The Eschaton Is Here

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross is a science-fiction book about a universe where a technological singularity (The Eschaton, aptly named after the End Of Everything) happened and spread humanity to the stars, while giving them cornucopia machines, basically nanotechnology capable of producing almost everything from cold air. The book is set in the Republic, one of the colonies the Eschaton created, which gets "attacked" by the Festival, an infovore civilization trying to assimilate as much information as possible, wrecking havoc on the political structure of the Republic in the process.

The book tells basically a straight-forward spy story, pitting an agent of the Eschaton and a UN weapons inspector, both trying to keep the Republic from violating causality by travelling back in time and arriving at the hot spot of the conflict before the Festival did. The Eschaton isn't very keen on causality violations, because that's the only way it's creation could be undone.

Singularity Sky is an interesting read, but flawed insofar as the Singularity it is named for takes a back seat to rather conventional space battles and spy/counter-spy games. I'd rather had some more information about post-singularity earth and the ramifications of a god-like structure that really does meddle in human affairs instead of lengthy descriptions of space battles (which are, at least, physically plausible and not the usual space-opera tripe) and the protagonist's problems escaping the Republic's secret police. Another problem of the book is Stross' tendency to use scientific and technological terms and abbreviations without defining or explaining any. Can be a little jarring if you have to look up a term (like "gray goo", for example) to understand what's happening.

The Giggle Loop

Keeping up the religious theme.

I like Coupling. It's funny. But I never even remotely believed the abstruse Situations Jeff likes to describe, could be true. Enter: the Giggle Loop.

My girlfriend's grandmother died on Saturday. She was well over 80 and had suffered a stroke a couple of weeks before and hadn't really recovered, so it was only a question of time. The family took it quite well, my girlfriend's grandfather was struck hardest. My girfriend's grandparents were the last real catholics in the family, from her parents down they don't care much for the church at all or are as atheistic as I am. But a catholic funeral is tradition, and you don't mess with tradition in a small village where religion equals catholicism.

I understand the point of funerals, of wakes. Say goodbye to the departed, come to terms with the loss. Perfectly understandable, perfectly ok. But, here in the catholic heartland, we have something called "Beten". Simply translates to "praying", and that's basically it. People close to the departed come together a day or so before the funeral and pray for his or her admission to heaven. Sounds silly? You don't know half of it.

The community prays a "painful rosary" (and painful it is), which consists of 50 Hail Marys and 5 "Our Father ...", intersped with begging saints to tell god to let the departed into heaven. Some rather obscure things are asked to "pray for her", for example ivory towers, heavenly gates and immaculately concepting virgins.

Now, during this litany I look at my girlfriend, she looks back, and suddenly the silliness of the whole situation gets to us and ... the Giggle Loop strikes. We both try to surpress our sudden amusement by looking somewhere else. I focus on the wooden floor paneling, she digs her nails into her hands to keep from laughing. And everytime we think we have it under control, a casual glance at the other is enough to bring back the urge to giggle - only stronger than before. The prayers don't help much, because the described things become more and more abstruse. I made it through, but barely. Another two minutes of this and it would have been too late. Even so I drew some strange glances from other attendees on the way out, because my amusement was quite visible on my face.

With that and the anti-catholic rant below, I've collected my share of Hell-Points for the month, thank you.

Rant addendum

Bernd says:

Regarding the "in a society without god, everyone is his own god" problem, that's trivial:

It's the old religious argument (apart from, you know, god is just true) against atheism, that man without god would become arrogant, and would not accept higher authority beyond his own will, thus becoming evil against other men who have a different will:

It's been used against many free-thinking groups, and found different answers; if you consider that the biggest atheist movements of the 20th century have been the nazis and the communists, it's even hard to dismiss it out of hand.

I'll give Bernd the communists (gladly, in fact) but the nazis were not atheists for the most part. Various catholic and protestant groups (most notably, the "Deutschen Christen") openly supported them, and there never was a ban on religion in nazi-Germany (only on religion that didn't agree with them). The pope only condemned the nazis when the catholic church didn't get what had been promised to them.

Although it has only been a tangent of my rant, Bernd has some interesting thoughts on abortion, too. Makes me want to re-evaluate my stance on the issue which always has been something along the lines of "do as you wish as long as you leave me alone". Doesn't quite hold up, if one looks at it from a (bio)logical perspective.

Fuckheads like this

are the reason I hate the Catholic Church with a passion normally reserved for worthier targets (Warning: Rant follows).

German Cardinal Joachim Meisner in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel (interview in German, obviously).

Choice quotes:

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Fuckhead says:

"Zunächst kommt nur die Wirklichkeit an das Kind ran, die die Eltern ranlassen. Wenn sie die Wirklichkeit Gottes nicht eröffnen, werden die Kinder zu geistigen Krüppeln."

Translates to:

"At first the only reality reaching the child is the one the parents let filter through. If they don't show (the children) the reality of God, they become spiritual cripples."

Reads as: "We are losing our influence over the younger generation! Quick, find someone to blame other than the church itself, WHICH OF COURSE CAN DO NO FUCKING WRONG!"

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Fuckhead says:

"Aber weil Eltern und Lehrer die Jugend nicht mehr an die Quellen des Lebens führen, kommt es zu Ersatzhandlungen wie etwa zum Griff nach Kondomen und der Pille."

Translates to:

"But because parents and teachers don't show adolescents the sources of life, they commit substitution acts like taking the pill or using condoms"

Reads as: The usual catholic indoctrination. But I like the term "Ersatzhandlung" which makes using condoms or the pill sound like a psychological problem.

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Fuckhead says:

"Ich frage mich manchmal: Leben wir denn in einem Irrenhaus? In der EU-Verfassung etwa hat man auf den Gottesbezug verzichtet. Und wenn Gott in einer Gesellschaft nicht mehr Gott ist, dann fühlt sich jeder einzelne Mensch als Gott."

Translates to:

"I ask myself sometimes: Do we live in an asylum? The EU-constitution does not have a reference to god. And if god isn't god any longer in a society, every single person feels as god."

Reads as: "Separation of church and state? What's next? Democracy? That's not what Your God wants!". I don't get the whole "everyone is god" bit, really. Sounds a tiny bit paranoid.

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Then he cowardly squirms out of the question about the comparison of an abortion-pill with Zyklon B, the gas used to kill countless Jews in WWII, he made in a sermon in January. Fuckhead.

Go read, your God commands you!

Sinfest.