The New Netflix Narnia

I am a big fan of Narnia.  The name of this blog derives from a place in the Narnia series.  Many of my most favorite posts on my blog, my neatest ideas, were inspired by Narnia.

My children have a Yoto audiobook player, and every night they fight over who gets to pick the book: will it be Silver Chair, or Dawn Treader, or Last Battle?

In particular Magicians Nephew, I have overhead multiple times, read by Kenneth Branagh, who does an excellent job with the voices of especially Uncle Andrew and Aslan (and who would have made a far better cast for either role).

It's hard to have one favorite book, because they each offer something slightly different.  But one of my favorites is Magician's Nephew, for the reason that it offers the most science-fictional approach to the entire series.  This book tries to answer or explain questions about Narnia, and about travel to other worlds.  It gives us a mechanism of travel, and then presents a vast forest of parallel universes, leaving all of it an open question with the exceptions of our world, Narnia, and Charn.

I love the Magician's Nephew.  And so I really want to like the new Netflix adaptation.  By which I mean, I want the adaptation to be a loving and high-quality adaptation that I can see and enjoy.

Unlike so many others, especially on the internet, my goal isn't to trash adaptations for the sake of trashing things.  I don't get any kind of joy -- not even the joy of making fun of something -- from a bad adaptation of Narnia.

I love this book, and I want to at least enjoy the movie.

Having seen the trailer, let me start with some positives.

Firstly, the casting for Polly Plumber was well done.

Secondly, the visual effects look very interesting, and might do some justice to the creation scene.

Thirdly, I'll admit that Greta Gerwig is a talented director, even if she's the wrong director for this movie.

Fourthly, Meryl Streep is a talented actor, even if she is the wrong actor for this movie.

However, from the trailer, and from comments from the director, the impression I get is that Gerwig really wanted to make yet another film adaptation of His Dark Materials (the book series starting with Golden Compass), and got the rights to Narnia instead.

Which... is kind of fine.  I can't begrudge a director having preferences.  If she prefers the tone or themes or focus of His Dark Materials, she should direct a movie with the same tone and themes and focus as His Dark Materials.

But, and this is my only thing, but don't make a film based on His Dark Materials and then call it Narnia.

It's funny, you actually don't have to purchase the rights to any children's book franchise, at all.  You don't need to pick between rights to Narnia or rights to His Dark Materials.  You can still make a movie about things like magic talking animals, parallel worlds, flying horses, giantess witches, all of it.  None of that, on its own, is copyrightable.  That is all scene-a-fair for children's parallel world fantasy.  You can mix in the Magisterium and Scandinavian witches of HDM and the talking animals and magic rings of Magician's Nephew, and make a new and unique film about the dangers of parallel universe exploration, and not pay a single dime in adaptation rights.

Arguably, I might have enjoyed a generic story about children on a science fantasy quest through parallel universes hunted by an evil witch from a ruined world, ending in a flight on a winged horse.

But when you tell me that your story isn't a generic story, but is in fact Magician's Nephew, then that's what I should get when I open the box.  And I don't think that's what is inside this box.

And the trailer itself bears commenting.  I like Led Zeppelin.  I like Chronicles of Narnia.  I do not like them mixed together.  When you put Stairway to Heaven playing over the scene of Strawberry (newly named Fledge, the father of all flying horses) taking off into the sky, you're asking me to connect Fledge and Led Zeppelin's Icarus mascot.

It's worth point out, maybe, why there is a flying horse in Magician's Nephew.  It began as a normal horse in London, pulling a horse-drawn taxi cab.  Through the events of the story, Strawberry and his driver Frank end up, to their surprise, in Narnia.  Strawberry gains the ability to talk, which is how we learn that Strawberry is also not terribly bright.  Aslan gives the children a quest, which requires they travel very far.  Realizing they won't complete their quest, Aslan asks Strawberry if he would wish to be a flying horse.  Strawberry really very greatly would like to be a flying horse.  So Aslan calls him Fledge, and he grows wings.  It's a fairly touching scene.  It has a completely different energy to Stairway to Heaven, and that kind of goes back to my point.  A movie with a scene of children riding a flying horse on a quest as Led Zeppelin blasts in the background could be really awesome.  A movie, a scene, some hypothetical movie and scene.  Make that movie!  But this movie is Magician's Nephew, and this scene is supposed to be a touching note about providence and grace.

Which also leads me to suspect, maybe the reason they chose Led Zeppelin as the music track, is that someone in the room saw the scene of Fledge taking off into the sky, and thought "Oh cool, it's like that Led Zeppelin angel", and suggested it, and then the suggestion was taken seriously.  And just being able to suspect that line of thought as an explanation for the trailer, by itself, tells me a lot about the quality of adaptation I could expect.

I love Magician's Nephew.  When they were making the original set of films, I so hoped they would adapt it.  Now there is an adaptation.  Though I would love if this were the kind of adaptation I could love, I have every reason to think that it won't be. I likely won't watch it.

The Little-Known Hobbit Adaptation that Is Superior to the Peter Jackson Films

Even though JRR Tolkien's classic The Hobbit is one of the most universally beloved children's books of the past several centuries, still to-date there has only ever been one feature-length adaptation of the book.  This sole adaptation was produced in 1977 by the Rankin/Bass studio.  This same studio gave us masterpieces such as the stop-motion Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reinder, the animated Frosty the Snowman, and The Flight of Dragons.  Their adaptation of The Hobbit was originally a made-for-TV movie, so it has a reduced length (77 minutes), and clear jump points meant for commercial breaks.  It is also meant for children.  And because it is meant for children, it captures the themes of the original perfectly, in beautifully hand-drawn scenes, with perfect musical settings for the many songs throughout.

