When I was writing an earlier blog, I ran it through the spell and grammar checker, and the grammar checker came up with three errors that weren’t, and suggested three very ungrammatical fixes. At first, I couldn’t figure out why, until I realized that I’d used a complex sentence structure with parallel subordinate clauses. Now, I obviously have nothing against technology per se, but this incident got me to thinking about the implications… and to a writer like me, those implications are between annoying and frightening.

It’s clear that the software doesn’t work nearly so well with complex phrases. Is that because it’s not worth while to design it to that level of complexity? Or that it can’t be? Either way, the end result isn’t good, because it’s applying simple rules to complex phrases, and that’s one of the biggest problems with most technology, especially when the user understands neither the entire field in question nor the limits of the technology. But, as in the case of word-processing software, technology often allows the marginally competent to look like the competent — until something really goes wrong.

These days, more and more young writers are relying on software to clean up their work, and every time I read manuscripts for a contest [which I do upon occasion] I’m reminded of this… and the fact that very few of them truly understand their native language.

Another problem that plagues me is the autoformatting feature of Word, especially when I have to go back three lines and put in a hard return so that I don’t end up with an after-the-fact indented paragraph. I mean, after all, I didn’t indent that paragraph when I typed it out. The software all of a sudden undid — or redid — what I did because I didn’t conform to its programming. This is a recurring problem with all computer-based systems. They do what you tell them to do, not what you intended to do, and, sometimes, they even do something that you had no idea they could do, and that you certainly didn’t plan on. The problems begin when there are features you don’t know are incorporated in the system. You think you’ve told the system to do one thing, but your instructions are reformulated by the system. This is an annoyance in word-processing, but it can be a disaster, as in the case of the Mars probe that crashed because there were conflicting measurement systems programmed into the navigation systems, systems of which some of the scientists programming the deceleration were unaware.

And, of course, just about the time I’ve finally worked through and understand most of the glitches in a system, some hot-shot programmers and profit-motivated executives re-design the software… and before all that long I’ll be forced to learn another new and improved system with unknown quirks or glitches, whether I want to or not, because sooner or later, things like the latest printers don’t have printer-drivers for the old software, and because I tend to burn through printers, that limits my choices. And that irritates me, especially since “new” is often not better. I can count on it to be more complex, but not necessarily better, and certainly not simpler… and that’s unfortunately true of most technology.

Why does Tor always put “The New Novel in The Saga of Recluce” on the front of each new Recluce book that comes out in hardcover? I understand the idea of getting this across to the readers, but it must look rather silly to someone who has many Recluce books in hardcover to line them up with ten or so volumes, each proclaiming that it is the “new” one.

Why is good practical judgment called “common sense” when it’s anything but common, especially among politicians?

Why is it that the United States, which is one of the oldest continuous forms of government and which prides itself on equality and opportunity, is only one of two major western powers that has never had a female head of state?

In the United States, according to various polls, over 90% of the people believe in God, and the majority of those believers are Christians. Although one of the tenets of Christianity is theoretically charity and another is judging people by their acts, 60% of those good souls would refuse to vote for an atheist. Why? It’s not as though good religious folk haven’t been the ones who’ve done most of the evils in societies over history.

Why is it that liberals — usually Democrats — are so ready to spend tax dollars to make sure that those who are less advantaged can attain the “American dream” and so ready to condemn and tax those who have actually achieved it?

Why is it that so many conservatives — usually Republicans — are so fond of the Bill of Rights when it comes to the first amendment [freedom of religion] and the second amendment [owning guns] and want to ignore it so much when it comes to matters such as the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments [freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, warrants, trial by jury, due process], especially when they apply to the poor and less advantaged, who are the ones who need those rights most?

Why is it that some political candidates declare that the answer to the pay-gender gap is that women should get more education when women have been getting more collegiate degrees than men for at least a decade? Or is what they mean that women have to have more education to get the same — or less — pay than men?

When government gives money to individuals who can’t make ends meet, it’s called welfare, but when it gives money to corporations, it’s called an incentive or a credit [or an absolutely necessary financial system reform]. Why the difference?

Why is it that when a man with small children runs for public office, he’s hailed as a good family man while a female candidate for the same office is asked how she can handle the job and her family? Is this because we expect the job to be so taxing that the office-holder must neglect family and because no man is expected to take on family responsibilities? Isn’t that just chauvinism one step removed?

And why is it that, when one asks questions like these, they’re either ignored or addressed with platitudes or simplistic answers… or result in attacks?

