadir, and it's nice to see how things have improved and that there's so much more interest and activity (and sites and pages to link to) in that area now. Books in translation are perhaps still a bit of a niche-area, but at least it's a much, much larger one now.
It's gratifying to see continuing great interest, from around the world, in the site and what's on offer here, and I'm glad to see that the complete review continues to be of interest and use to a large and very diverse readership.
As to the future -- well, I daren't look ahead twenty more years, but for now see no reason why it shouldn't ... putter along as usual for the foreseeable future.
Onward to the 5000th review !
No place for a paranoid: RIPA, Abbie Hoffman, and other books of bomb-making
It’s a story you’ll struggle to find on any mainstream news service, so thank goodness that technologists tend to be generally liberal and sane as well as technologically knowledgeable and proficient.
The Register has a long report on ‘JFL’, the first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime. And he’s a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.
There are a number of complications, and while it’s possible to read the entire history of the case (which you should) as the hounding of one man by security forces bent on conviction, whose prosecution finally succeeded only on the basis of the accused trying to avoid such harassment, we’re aware that the police are unlikely to simply walk away from a man behaving shiftily while bearing traces of high explosive; to do nothing was never going to be an option.
It’s the methods used, and the inferences drawn, that concern us. JFL was allegedly told, pursuant to demands that he hand over the keys to encrypted computer files, that: “There could be child pornography, there could be bomb-making recipes… Unless you tell us we’re never gonna know… What is anybody gonna think?” The presumption of innocence was a long way off.
The fact is, there were bomb-making recipes, and not in the computer files: the judgement also took into account a number of books in JFL’s possession: “on gun manufacture, a book on methamphetamine production and an encryption textbook” – all, apparently, available from Amazon. (We don’t know what they are, but this, this and this would all fit the bill – covers below.)
The Uncle Fester books in particular (Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture, above centre) have a long and dodgy history. A pseudonym of Steve Preisler, whose other publications include Silent Death (describing routes for manufacturing nerve gases) and Bloody Brazilian Knife Fightin’ Techniques– Fester and his publisher, the much-missed Loompanics, faced many legal challenges over the years, frequently cited in court cases. In 2007, a Denver bookstore successfully fought a court order to turn over purchaser details for one of Loompanic’s Fester titles.
The other book quoted in the Register article is Abbie Hoffman’s seminal Steal This Book, which the judge in JFL’s case described as “a book that detailed how to make a pipe bomb”. It does indeed – as you can see from this online version(Steal This eBook?) – although it also includes advice on starting a pirate radio station, living in a commune, preparing a legal defense, and obtaining a free buffalo from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Hoffman’s work too has a long history of controversy – not least frequent wrangling with bookstores unhappy that their copies kept going missing.
In the Legal Advice section of Steal This Book, Hoffman gives the following advice to those who find themselves in custody:
Any discussion about what to do while waiting for the lawyer has to be qualified by pointing out that from the moment of arrest through the court appearances, cops tend to disregard a defendant’s rights. Nonetheless, you should play it according to the book whenever possible as you might get your case bounced out on a technicality. When you get busted, rule number one is that you have the right to remain silent. We advise that you give only your name and address. There is a legal dispute about whether or not you are obligated under the law to do even that, but most lawyers feel you should.
It’s a shame to see that a book derided in JFL’s court has as much relevance today as it did in 1971. The defendant’s right to silence was the core liberty overridden by Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) which came into force at the beginning of October 2007, nominally aimed – of course – at terrorism, but employed in this case despite the fact that all suspicion of terrorism was dropped long before trial and JFL was sentenced under RIPA Part III “as a general criminal rather than a threat to national security”. Furthermore, the judge diverted from normal court procedures because, he said, “I was satisfied you would not tell the Probation Service anything significant further that I saw no purpose in obtaining a pre-sentence report which is normally a prerequisite for someone of no previous convictions who has not previously received a prison sentence.” Such reports would have done much to explain JFL’s behaviour.