Perhaps no one has ever tried to adapt The Hobbit since then, because Rankin/Bass did an essentially perfect job.  It could only have been better if it were three hours long.

Nevertheless, there are two other films worth mentioning.  The first, which most people are aware of, was a trilogy of major motion pictures based on a Lord of the Rings fanfic written by Guillermo del Torro, and directed by Peter Jackson.  This adaptation borrowed heavily from other fanfics of the era, like Legolas by Laura, and worked in a lot of Legendarium
material.  It is worth mentioning in this category at all because the films are set during the same timeframe as The Hobbit, so that Bilbo is out on his quest while the events of the movies are taking place.  These films are feature-length adaptations.  But they are not adaptations of The Hobbit.

The second, which very few people have heard of, was created in 1966 by a nearly-unknown (to me) Czech animation studio.  This is an adaptation, but not feature-length.  The animation company had early on acquired the movie rights to a tiny children's book no one had ever heard of.  In the 1960s, suddenly, Tolkien's writings skyrocketed in popularity, and this company found they held rights to a major property.  In order to maintain those rights, per the contract, they needed to use them.  They needed to produce and air an actual version of The Hobbit.  They had very little time or budget to do so.  You can read the first-hand history of its creation here.  And you can view the entire thing on YouTube.

What was produced is a short, less-than-twelve minute film that I think encapsulates the heart and charm of The Hobbit, in its short, hastily-produced format.

I had first become aware of this version a decade ago, and I have returned to it now because my three-year-old keeps asking me about Gandalf and Bilbo who are on the posters and box covers all over my house.  People like to malign it, but I want to defend it.  This movie is The Hobbit.  But let me lay some groundwork.

Firstly, The Hobbit is a book for children.  I first read it in elementary school, which is when children should first read it.  The Lord of the Rings is for young adults, teenagers or older.  But The Hobbit is for children.  It is told by a strongly present narrator, whose voice is that of a kindly old man, likely by a fire, telling you this tale.  It's not quite meant for a child who needs an adult to read, but also a child not quite old enough to read this sort of book without an adult's presence.  The imaginary elements and features of the world are free-flowing, and alternate from wondrous places, friendly figures, and horrible monsters.

Secondly, The Hobbit is not a lore dump.  Though there are aspects of The Hobbit that will be included into the larger Legendarium, this book is not intended to present the lore.  It was not originally written with any of the lore in mind, either, but had to be worked back into the Legendarium that had already been planned.  Fans of The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion, or the rest of Tolkien's writings, will often try to view adaptations through the lens of consistency the lore.  It's all about the lore, and representing all the deep connections, and exactly pronouncing Quenya names.  And this is a tension that has always existed in Tolkien's writings, because The Hobbit does not care about the lore.  The Hobbit does not care about who the Necromancer is, what Bilbo's ring is, about how dragons swallowed the seven dwarven rings, or that Gandalf's sword Glamdring was forged by Elven lord whats-his-face, the thirdborn son of so-and-so, or about the balrog that technically is there somewhere in the goblin caves during this book, or that Gollum is actually a deformed hobbit bent by the ring's power, or that Gandalf is a Maiar named Olorin.  The Hobbit doesn't care.  While those elements are relevant to the larger Legendarium, they are entirely irrelevant to The Hobbit, or the intended audience of The Hobbit, or the enjoyment of The Hobbit.  For The Hobbit, all of the fantastical elements are only about the wonder and adventure they present in this book, unmoored to the rest of the Legendarium.

So sure, the stone trolls have the sword of the Elf-lord Turgon stashed in their mud cave.  Why not?

Thirdly, The Hobbit is properly a book about... a hobbit.  It is about Bilbo Baggins, the Baggins of Bag-End, and a descendant of the great Bull-Roarer Took who rode a horse into the Goblin Wars.  The story is a classic story structure, of the normal everyman going into the unknown and growing by overcoming obstacles until he becomes a hero.  Bilbo begins as a timid country gentleman accustomed to comfort and frequent meals.  He begins gradually learning how to use his wits to defeat monsters far larger and stronger than himself, until before long he is single-handedly confronting a small battalion of gigantic spiders with taunts and dagger stabs, striking from the invisible air, sending them running in fear.  By the end, Bilbo sneaks alone straight into the lair of a gigantic fire-breathing dragon and snatches a treasure right from under its nose.  That is what The Hobbit is about.

One minimum requirement to being an adaptation, and counting as an adaptation, is that you have to actually be about the same thing that the book is about.

While Peter Jackson's movies are about heroic dwarves and vengeful orcs and love triangles with Legolas and confronting the Necromancer (Who is revealed to be Sauron in disguise! It's a tie-in!), the 1966 Czech adaptation is actually about the same thing The Hobbit is about.  It's about a hobbit.

People critiquing this film on the basis of the changes are largely looking at it from a Legendarium lens.  There was no princess of Dale!  Dale had been burnt nearly two-hundred before the events of the story, not just a few months ago!  Thorin Oakenshield wasn't a human general, he was a dwarf!  The monsters weren't tree-ogres, they were stone trolls!  Bilbo didn't use the Arkenstone to shoot down Smaug!  It was Bard, the great-great-great grandson of the former king of Dale, using only a long bow and his last arrow!  ... okay, the last one is a poetic note that is rather important thematically... but still.