As many Americans have been, I’ve been following the current housing credit/financial meltdown, and, as someone who was once a practicing economist, I have more of a professional interest than many. But in reading all the business and financial journals I receive, I’ve noticed something startling: almost no one talks about the moral dimensions of the mess. It’s as though the “business model” has subsumed all sense of ethics and morality.

Now… let’s put this in a simplified perspective. Builders were building too many houses for those who could qualify for housing under the “more traditional” standards. So more “innovative” ways of mortgage financing were developed, many of which required no money down and minimal, if any, detailed credit checking. In turn, these marginal and sub-prime loans were bundled into larger mortgage tranches, if you will, which were then securitized and sold to various institutions. In many cases, the “leverage” was close to 65 to 1. In plain English, that meant for every $65 loaned, only one dollar of reserves, or cash on hand backing the loan, was available. Now, leverage works both ways, and when the housing market slowed, and when home-owners began to default on loans, each dollar of default theoretically required the institution holding the securities to come up with an additional $65. That meant that less than a five percent default rate could wipe out the value of the other 95% of the mortgage package. Most financial institutions could not come up with anywhere close to the additional reserves required… and… the rest, as they say, is history, if aided, by another illegal but tolerated practice of the brokerage business — naked short-selling, which the SEC just belatedly announced would no longer be accepted.

Where does morality come in? At all levels.

First, it’s been estimated that something like 30% of the subprime loans were written with terms that effectively made refinancing impossible if the price of the house did not increase dramatically. Not only was this financially unwise, but locking a gullible buyer into such a situation is unethical, to say the least. Then, the higher level junior executives who sold these mortgages to the institutions that securitized them dramatically understated the risks, also not exactly the most ethical of behaviors. The institutions that bought the securitized loans didn’t exactly perform the greatest due diligence, and there are stories, if currently unverified, that some analysts who tried to raise the question were quashed… because, after all, this quarter’s yield is far more important than what will happen a year or two from now. The CEOs of the institutions involved certainly didn’t look beyond the immediate balance sheet, and they were paid and took enormous salaries and other compensation while insisting that their firms were solvent and would remain so, which is a form of either naivete [and one shouldn’t be a CEO with that level of naivete] or misrepresentation, which is a form of fraud. And it doesn’t appear that all the brokers who decided to profit from the market decline by short-selling the stock of companies like AIG, Lehman, and Merrill Lynch, without having the stock to cover the short-sales, were even behaving legally, let alone ethically. Now, because of the intertwined nature of the world financial markets, in some form or another, U.S. and other taxpayers will have to come up with the cash reserves to keep the whole system from crashing, and that cash requirement is nothing more than an enormous theft from the public — an elaborate variation on the Ponzi or pyramid schemes of the past, which have resulted, if only in the past, with their perpetrators going to prison. Here, the executives at all levels of these public companies raked in enormous salaries and bonuses as a result of these unethical and sometimes even illegal practices, and I sincerely doubt that any of them will face criminal charges.

Didn’t anyone of importance say, “These kinds of mortgages are wrong.”? “These appraisals are inflated.”? Didn’t any executive observe that the leverage requirements were so far out of line with banking and securities reserve requirements that they were in effect dangerous and fraudulent? Didn’t any brokerage firm or executive crack down on naked short-selling?

So far as I can tell, none, or very few, did. Instead, they followed the “business model” of “the highest level of short-term profit possible by any means allowable under the law.”

The problem that no one seems willing to face here is that brilliant men can always find a way around the law. Always! Our saving grace as a society in the past has been that there has been a preponderance of men and women who also asked, “Is it honest? Is it right?… instead of asking, “Is it legal and how much can we make?”

And it’s also sad that, so far, very few, if any, of our vaunted media, self-anointed guardians of liberty and discoverers of wrong-doing, have asked the questions posed here.

All the new rules and regulations will mean nothing until we, as a society, stop insisting on “more” at any cost and start asking, “Is it right?”

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” That’s an old line from the comic strip Pogo, but it’s even truer today than it was when first printed.

I’ve been observing the current presidential campaign and trying not to succumb to terminal nausea as I see the media of the left and the right, and the far left and the far right, all working their damnedest… to do what? To create fights where there are none, and to intensify conflicts and differing opinions into class wars.

Why is this happening? Because conflict is “news,” and the greater the conflict, the greater the news “value,” the higher the ratings, the greater the advertising revenue, and the more exorbitant the profits. And we as a people not only accept this, but we encourage it by insisting that greater profit equates to greater good. I’m certainly not against profit, but when Americans come to believe that a company has somehow “failed” if its profit margins don’t increase year after year, there’s something very wrong.

