Ryan Reviews: Nexus - Ramez Naam

This is hard sci fi going where lots of soft sci fi has gone before. Telepathy and collective intelligence shows up, notably, in Bester's Demolished Man, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside, and many, many more; not to mention the collective intelligences featured in Star Trek and Doctor Who (and many, many, more.) The innovation of Nexus is its focus on neuroscientific and nanotechnological foundations of collective intelligence. 

The central mechanism in the story is Nexus 5. This drug, when first ingested, goes about mapping and 'rationalizing' the mind, making intelligible what would otherwise be unintelligible to others (or to the self). People can program their bodies to react in certain ways, overriding weakness of body and will. It then allows people to access and alter other people's minds at varying levels, allowing mental 'texting' and communication of emotions, but also the domination of the senses and body. Lane, the protagonist, uses this aspect of the drug to force Sam, an anti-drug government agent, into a state of sensory deprivation. Lane gets dominated, later, by posthuman Chinese scientist Su-Yong Shu. The most interesting implication comes from the merging of minds without coercion, when the merging of minds creates an emergent, greater, intelligence. It is fitting that the people most interested in this are hippies and Buddhist monks. 

Naam's biggest success is the idea of Nexus 5. His execution of the story based around the concept is less of a success, but still enjoyable. The descriptions of the effects of the drug were, frankly, not weird enough. Nexus often just seems like Google Glass that can make your body a video game character (indeed, the 'Don Juan' pick-up program reminded me a lot of the dialog choice interface in the Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic video games). The more radical implications of Nexus suffer from being told to us instead of shown. 

Kade Lane, the protagonist, is an optimist regarding the potential of Nexus to do social good. His opposition is Sam, who fears the abuse of power that Nexus allows. Sam's arguments against Nexus are shot down by Lane by statements of 'I won't allow that to happen,' which are never really that reassuring. The government gets Lane to work with them in exchange for leniency for his friends in a drug bust, and Lane and Sam attend a Neuroscience conference in Thailand. There, Sam and Lane argue about the merits of Nexus and 

Sam's character arc comes to a close when she discusses her reasons for being against the Nexus drugs. Turns out, her family was dominated by a precursor to Nexus; a commune decided to expose itself to a virus that made all of them more altruistic--but (in a parable out of Ayn Rand) in the land of the altruistic, the selfish man is king. Sam escaped, while her family did not. She confesses all of this to Lane while they are under the influence of Nexus and another mood-enhancing drug. She releases her pain, but then ceases to be a driving character. Like the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek 5 when Sybok took their pain, Sam's emotional resolution leads to a loss of agency.

The resolution of the book ignores the characters, cementing Nexus as the central purpose of the book. Lane uploads the Nexus formula, and despite the efforts of governments around the world, it spreads to everyone. Lane's victory in the debate between him and Sam is not really the victory of his ideas, but in the loss of Sam's agency and the evil of his enemies. 

The shape of the story (a la, Vonnegut) is an incomplete version of 'Man in a Hole.' We have a well-off character who is dumped into a hole... and he's supposed to get out and be better off for the journey, but instead it ends with him being still in the hole while Nexus gets out. Visually:

Some unanswered questions: How does consciousness work? When we're given the perspective of the characters under domination, their internal monologues remain their own, their thoughts remain untouched; only the 'machinery' aspects of the mind are affected. Was this description of the mind intentional? It seems to cut against the possibility of collective intelligence, instead pointing to the drug as an extreme form of communication (which is even hinted at by the comparison of Nexus to reading and writing).

Overall, ***.5/***** (rounded up for Goodreads). An intriguing subject and easy read, somewhat limited by an unsatisfactory handling of the story and description.

Ryan Reviews (short): The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (Audiobook)

** (out of *****)

A 'postmodern' take on the wizard school genre. The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a boy who has little investment in the real world and is chronically unhappy. He's smart but doesn't care that much about school, has only a handful of friends, and is not that close to his family. His main escape is magic (as in sleights-of-hand) and a fantastical world of Fillory (which is, by the way, the dumbest name ever). He's whisked away to a school of magic, where he excels but fails to find contentment. After graduation, he moves to Manhattan where he does nothing but slide further into motionlessness--until an old acquaintance returns with a way into Fillory. Blessed with the opportunity to live his childhood dreams, Quentin, of course, finds nothing but despair and tragedy. The experience leaves him so disillusioned that he returns to New York and gives up magic, instead settling for a menial job provided as a sort of welfare for disillusioned magicians.