But I'm looking it at from the standpoint of my three points above.  This is a movie for children.  It has a short length, it's even less scary than the 1977 Rankin/Bass adaptation, it has the same kindly narrator, it makes use of the same free-flowing imagination (such as the liberal changes).  This is also ultimately about a hobbit named Bilbo on a hero's journey, overcoming challenges through wit and courage.

People also critique this film on the basis of the production values, which are really low.  Though produced  by professionals, it is not incorrect to say this has the same quality as a student film.  Today, this could be made by most elementary school classrooms.  But the fidelity of an adaptation is a different issue than the quality of an adaptation.  In terms of fidelity, the low-budget illustrations succeed in capturing the fairy-tale imagination of the original book.

Is it a great movie?  As a short film adaptation of a children's book, with imaginative artwork, for children too young for the real adaptation (Rankin/Bass 1977), yes.  Otherwise, it's maybe a fun curiosity for adult audiences.

Is it a better adaptation of The Hobbit than the Peter Jackson films?  Yes.  Because Peter Jackson's films are not even an adaptation of The Hobbit.  The Jackson films get the lore right.  But again, from the standpoint of The Hobbit, the lore is the most irrelevant part.  They get nothing else right.  The Jackson films are not for children (far too scary and violent).  They deliberately downplay the childlike imagination, taking instead the stance of "serious elf movie."  They include heavy and boring lore dumps everywhere, with excessive over-pronunciation of Quenya words.  They are focused on everything except for the main character, the hobbit of the title.  Bilbo remains essentially the same timid hobbit by the time he goes into Smaug's cave, as he was leaving his hole in Hobbiton.  These movies adapt something else, some other set of material, which had been granted the rights to use names and ideas from the book.

That isn't to say that the Peter Jackson movies aren't better as movies.  Going on only metrics like production values or acting talent or cinematic experience, they arguably dominate the other two.  But when ranked as adaptations of The Hobbit, they don't make it onto the list for consideration.

So when it comes to adaptations of The Hobbit to film, the short Czech animated adaptation is in second place.  Which it takes almost by default, as there is only one other contender.  The first place goes to the Rankin/Bass adaptation, which still remains the only feature-length adaptation of The Hobbit to this date.

It is possible, if I had to rate this movie without knowledge of the Peter Jackson films for comparison, I'd probably be much more negative.  But also probably not; for showing to my son, it's perfect.  I don't like that it changed so many things for no apparent reason.  I think it's silly a princess is there, and the other characters (Thorin and the watchman who fell asleep) are completely undeveloped in this ten minute film.  I don't like that they left out the spiders, or the elves and the barrel ride, or the battle of five armies, or the visit to Rivendell.  Those are all great scenes.  I do think the switch from trolls to "groans" was kind of cool.  And I love the artwork used in the animation.  Or what passes for animation... which is a camera rotating on a sequence of still images.

It would be nice if someone with as much love and attention for the original book that Jackson held for Lord of the Rings, could produce a movie adaptation with as much care as Rankin/Bass did, but longer, to include even more of the places and people of the book.  Until then, the Rankin/Bass adaptation of 1977 remains the only (and the greatest) feature-length adaptation of The Hobbit.

Generative AI and the End of Chesterton's Fence

Chesterton's Fence is a principle of caution, that is especially important in engineering, and especially software engineering.  The principle originates with GK Chesterton, in the form of a parable, paraphrased as follows:

Suppose you arrive in a new town, and find that the central street of the town has a fence stretching across it.  This seems like a very dumb thing, and you can't think of any reason why anyone would put this fence here.  So you decide, it would be best if you remove the fence entirely.  Chesterton says, no.  If you don't know why the fence is there, then you should not take it down.  Find out why it is there first, and then you can take it down.

Or more succinctly, don't change a system until you know why it was put in its current condition.

In software engineering, this "fence" is often some class or method written in a confusing manner, or some algorithm that seems less than optimally implemented.  There is a temptation to always complain about code, and to always want to refactor everything, especially things that seem obviously wrong or suboptimal.  But if we try to refactor a block of code without understanding the original intention, we will likely only make things worse, or break something more complicated than we understood at first glance.

To really understand the principle, you have to recognize that things like fences, software blocks, or legal policies, are not the kinds of things that just happen.  People make them.  If a man builds a fence stretching across a street, he has to be pretty intent about doing so.  If he is intent on doing so, then he has some idea in his head that putting this fence here is a good idea.  If he didn't, he would not have built the fence.  So there must be some reason, even if we don't know it.

If a software dev writes 200 lines of spaghetti code with jumps and labels, then he must have an idea in his head that this is a good idea.  There must be some reason, even if it doesn't seem obvious.  Now, maybe we can accomplish the same goal without the gotos.  But to do that, we have to know the goal.  If we don't know why the dev thought he needed gotos, then we can't make the code better.  It will only become worse.

Finding out should take the form of tracking blames, looking at notes in old PRs or tickets, or asking the original author.  But you should always take the time to find out.

Now here is the actual point:  In the world of ChatGPT and LLMs and AI-generated code, we can no longer apply Chesterton's Fence to any code written after 2023.

Prior to 2023, if you saw a block of code, you had to assume that a human typed those characters with some intentionality aimign at some purpose, and that therefore there was some reason for them, however so vague or misinformed.