There are two very conspicuous current disasters showing the absolute folly of insisting on ever-increasing profits. The first is the mortgage/housing/securitization meltdown, whose impact continues to spread and worsen and which I’ve discussed earlier, and which resulted from essentially defrauding financial markets in an effort to pad profits even more… with the strong likelihood that we’ll end up in a deep recession, if not worse, as a result. The second is the vicious and polarizing “Let’s you and him fight” attitude that permeates the media. This attitude is most obvious in the incredible growth of violence in television dramas, in the proliferation of “reality TV” shows, and in the almost-instant media focus on any short-coming of any public figure of any political party.

Thomas Jefferson had slaves and affairs with them. Lincoln’s wife was clinically depressed and possibly worse. Franklin Roosevelt had affairs throughout his life and even during his presidency. So did Kennedy and Johnson. Grover Cleveland had an illegitimate child. Even honest Ike had an affair when he was an Army general. In those days, such matters were seldom brought up by the press, and even when they did, most Americans paid little attention. Did such “dirt” bear upon the conduct, policies, and actions in office of such officials? Apparently not, or very little.

So what’s more important — candidates’ personal and family foibles or their legislative and public record and their stand on the issues? Exactly how does the choice of a pastor or a daughter’s romantic exploits bear on the great economic and military challenges facing the next administration? Why is the number of houses a candidate’s wife owns more important than that candidate’s stance on Constitutional rights? Is whether we’d like to have a drink with a candidate more important than how he or she would lead the country?

For that matter, why do so many Americans let the media use these diversions to determine public discussion on the future of our country? The media isn’t employing such diversions for our good, but to boost their bottom line… and that’s something else to consider in the course of the campaign.

Earlier this year, I was working on a science fiction novel, and I wanted to have a character quote a well-known semi-contemporary poet — except, since this is SF, the poet would have been a historical figure in the future I was writing. I wasn’t going to steal the lines, or pass them off as my own. The whole point was to acknowledge that the poet in question wrote the lines, and to show something about the protagonist by quoting the poet.

When the book comes out, however, you won’t find those lines. Why not? Because, under current copyright law and in the current litigious climate, I would have had to pay a not insignificant sum for each line I quoted, even with full attribution to the poet. I wasn’t passing his work off as mine. I wasn’t trying to make money off using a few lines of another writer’s work. I wanted to show something about the protagonist and perhaps even encourage a few readers to look up other work by that poet.

It won’t happen, partly because of the permission fees required, and partly because I don’t feel that publishing a line or two of poetry in the middle of a novel, verse fully attributed to the author, should be considered a violation of copyright law.

At the same time, if I were back teaching college English, I could have legally copied the entire poem and passed a copy out to the entire class without breaking the law. In both cases, the motives would be similar, to expose readers to something new, and, additionally, in the case of the novel, to show the impact of that verse upon a character.

In another case I came across several years ago, a contemporary composer wanted to set the poem of a relatively recently deceased poet to music to create an art song. The lyrics would have been credited to the poet, and half of any royalties or residuals would have gone to the estate or the heirs. The composer — a classical composer, by the way — requested permission and was denied. Such denial was certainly within the rights of the heirs who owned the copyright, but it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me… or to society. The art song that would have been created would certainly have exposed more listeners to the poet, and it definitely wouldn’t have hurt the heirs financially. In the meantime, none of the poet’s work has been set to music, and the poet, once well-known, is slowly fading into obscurity. In a century or so, of course, the work will revert to the public domain, but will there be a composer knowledgeable enough to even find the work by then? Or who will have the interest?

I once published verse in small magazines, none of which survived, which may say something about both my verse and the magazines, except other better-known poets were also published there. But who will ever search out the work that appeared there? Could anyone even find it? Yet songs often perpetuate verse far longer than the written word alone.

The whole idea of copyright is to protect the intellectual property of the creator, but often, as in the cases I’ve cited, the application works the other way. For poetry in particular, the intellectual property of the creator is hardly preserved, and often in effect destroyed, if no one knows that it exists, which is the case if the work is relegated to a dusty anthology or small volume printed once or a few times and then forgotten. Even once-famous poets are sliding into obscurity, in part, I believe, because they are taught less and less and because they do not appear in other forms or venues. My work certainly doesn’t sell like Harry Potter, but I can guarantee that any line of verse that appears in one of my books — or those of many other F&SF genre writers — will reach far more readers than would be the case except for all but the most famous of poets.

I certainly would have been more than pleased if, say, a character in The DaVinci Code happened to quote a line from one of my books and named me as the author — and I definitely wouldn’t have demanded payment for a few words.