I expected a lot from this book and was disappointed. The 'deconstruction' of the 'boy-magic' genre is superficial, and turn instead into 'what would Hogwarts be like if it kind of sucked' along with 'Quiddich that kind of sucks.' The biting social commentary is, sadly, absent. The book touches on some important subjects: What do you do in a 'post-scarcity' situation, when the main struggle of life is not satisfying your wants, but in finding things to want? [Iain M. Banks's Culture series tackles this question much better.]
The lack of direction experienced by Quentin resonates, at first, but he quickly turns into a caricature, severing any degree of sympathy between him and the reader.

The failings of the book lie in the weakness of the main character, Quentin. Quentin exists simply to be disappointed by things. Not for any deep reason; that is just his m.o. Unfortunately, merely describing someone feeling disappointment is not enough to get the reader to go along with the character's disappointment. The fantasy genre is full of paper characters who have no purpose other than to let the author tell us how wondrous everything is; paper characters who only let the author tell us how disappointing everything is not much of an advance.

What should Voyager have been?

This post is a continuation of the post the other day (or yesterday, depending on when I finish this) about Star Trek: Voyager.

Voyager is broken up into two parts: pre-Borg and post-Borg. Seasons 1-3 were an attempt to acclimate the crew (and the viewers) to Voyager's predicament, establish relationships, and introduce the alien-ness of the Delta quadrant. Seasons 4-7 gave up any trappings of continuity and became TOS in the Delta quadrant.

Assuming that Seven arrives in Season 4, and the Borg are introduced, my suggestions:

When Voyager arrives in the Delta quadrant, they are essentially on the fringes of civilization. No replicators, and even water is scarce. Caretaker actually sets this up pretty well, but it fails to follow through. It needs to show the implications of scarcity (outside of Voyager). It's easy for Voyager to be all high and mighty when the Kazon are all a bunch of douche-nozzles.

The Kazon could be cast as a slave race from a recently disintegrated 'Roman Empire' type civilization. The first three seasons of cruising through the Delta quadrant would be like walking through eighth century Europe: some semblance of a common background (common law, similar but diverging languages and cultures, half-a-dozen wannabe heirs to the throne). You already have the Vidiians, who are suffering from a plague, who would fit right in as former members of this 'Roman Empire.' The common background doesn't prevent vastly different outcomes: Voyager could do away with the annoying Trek Tropes of: all (non-Federation) civilizations are single-species (Dominion excluded, kind of); and all members of the same species (non-Federation) share the same attitudes, culture, and political system. Some Kazon sects may be really friendly to Voyager, straining their desire to withhold technology, while others can be classic Trek villains.

As season 3 draws to a close, Voyager comes to discover the cause of the 'Roman Empire's' disintegration: the Borg.

Something has to be done to make the Borg more interesting. Season 3 episode, Unity, offers an interesting possibility (this is the episode where Chakotay meets the former Borg who want to re-collectivize). What would happen if the Borg collective were destroyed (without all the Borg being destroyed?) Picard chooses in TNG's Hugh not to use a virus that would potentially destabilize the collective. After First Contact, it seems like Starfleet Intelligence would be more than willing to do something to get rid of the Borg threat. As Voyager enters Borg space, they encounter a strong Borg, but at some point they get word from Starfleet that the Hugh-solution has been activated. The central collective collapses, but there remains some odd trillion individuals still around. The former Borg have a myriad of reactions--some wanting to re-form a collective, some wanting to remain 'Borg', but individuals, and some wanting to re-join their former civilizations.

(I don't love Species 8472. It was kind of a 'we need someone with an EVEN BIGGER stick' moment, which Voyager fell victim to often.)

The Borg who want to re-collectivize enable a story arc that provides a sympathetic picture of the Borg. Sci-Fi is at its best when it presents conflicts as between two legitimate points of view (Star Trek, though, does this poorly as a rule. The best Trek villains--Borg in TNG and 8, Kahn in 2, the Dominion, are, perhaps, understandable, but never sympathetic). The collective could really push the logic of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." A single civilization provides its distinctiveness to a billion people or so, while that culture assimilated benefits trillions upon trillions of Borg.

The Borg who want to re-integrate with their original society provide a way for Voyager to interact with new civilizations. I'm sure Voyager could play on some immigration/war crimes stuff, with the returning Borg being accepted, shunned, or persecuted for war crimes.


What would the relationships have looked like?

Harry Kim would have had a much more intimate relationship with dead.