Since the arrival of AI-generated code, you cannot assume that.  Maybe a person wrote this for a good reason, or a bad reason.  Or maybe an LLM wrote it for literally no reason at all.

The problem of hallucinations in the generative AI that many software engineers have come to rely on means that there is no actual agency or intentionality behind the creation of code.  The AI that writes the code is never trying to do whatever it is the engineer intends; the AI is instead always and only and ever trying to fill in a word that is most likely in the situation.  Often, that word leads to properly functioning and sensible code.  Maybe.  But it doesn't have to.  And once an LLM has started spouting nonsense, then the next most likely word is also nonsense, and so on.

Entire purposeless code structures can appear in this way, unrelated to any actual function of the program, simply because once it starts making it, it makes the most sense to finish it.

With a mechanical agent that builds things for no reason simply because a stochastic process got it started, the principle behind Chesterton's Fence can no longer apply.  You can look at code written since 2023, and in some cases you might be exactly correct to conclude that there is no reason for it to exist in the way that it does.

Or not.  Maybe it was written by a human for a reason you don't understand.  Who knows.

LLMs really should not be used to create any code that is expected to work correctly.  If the code is only supposed to work qualitatively, maybe for the purpose of a demo, then an LLM can be helpful.  If the code is only supposed to show how to use some API call, then an LLM can be helpful.  And for languages like C++ requiring lots of boilerplate (like filling in rule of 3/5 in classes), an LLM can cut down on a lot of excess typing.

Just please do not mindlessly commit the output of an LLM to a real working codebase without making sure it's doing what you want it to.  If for no other reason, then because you'll break Chesterton's Fence.

The Shroud of Turin, The Image of Edessa, and Why Neither Belongs to Jesus

The Shroud of Turin is back in the news.  Many of the content creators I follow have been claiming the Shroud is real, in light of recent studies using x-rays to analyze the plant fibers of the Shroud.

I think the most egregious is the "face of Jesus" made by asking a generative AI to create a face based on the Shroud of Turin.  If you ask a generative AI to generate an image of a face, it literally must create an image of a face.  And that's what they got.  They got an image of a face.  It'd be curious to see, if they kept asking it the same thing, how different the faces would be.  I'm guessing broadly similar, but notably different.  Especially if you asked Google's Gemini.

I have always been dismissive of the Shroud.  My point has been, the eyewitness evidence of Jesus' burial and resurrection is inconsistent with the Shroud of Turin, so that even if the Shroud is miraculous and from the 1st century, it just means it's a miraculous 1st century burial shroud of some other guy.  I want to stress, this is a rhetorical position.  The Shroud is not miraculous, and is not 1st century; I'm simply emphasizing that I do not need to know its date or means of creation to know it is not the burial cloth of Jesus.

I made a kind of flippant post recently.  However, the Shroud of Turin is actually a highly studied religious artifact, and maybe warrants more than such a brief dismissal.  So I thought I'd take some time to go into more depth on it.

I am going to again state the case against authenticity.  That is, that the Shroud is not the burial cloth of Jesus.

The argument I am going to make does not in any way rely on the carbon dating data, on modern replication attempts, on historical records from medieval France calling it a forgery, nor on any modernist, naturalist, or anti-supernaturalist viewpoint.

My argument will only be based on, firstly, the eyewitness accounts of the burial and Resurrection of Jesus that we have in the New Testament.  Secondly, on the historical descriptions of the Image of Edessa, the most likely historical candidate for the Shroud's pre-Turin existence, taken out of the patristic sources.  These are the sources Christians should look to.  Based on careful analysis of these, and these only, I will show that Jesus was not covered in a shroud at the moment of his Resurrection, and that the Image of Edessa is a later accretion to the original legend of King Abgar V.

Me and My Life

My name is Reece.  I am a PhD in physics, a father of two, and a husband (to one).  I have been authoring this blog irregularly since 2012.

When I began blogging, I was an unmarried graduate student who spent most of his time reading books, solving math problems, and programming computers.  I had a lot more time to write, but also more interesting things to write about.  And maybe I felt more cocksure about posting any silly thing that came to mind.

Now I have two children and a career.  I don't really have time to write, and even when I do I have to write other stuff instead.  I have even less time to read, and even when I do, I have to read other stuff instead.

I'm not going to turn this into a rant about not having free time.  I instead just want to leave a note for the handful of people who might read this: I'm sorry I can't post any more.  These are the things I would post about, or started writing posts about, and never finished; but at least you can see what they were.

Firstly, now that I've finished graduate school, I spend a lot less time thinking about ideas in fundamental physics.  Most of my day is spent programming computers that process data from a national laboratory.  So ideas about probability swords or alternate spacetime geometries occupy fewer of my own compute cycles.

Actually, in the time I have to think about anything, I usually think about questions of theology, not science.  Which means most of the things I have to talk about are related to religion, and in particular to Christianity.  Things like, should I baptize my children?  Or what is the meaning of the Lord's Supper?  While I think these are fascinating questions, probably most people don't, and people smarter than myself have already applied all of their brainpower to the issues.

I would love, though, to go back to the days of writing about the probabilities of alien life, of faeries in phase space, of interpretations of quantum mechanics, time travel, field theories and speculative physics and the rest.  I still have some things I've never said.

For instance, I have been planning since the 2010s a blog post titled "All the Multiverses" that walks through all of the different ideas floating around today that all go under the name "Multiverse" or speak of a "parallel universe", and try to clarify how these ideas are distinct.  I see way too much confusion on it, the most egregious being the confusion of Everett's many-worlds hypothesis with some sort of multiverse of counterfactuals, or confusing the quantum interpretation with time travel, or other things.

I have been planning since 2023 a blog post in the "Positions I Don't Hold" series about quantum interpretation, specifically about Everett's hypothesis.  I think the name of the blog and some posts maybe give the idea I hold to a many-world's view.  I don't, and I have reasons I don't, but the main reason I don't is that I favor the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics, because I think it just makes sense.  So since the Bohmian view just makes sense, I don't bother with other views that are weird, quantum-woo-woo, mystical nonsense.

I have a blog post I started authoring in 2014 dissecting evolution, not particularly trying to prove or disprove it, but to illustrate the multiple ways that people who do believe in it misinterpret it to give a teleology to events, or see things from some view of a direction of human progress.  The main point was that just because someone claims to believe in an idea called "evolution," it didn't imply the person was actually any better educated on the actual science of evolution; usually it only means the person is willing to accept cultural norms from authority figures without really  thinking about them.  I have I think the entire thing written, but I never posted it.  I guess I felt it needed more editing, but I didn't want to do whatever was left, and it got forgotten.

I started another post in 2015 titled "On the Operation of DeLoreans" where I tried to actually examine the multiple-timeline theory of time travel from films such as Back to the Future, from the perspective of physics.  In physics, we know exactly how time travel would work and it'd work according to ideas in GR, which I've written about before.  But most people don't care what GR says and want to hear what Hollywood says, and Hollywood says timelines would bifurcate and you could change the past and etc.  So what would that mean, that timelines bifurcate?  And could it mean anything less than the creation of a new universe, with all of the mass-energy present in that new universe?  I wanted to flesh that out as a means of finally putting that idea to rest, in some place, that actually physically analyzed the concept.

I never spoke much about the actual science things that interested me.  Those relate to general relativity, and in particular to the emission of gravitational waves from compact stellar objects.  That was my thesis topic.  I generally jealously guard these ideas, as I think they might actually lead to publication and I want to be the one to publish them.  But also, if I'm honest, I don't have time and I never will. So why be so guarded?   These ideas would relate to novel methods of calculation, or potential measurements of gravitational waves from the interiors of stellar objects.

When I started the blog, I was actually mostly motivated to share theories about the Kingkiller Chronicles and A Song of Ice and Fire.  I actually re-read all of the ASOIAF books (that were then published, and, as it happens, which are still the only ones published) and took extensive notes in my kindle to use in the post and then... my kindle just lost all of the notes, to the great bit bucket in the sky.  I don't even remember what I had to say about ASOIAF, and all I'd have to say today is, don't read the books expecting a conclusion, and if you do read the books then consider it a trilogy and pretend the others after Storm of Swords don't exist.

I have no energy to write out speculation on what's going to happen, because it has become clear to me that Martin doesn't know what's going to happen and is just making it all up; or he does know, and it really sucks and is infuriatingly unsatisfying.

I also wanted to speculate on the King Killer Chronicles.  I have a few posts up, and my post on Dena and her Patron still gets some traffic.  I haven't gone back to it because... I wrote those posts 13 years ago and Rothfuss still hasn't updated the series.  Once, on a Reddit AMA someone asked about why he chose to give the map that he did,  and Rothfuss promised to write a blog post about it... but that was ten years ago and I never saw the blog post.  On a later AMA the next year I asked him why he didn't write the blog post, but he didn't answer that question (in fairness I probably missed his window of attention).  According to Rothfuss, the entire trilogy was finished before the first book was published.  So how does it take over 13 years to get the last one out?   Was he just lying?  Does he also not know what happens?  Or (worst of all) he does know, and he did have it written out, and devoted fans who were paying attention guessed or deduced a lot of details, and now he's trying to change everything.  Because that would be a sucky way to punish fans just for paying attention.

For instance, I really believe Rothfuss wanted the reveal about Bredon being Dena's patron to be a huge surprise.  And I think for most people it still will be.  And for the fans who paid attention, it will be a satisfying confirmation that they saw the right clues, and that the author had a direction.  If Rothfuss is delaying because he doesn't want to write that reveal anymore, then it's not worth reading even the books that were "good".

But I actually have two more posts I wrote at the same time as the original three (back in 2012), one about the nature of angels in the series, and another about the identity of the king Kvothe kills.  But I don't have the energy to continue with that series, either.  I've been meaning to write something explaining my theory for why Rothfuss hasn't finished the series, similar to my post about Martin, but since KKC isn't frequently in the news, I just don't even have the motivation for that.  

My theory for Rothfuss isn't the same as for Martin.  For Martin, I think he always intended an ending that will piss off fans, got a preview of how fans react with the TV series, and is deliberately stalling getting to that point.  But with Rothfuss, I think he's firstly milking the status of being an author, but also trying to find some "out" in a rewrite that will still have all the clues but point to different resolutions than the ones fans guessed.  But I don't have the time or motivation to explain why I think that.

I've written about some other book series, and sometimes do movie reviews, but actually, lately I don't even have time to watch anything.  That's about two hours on some specific night, and I don't even have that amount of time.

For a while I was on a DnD kick and posted some ideas related to that.  But I was never able to really get the game that I want, and with the lack of realization of it the ideas sort of dried up.  Maybe I should write a post about my difficulties finding a way to play my ideal game.  I actually feel like I'd have motivation for that.