Kes. I would have like to have kept Kes aboard. I don't dislike her relationship with Neelix. I like her relationship with Janeway (though having both Seven and Kes aboard would have strained Janeway's motherly side). Seven and Kes could have had a good relationship, I think? (Also, why don't the Borg have Telepathy or empathic ability?)

Neelix should have been the social center of the ship. Everyone eats at the mess hall--Maquis, Starfleet, Dayshift, Nightshift, every department. Voyager shows occasional social fragmentation (outside of the bridge crew). He's ostensibly a morale officer, but that doesn't go very far. His fear of becoming useless once Voyager goes beyond his knowledge of space is a great character arc, but I think the solution of kinda making him a security officer and kinda making him an ambassador isn't satisfying. Instead, Janeway should have emphasized that Voyager is a society, not just a starship, and his role as opinion leader, connector, and 'morale officer' is a real job. (Another Trek Trope: no one outside of Starfleet ever does anything useful).

I also like the early season relationship between Janeway and Chakotay. I think the trend of passionate, but respectful, disagreement is good. There could be more tension between Chakotay and Tuvok, as Tuvok often feels more like a first officer than Chakotay does. The thing missing from Chakotay was something missing from the show in general: real tension and distinction between the Maquis and Starfleet crew.

I would have like to have seen a story-arc involving Tuvok-as-Javiert. A group of Maquis are troublemakers, and Tuvok zealously pursues them--rightly in most of the cases, but in one case he ends up pursuing, and ruining, a truly repentant Maquis crewman, and Tuvok must deal with his over-reach.

The Doctor, and Tom and B'Elanna, are fairly well done. T&B stagnated for a bit (the fake-crew T&B marriage lampshades this), but they're fairly positive. Janeway, too.

What does everyone think? Obviously there are lots of other things I would tweak, but I don't want this post to get to be longer than most of my papers.

Ryan Reviews: Star Trek Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager is kind of the whipping boy of the Star Trek community. The people who didn't like DS9 or ENT simply avoided them, while Voyager offered a sort of perpetual hope that it would improve, so more people stuck through it than other Treks.

I was originally among the haters, but since Anna had fond memories of Voyager, and we are kind of on a completionist kick. My earlier conceptions have been confirmed, but I've been enjoying it more than I used to.

Voyager's biggest problem is that it was set up to be a serial, but ended up being the most episodic show of the modern-era Treks. In terms of sheer quality, it's not that far from DS9, and closer to TNG than it seems. In terms of fulfilled potential, it's extremely low.

The acting: On a character-by-character basis, the case of Voyager is very strong. Janeway, Tuvok, the Doctor, Kes, and especially Seven are all very strong actors, with B'Elanna and Tom right behind. Neelix is sabotaged beyond all hope by terrible writing, and Kim should have been killed off instead of Kes.

Chakotay is much better than I remember, at least in the first four or so seasons. He is a victim of bad writing as well, as other than the 'otherness' of his being Native American he has very little depth. His spirituality is occasionally used to good purpose, but not enough. As the seasons progress he becomes more and more a cipher (turning in fewer and fewer good performances). His relationship with Janeway, when they actually develop it, is one of the strongest of the series: Janeway is able to have a less-hierarchical relationship relationship with him than she does with any other member of the crew (except Seven, who eventually replaces him as the-person-who-has-a-relationship-with-Janeway).

So, the problem is not the cast. What about the plot?

The plot is not the problem. In fact, if you described the premise of each show to a person who knew nothing of the execution of the show, Voyager is by far the best. The Maquis-Starfleet crew combination is a perfect way to generate tension--TNG was great, but there was little inter-personal conflict. The 'journey home' aspect ensures that the villains are not simply re-hashed TNG villains, keeping the canon intact but without any of the baggage that being a sequel entails. The scarcity of resources--something that normal Trek never has to deal with--is an actual problem. The scarcity of people cuts off one of the cheapest Trek (and otherwise) tropes: introducing a (good-guy) character and killing him off in order to resolve the plot.

The problem was the writing.

In particular, three problems: continuity, bad science, and a lack of originality.