But lately I mostly think about theological questions.  And for some reason, I feel some kind of guilt posting too many theological posts in a row.  But that's really all I have the motivation to think or write about.

I have two children, so the main issue I've been considering lately is about infant baptism.  I came to faith in the South, and down here even the Methodist churches are Baptist churches.  However, infant baptism is an ancient practice, and the majority of Christians historically, and the majority alive today around the globe, and the majority of Christian traditions, all practice it.  So it's probably worth seriously considering it, and looking at the arguments for and against.  And I did, from several traditions, and looked at it historically, and have conclusions. But I think it's only worthwhile to express my conclusions by also expressing the contrary views, and summarizing those views accurately.

Last August I started writing a blog post about the Shroud of Turin I think conclusively disproving its authenticity.  It was a more serious post than my others (this and that), which were pretty flippant; here I actually scrutinized the primary arguments for authenticity, including its historical provenance as the Image of Edessa (or Mandylion).  All I really have left is some editing and adding citations -- but I haven't found a lot of time to do that.

Most of my life is as a computer programmer.  I write software used at a national laboratory, unrelated to my thesis research.  When I get off work, I'm a husband and father.  I am a part-time student, studying theology -- I can take about 1 class per semester, barely, turning all assignments in late.  I usually go to bed around 2 in the morning, and wake up again at 8.  And while I used to blog about cool stuff, I just can't any more.  Something in my life had to give.  The blog was one of the first things.

I wrote this just to mostly update whoever reads it.  I do think about the blog, and have ideas.  I just don't execute.  But at the same time, in writing this out, I had some ideas for things I might be able to post with less effort.  Or this blog will just become a series of posts of me complaining about my lack of time.

The Actual Fault with the Electoral College

 Every four years in America, we have to explain our confusing presidential election process all over again, and even then people walk away not understanding.  Maybe especially foreigners, who might be more used to popular vote elections and parliamentary systems, are perplexed at how it works and why anyone would ever choose to conduct elections in this way.

Exacerbating this problem is no doubt the fact that while we actually elect the president one way, we pretend that we elect the president in a different way.

What we pretend is as follows: Each state is apportioned a number of "electoral votes", based on population, to select the President.  Citizens of each state go to a polling place and cast a vote for the President.  Whichever candidate wins the majority of the popular vote in a state receives all of that state's electoral votes (with exceptions of Maine and Nebraska), and whichever candidate receives 270 or more electoral votes wins.

The way we actually elect the President is as follows:  Each state is apportioned a number of Electors.  The office of Elector is uniquely invested with the power and responsibility to vote for the President.  The states choose their Electors, and the Electors assemble to cast their votes for the President.

An Elector is like a Representative.  A Representative represents your interests when voting for budgets and federal regulations.  An Elector represents your interests when voting for President.  Just as you have never voted on a federal budget, you have also never voted for the President (unless you are very active in a political party).

Under the Constitution, states are free to pick Electors however they want, provided it accords with representative democracy.  We could imagine many ways of selecting Electors.  But the way most states have actually chosen to select Electors is also probably the stupidest way imaginable, and leads to much confusion.

In most states, every candidate assembles as slate of Electors all pledged to vote for him/her.  These slates of Electors are legally recognized by the election boards, and must swear legal oaths, and face legal penalties for not voting as pledged.  Which slate of Electors is sent to cast ballots is chosen by popular vote.  Citizens are usually presented a ballot with the names of the registered candidates.  While it seems the question being asked of citizens is "Who do you choose as President?" the question actually being asked is "Which slate of Electors do you choose to vote for the President on your behalf?"  Whichever candidate name receives the majority of votes, that candidate's entire slate of Electors is chosen to cast votes for the President on behalf of the entire state.  And because those Electors are all pledged under law to vote for that candidate, this results in a winner-take-all system.  Even if a swing state has a razor-thin margin of 49.9 to 50.1, all of its dozen or so of the Electors pledged to a single candidate in the slate are sent by the state.  Or to put it in the pretend speak, all dozen or so electoral votes for the state go to one candidate.

This is the system we're used to, but has the flaw that it does not correspond to reality.

I think the problem with this process is that it conceals from us what is actually happening.  It is trying to make one situation the reality by obfuscation and legal fines, while another situation is still what actually happens.  We are trying to pretend there is a democratic, and not representational, vote for the President.  We write on the ballot that we are voting for President, and we're not.  We say that states send electoral votes, and they don't.  We try to pretend that Electors don't exist, and maybe we prefer if Electors don't exist... but Electors voting for President is still what actually takes place.  

I was pleased this year to see my state's ballot actually made the reality of the election clear.  Rather than having simply the names of the Presidential candidates, it said instead "Electors for X", indicating the office I am actually voting for.

If the Electors for X receive a majority in my state, they will go on to actually vote for X... or they might not.   Those Electors might decide to vote for someone else.  If Electors pledged to X all vote for Y, the state might fine them, but their votes still go to Y.  In a situation where X wins more than 270 "electoral votes", but the actual Electors decide to vote for Y instead, then Y actually wins the election.  Which is to say, it is the votes of the actual Electors, and not the imaginary "electoral votes" of a state, which select the President.

We might ask at this point, what is the Electoral College supposed to be?  Why is it set up this way?  Why wasn't it set up for direct nation-wide democratic vote?

The US President has tremendous power under the Constitution.  All executive power is vested in the President.  The legislative branch is Congress, which is made of the Senate and House, with 538 people total.  The judicial branch is a set of higher and lower courts culminating in a Supreme Court.  The executive branch is the President.  All other executive positions derive their power from the President, and serve at the President's pleasure.  The Founders of our nation were at least partly concerned that the common people could be swayed by demagogues, and that this incredible power would end up in the hands of unsavory, corrupt, or tyrannous leaders.  Go ahead and think of your least favorite past president; that's almost certainly the sort of person who the Founding Fathers had in mind.  To prevent this, they deliberately set up the office of Elector, to add one step between the people and the power of the executive branch.  For Elector, the people (through their state government) are to choose a responsible representative, and the Elector (vested with the confidence of the people as to character and discernment) will then go vote for the President.  So the President is not approved by the people directly, but by a selected group of people, picked for their better judgment.

You can already see how the pledged Elector system, and Electoral slate system, undermines some of this intention.

Another concern of the Founders was that in a democratic vote, the more populous states would be able to overwhelm the interests of the less populous states.  So the count of Electors deliberately includes the number of Senators, which also deliberately over-represents the less populous states.  The Electoral College tending to favor less populous states is not an oversight or flaw but a deliberate design decision.

So why don't we treat the Electoral College as it actually is?  Why don't we vote for Electors?  Not pledged Electors to X, whose names aren't even on the ballot.  I mean, why don't we actually vote for the Elector?  Why am I not casting a ballot for Jimmy H Smith, Elector for District 32, my man in the Electoral College?

In part, because of parties.  In part, because of the media.  In part, because people do prefer this way.

Parties want to say who their candidate is.  The primary is supposed to determine the candidate for that party.  If unpledged Electors are the ones who ultimately choose the President, then the electoral college vote is the only "primary" that matters.  You could imagine a primary challenger with huge support by the base, being selected by that party's Electors in favor of the official candidate.  Changing would also require sharing.  In the winner-take-all method, the dominant party in the state gets to ensure all of that state's votes go to their party.  Which political party is really going to propose splitting those up?  Since it benefits political parties, and since parties control the politicians, it will never be changed.

The media prefer this method.  On the first Wednesday in November, the only reason we can say with confidence who the President-Elect is, is due to the system that we have.  Otherwise we'd only be able to list the names of the chosen Electors and make guesses about their future votes.  Newsrooms want the drama of tracking maps as they fill in red and blue and the ticker bars move one way and another.  They want "X Wins Presidential Election" printed in the title on Wednesday morning.  We could not talk about how many total votes X received vs Y, or what percent of the popular vote X received vs Y, or votes for X or Y broken down by demographic, if we did not have a system pretending the people cast votes for X or Y.

Lobbyists want to know who is likely to be in the White House, as early as possible, so they can figure out which to begin courting as soon as possible.  When the two major parties put forth their candidates, those are the two people the lobbyists need to try to influence.  Targets are focused.  Having only two is manageable.  Courting somewhere around 1076 possible nation-wide Electors is too much for them.

But also this method puts more control in the hands of the people.  The office of actual consequence to the people is the Presidency, and not this office of Elector.  Therefore, the people want to at least feel like they are voting for the office that matters.  The confusing behind-the-scenes reality of pledged Electors and all that isn't relevant to the people. The people also don't want to feel like it is only a group of easily-corrupted fat cats in smoke filled rooms choosing the most consequential office in the United States.

But despite this being the method we've settled on for convenience, there are many other ways, and some more perspicuous ways, that we might select Electors.

The office of Elector is an office pertaining to the state, and it is in the state's discretion how to choose one.  We could therefore view Electors more like Senators.  Under the Constitution, before it was amended, Senators for each state were picked by the state's legislature, with vacancies appointed by the governor.  It is therefore consistent with the Constitution's idea of representative democracy if Electors are chosen in the same way.  We could imagine a state which has no presidential candidate on the ballot at all, and instead the state legislature gathers and selects a slate of Electors.

The office of Elector is like a Representative.  Representatives are chosen by direct vote within a certain region.  Therefore, it would be consistent with the Constitution if Electors were instead chosen by popular vote in a district.  In fact, two states (Maine and Nebraska) use a variant of this method with pledged Electors.  The number of Electors is always the number of Representatives plus Senators.  There are two Senators, so those two votes go to the state as a whole.  The others are divided in to districts.  Whoever wins the majority vote in the whole state gets the two state votes, and whoever wins the majority in each district gets the district's vote.

But imagine a similar system without pledged Electors.  Suppose instead, people actually voted for their Elector by name, by district.  When you go to vote, you do not see the big presidential candidate names on the ballots.  You see the names of two or more people from your district who you can select to send to the Electoral College vote.  What would that do if one state did it?  Or if all states did it?

If one state did it, it would seriously screw up a lot of accounting in elections.  We would not know who the president was on election night (but maybe we could guess by political party), and we would not be able to say anything about popular vote because at least one state was excluded from the vote.  It would be a weird oddity that annoyed pundits.  But if all states did it, then I think it might even overthrow the two-party system.

There are other alternatives, both with and without pledged electors.  But here's a system I want to propose.  It's pointless to propose because it will never be adopted, but it is fun to think about.

Consider if instead of election, Electors were chosen by sortition.  Election is when citizens vote to choose someone, while sortition is when a citizen is randomly chosen for service.  Jury duty is one example of sortition in the modern United States.  In ancient democracies, the legislatures were also picked by sortition, and this was even considered a crucial element of a democracy.