Voyager ended up adopting the episodic nature of not only TNG, but TOS. It seemed like the studio was fine having one Trek telling a serialized story--DS9--but wanted a Trek that people could tune in to and not miss a beat. Now, I have nothing against episodic TV shows, but Voyager *needed* to maintain some continuity. The Maquis-Starfleet plot would have involved rapidly changing relationships, tensions over different issues that sometimes exploded into a plot point, and so on. Resource scarcity can allow for the crew to set, and achieve goals over many episodes. Travelling through the Delta quadrant can allow for some foreshadowing (kind of like they did with Borg space) and show a gradually changing alien landscape. On this same point, the lack of continuity let the writers allow for characters to become disconnected from one another. Sure, there were some relationships, Tom-B'Elanna, Tom-Kim, Janeway-Chakot/Seven, Neelix-Kes-Doctor, Doctor-Seven, and so on. But there were so many holes in the relationship-network. In TNG (and DS9 to a lesser extent), every character had some sort of unique relationship with the other members of the crew. Not the case in Voyager.

It's obvious that some among the writers wanted to promote continuity, as episodes like The Year of Hell and Course: Oblivion prove. But such glimpses of continuity only served to remind us what Voyager could have been normally.

Bad Science. This manifests in two forms. First, the techno-babble. Techno-babble, even more than killing off new characters, is a plot crutch. A good plot confronts the characters with a challenge, and requires that characters come up with some creative resolution or make some sacrifice in order to solve the problem.

Because techno-babble decreases the price of one sort of resolution, it allows for the creators to 'produce' more 'problem,' in other words letting the writers get the characters into and out of bigger problems. This leads to an unfortunate spiral (that started in TNG), where drama requires problems of increasing intensity, and increasingly contrived solutions. This ultimately makes it impossible for the writers to credibly commit to danger or drama of any type.

The science itself is also terrible, especially regarding DNA and Evolution. The infamous 'Threshold,' where Paris and Janeway exceed Warp 10 (to infinity- and beyond! To hell with evolution, basic fractions escape the writers. If you exceed infinite speed, this means that you travel and infinite distance in some finite length of time. They would never have seen the Delta Flyer again). They then turn in to lizard people from their DNA changing. The writer of that episode, Brandon Braga, stated that he wanted to convey that 'evolution doesn't always go forward - it can go backwards too!' In Distant Origin, Voyager 'simulates what a dinosaur would look like if it evolved for another 300 million years.' The 'progressive modernist' view of history is annoying enough, a 'progressive modernist' view of evolution (evolution without selection, a.k.a., not evolution) is worse.

The lack of creativity manifests itself in two places, one of which is more obvious looking back than it is now. One is a lack of technological change. It's been joked elsewhere, that some of the most life-changing technologies in our lives are completely missing from Star Trek. Social media (#ShitSiskoSays), interactive display devices (for more than reading), any sort of technology that makes people 'better,' or cyborgy, is completely lacking from Voyager. I don't expect these exact things (but human modification seems a no-brainer, especially with the precedent of Geordi), but the only technological advances that Voyager makes are 'in universe' advances and not 'lifestyle' advances. Bioneural gel, Slipstream drive, etc, are all 'advances' that have zero implications for the characters.

The second creativity failure is in the failure to produce a good Delta Quadrant culture. They tried with the Kazon, but 1) They hung around for *TWO YEARS* going at high warp. The same Kazon. and 2) the Kazon sucked. What would it be like to travel across the United States on foot? There are certainly distinct cultures, but the change is gradual, people know the surrounding area, and have relationships with each other. In Voyager, it's a little bit like stepping from the Bronx into downtown San Francisco, then the next block is Amish country, and so on. And then you get to the Borg. Kind of.

To be fair, there are quite a good number of 'creative' episodes which are really good. The episodic nature of Voyager allows it to come up with a really good stand-alone now and then (while Enterprise and DS9 had to deal with both the arc and the episode, for the most part). I'll come up with a list of them soon. It's probably as long as DS9's list.

Next time: What should Voyager have been?

the internet teached me this

Look what happens when you cut off the bottom of bok choy (or celery, or green onions) and stick it in some water for a couple of weeks. Neat!

Ryan Reviews: Star Trek Reviews

*Ahem*

Now that that's done...

Anna and I have been watching Star Trek over the last couple months--all of Star Trek. Yes, even Star Trek V (though Anna skipped that one).

When watching shows like Star Trek, where the episode-to-episode quality varies so much, it's worth keeping an eye on episode reviews so that you can avoid the big stinkers, even if sometimes your terrible wife makes you watch Threshold anyways.

I've been following some of these guys since High School (though by this point only Enterprise was left), and if you just want to avoid the bad episodes just about anything will do (though if you're a big fan then you instinctively know the bad episodes). It's not enough to just read the Netflix summaries, because sometimes the worst ideas can turn into pretty good episodes (Tuvix?).