It would work as follows.

Each state is divided into electoral districts.  How these districts are drawn up I'm not sure, but there are as many electoral districts as the state has Electors.  From each electoral district, from the list of every eligible and registered voter, one is randomly chosen to be the Elector for that district.  It might be you.  It might be your neighbor.  Perhaps, for the sake of accountability, two Electors from each state are appointed by the legislature.  In total, 538 people will be chosen this way.  Those 538 people get to vote for the president.  The candidates then have to convince those 538 random people to vote for them.

The rest of us can carry on, uninterrupted by the relentless screeching media, the incessant campaign text messages, the ads pleading for campaign donations, or the pandering rallies with twerking prostitutes.  No more endless debates about purged voter roles, voter ID laws, noncitizen or illegal voting, broken ballot machines, campaign finances, or any of the rest of this stuff.  There are 538 votes, so it will be pretty easy to cross al the Ts on the voters.

An obvious concern would be corruption.  It is significantly easier to buy 538 votes, than 500 million votes.  It would also be significantly easier to police possible corruption with these 538 voters.  But in fact, it could be possible to keep the identities of these 538 voters secret (as with jurors) until the vote is cast.  Or until very near when the vote is cast.  Let's say the day of the vote, the Electors gather to watch a live debate with the candidates and have a range of questions answered on a multitude of topics, then shortly afterward place a vote, in secret.

In what ways would picking the Electoral College by sortition be better?

The first is that it is better at representing the will of the people.  The process of selecting a candidate for President is normally determined "for us" by insiders, lobbyists, and wealthy donors.  Sortition removes the wall of division between the political class and the rest of us normal civilians.  Since single moms, inner-city minorities, small business owners, or middle class dads are all equally likely to be chosen for Electors as millionaires, normal people will have their interests better represented by the Presidential candidate chosen.

The second is that it removes the grift, bribery, and frustration of the electoral process.  There are no more campaigns.  There are no more campaign ads, there are no more yard signs, there are no more lobbyists bribing with political contributions, there are no more secret deals and greased palms.  Statistically speaking, the people picking the President are people similar to you, who care about the same things that you do, and who will be back to the same normal world as you in just a few years.

This method would also deeply upset the two-party system.  When looking at 500 million+ votes spread over the entire nation and divided into states, it really is pointless to consider a third party.  It requires convincing millions of people to unionize their votes.  But with just 538 people, even a handful of holdouts could block the extreme candidates the two-party primary system favors, and lead to real possibilities for third parties.

Which highlights the fact, there are no two parties in this kind of vote.  There is no machine-readable ballot printed with names registered at the state election board, with only so many names on it.  All candidates, even the major party candidates, are write-in candidates.  These Electors are not pledged, and while they might align with one party or another, they can ultimately pick anyone, anywhere in the country, to become President.  An Elector might vote for his own daughter.  The Electors might form a coalition to pick an Elector as President instead.  A party of Electors might deliberate and decide to all give their votes to the first person to walk by a specific geocaching camera.  And with randomly chosen citizens (and not party insiders who had to campaign), the usual Giant Douche or Turd Sandwich dilemma brought about by party interests, is entirely removed.

My ideal systems would involve the direct selection of unpledged Electors, either by election or sortition.  I think I favor sortition.  But it will never happen, precisely because it would ruin two-party control of the executive power of the US.

That said, to recap, the actual problem with the Electoral College isn't the one people usually moan about.  The actual problem is that we pretend our elections work one way, when they actually work in a different way.  Perhaps we could fix this by making our elections look more like how they actually work.

A Theory of Children and Happiness

There exists a device for clearing a young child's stuffy nose called a NoseFrida.  It is a thin medical hose attached to a tapered tube.  The end of the hose goes in the parent's mouth.  The tapered end of the tub in the child's nose.  You place it there, and suck in with your lungs, sucking the snot right out of your child's sinus cavities.

To whomever reading this, I hope you too will one day love another human being that much.

When you become a parent, your own happiness becomes tied directly to the happiness of your child.  The number of miserable experiences increases: sleepless night, disgusting messes, constantly dealing with another person's excrement and stomach bile and mucus.  You are no longer able to do most things you used to enjoy (like maintaining a blog), because your time becomes quite devoured.  So by any objective measure, you should become less happy.  And probably on the average you do.

But you also experience periodic moments of intense joy.  And the moments of intense joy can be caused by something as silly as a ladybug existing.

For me, as an adult, happiness is a very complicated thing.  It is some mix of how much I've slept, my relationship with my wife, my recognition at work, time talking to friends, interesting entertainment, the numbers in my bank statement, and overall things in the world going the way I want them.  It's hard to be happy as an adult.

But it's laughably easy to make a small child happy.  Almost any trivial thing will create gasps of elation and giggles of joy.

And seeing the beaming smile of my son or my daughter is all it takes to bring me a deep though momentary happiness, apart from whatever else may be the case in the world.

I find myself liking things I could have never cared about before, like dogs and trucks and tractors and unicorns.  And songs about dogs and trucks and tractors and unicorns.  I find myself becoming excited for every animal I see.  Not for the sake of any of these things, but for getting to see the excitement it will bing my children.

My theory is that being a parent makes it possible to once again experience the childlike happiness of seeing a garbage truck empty the trash.  The simple happiness at the novelty of things that have to me become boring.

It is so easy to make them happy, and thereby easy again to make me happy.