Now, the candidates:

Tim Lynch Reviews

Tim Lynch reviewed episodes as they aired, starting with "The Icarus Factor" in season 2 of TNG, and continued through DS9 and season 2 of Voyager (he quit on it). He came back to review the first two seasons of Enterprise, but quit on that as well (due to lack of time, not because of the quality). In doing so, he gained a bit of a name in the Star Trek community--in First Contact, they named the Ensign that Picard mows down with a machine gun after him (perhaps a subtle hint as to their opinion of his reviews?).

Links: TNG Reviews, DS9 Reviews, VOY Reviews, The Enterprise reviews are scattered through this archive

He reviews each episode as it airs, and at the end of the season re-watches (and re-rates) each episode and offers commentary on the entire season.

CONS: 
The reviews are scattered, and where aggregated are not well presented. This is a bummer if you want to glance at a season to see the episodes to watch/avoid.

Incomplete: He starts TNG late and ends VOY and ENT early; no late movies or TOS.

He gave "Manhunt" 9.5/10.

PROS: 
The reviews include a full synopsis, so if you've forgotten what happens you'll get a full review.

Done in real time, so you get a picture of what people thought at the time--the optimism that writers will follow up on character development, a fog over the future.

High Quality reviews, plus full season Synopses. Excellent commentary on the direction of the shows, especially in DS9.

Jammer's Reviews

I came upon this one in college, and I don't know very much about the author. Here's a link.

PROS:
He's reviewed everything. TOS, TNG (except the last five episodes), VOY, DS9, ENT. Plus! BSG and Andromeda.

The website is very good. You can tell at a glance where the one, zero star episodes are.

CONS:
While the reviews are solid, they never make me reconsider the episodes like Lynch's sometimes do, though he sometimes articulates my thoughts about episodes better than I would.

The TNG and early DS9 episodes were written way after the fact, by someone who had seen them all several times before. On the one hand, this gives him more time to think about each episode--but it's also a perspective that people watching now would have.

He hates The Royale, which I always thought was quite a fun episode.

TV.com

This website has an episode guide for just about every TV show, and user reviews for each episode therein.

TOS - TNG - DS9 - VOY - ENT

PROS:
The format is very pretty.

Everything's available.

If you like to see dissenting opinions, this forum allows that.

CONS: 
Call me an elitist. Review sites that stand the test of time survive by offering quality opinions. Some people don't have opinions worth listening to. Compare the quality of a newspaper article to the quality of the comments on a large blog. Frankly, I find many of the episode ratings odd--though the best and worst episodes tend to stand out. Some good episodes get rated poorly and vice versa.

There is no consistent voice throughout the reviews, and rarely do they offer much insight.


Suggestions

If you enjoy reading another's informed opinion of what you just watch, go for the Tim Lynch reviews where available. If you're just trying to avoid landmines, Jammer's Reviews is the best because of its format and generally high quality evaluations.


Also: The Cynics Corner, limited reviews of VOY/DS9/ENT, written as they aired. These are fun, but there aren't enough of them to use unless you happen to be in the seasons he reviews. Good for the Voyager episodes that Tim Lynch doesn't get to. They're actually very hilarious.

EDIT: Reading through the Cynic's Corner, I have to add a PRO to each of the above. They are all Star Trek fans, and interpret the episodes in a fairly favorable light. The Cynic's Corner, on the other hand, finds a little too much fault.

Ryan Reviews: Introduction and Stranger in this Town

Greetings, readers! I know this blog has not been very active for a long time, but I hope that we can change that in the coming days.

I am introducing new segment called 'Ryan Reviews.' It will be a forum where I talk about whatever I feel like: I'll review music, movies, tv shows, books, beers, board games, and perhaps I will even review some reviews? Who knows, things might get freaky. It will be fun to see Anna's reviews of things as well!

As I am currently, professionally dedicated to other sorts of writing, when these appear you will know that I have reached some sort of block, and am hoping that this sort of writing clears that block.

Anyways: onward and upward!

------

A Theory of Music Reviews.

When we review music, what is the object of the review (and what should the object of our review be?) Indeed, I go back and forth on this. Should the unit 'song' be what the artist strives for? Or should it be 'album,' such that each song is a part of a whole, and the goal is to rise above the sum of the parts?

I don't know the answer to that question, and there really isn't one in the first place. There's no accounting for  taste, really.

But, to account for taste, my music reviews will take the following format:

Each song will get 1-3 points in each of the following categories:
Lyric Quality:
1 stands for "I would be embarrassed to sing this in public, for other than the usual reasons."
2 for "Not great, but not the source of too many eyerolls."
3 for "I actually would listen to this song for its lyrics."

Music Quality and Performance Quality go along the same lines. I don't entirely know what criteria I'll use to judge these other than my gut, but perhaps a pattern will emerge in the process of the reviews.

In addition, there are two bonus points:
One for rising above the sum of its parts as a song, either by having its parts be so bad it sounds good, or by the components reinforcing each of the other ones.
One for its context in the album: is this song enhanced by its surrounding songs? Pinball Wizard, for instance, is a different song depending on whether you listen to it on Tommy or if you listen to it on a greatest hits album/iTunes shuffle.

So, the rating system for songs goes to 11.

For albums, I will simply take the scores of the top nine songs on the album. The other songs will influence the score indirectly, by subtracting or adding to the songs that do count. The high score is 99, so no album can be a perfect 100.

As you can tell, I like albums that have good songs more than I care about an album being put together well. That's what happens when you are raised with iTunes.

Also, this rating system only works given the Rock Album format. Beethoven's 9th and Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water need different rating scales.

DISCLAIMER: I have a terrible taste in music. My favorite band is Bon Jovi, and I have a very high tolerance for cheesiness (but I repeat myself). You have been warned.

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Richie Sambora 1991: Stranger in this Town

A YouTube Playlist of the Album, in case you want to listen along.

For those not in the know, Richie Sambora is the guitarist for Bon Jovi. He's released three solo albums so far: Stranger in this Town, Undiscovered Soul (1998), and Aftermath of the Lowdown (2012), in descending order of quality, I think.

In Brief: This is the album that got me thinking about the album/song question. I love this album, but none of the songs make it into my 'most listened' list. The album starts with sixsongs that are meant to be listened to together: "Rest in Peace," of little value on its own, sets the mood for the subsequent songs to play off of. Sambora's guitar, and the music, sounds more Blues/Blues-Rock, in contrast to Bon Jovi's Pop-Rock-Metal sound, which fits, because he's complementing his own voice instead of Jon Bon Jovi's. "Mr. Bluesman" is the musical highlight of the album, featuring a solo by Eric Clapton, while "Stranger in this Town" is the best song overall, followed by "Father Time." After the sixth song, the album stops sounding like a unified whole, which is mostly because "Rosie" was originally written as a Bon Jovi song. and "River of Love" sounds like a silly Jovi B-Side. While enjoyable, it doesn't quite fit in with the rest. The album as a whole would have worked better if 7-9 were excised ("Father Time" perhaps remaining as a postscript). Richie's voice is pedestrian, but it pairs well with his guitar style here, when sticking to his own style.


1. "Rest in Peace"  3:47
Lyrics: 2       Music: 2      Performance: 2      Bonus: Album(1)  Total: 7

2. "Church of Desire"   6:08
L: 2   M: 2  P: 2  A:1         T: 7

3. "Stranger in This Town"   6:15
L: 3  M: 2  P: 2  A:1 Bonus: 1      T: 9
The best song on the album, I think.

4. "Ballad of Youth"     3:52
L: 2  M: 2  P: 2  A:1      T: 7

5. "One Light Burning" 5:48
L: 2  M: 2  P: 2  A:1      T: 7

6. "Mr. Bluesman" (Solo by Eric Clapton) 5:14
L: 2  M: 2  P: 3  A:1      T: 8

7. "Rosie"   Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi, Desmond Child, Diane Warren 4:49
L: 2  M: 2  P: 2      T:6

8. "River of Love"  4:06
L: 1  M: 2  P: 1     T:4
"Let me be your preacher
And you can be my whore"
Yeah

9. "Father Time"  6:05
L: 3  M: 2  P: 3 Bonus: 1     T:9
Taken on it's own, my favorite song here. Doesn't contribute to the album as well as "Stranger," though.

10. "The Answer"   5:07

L: 2  M: 2  P: 1    T:5
A bit boring. It would have made a good closer to the album after "Mr. Bluesman," but it's kind of stranded out here.

Overall: 65

We'll see if my rating system gives enough of a standard deviation to be useful.
The song ratings seem to be:
5 or less - blah to bad.
6-7 - listenable
8-9 - enjoyable
10-11 - favorite.

We'll see on the album ratings.