Author Archives: jsylvest

Book List: 2019Q2

I'll call this the Wizards & Cryptarchs, Frauds & Revolutions Edition —or— "What I've been reading when I'm not prepping for lectures and wrestling with toddlers."

Cover of Ellen Ullman's "Life in Code"

Life in Code, Ellen Ullman

When Ullman sticks to psychology, writing about what's like to be dealing with code, she is brilliant. No one communicates what it feels like to code as well as she does. When she expands the scope to sociology, she is mediocre. I can get that brand of techno-cynical, socialist dirigisme in any magazine on the newsstand. ((Here I'm not using "socialist" as the generic critique of any left-leaning idea that it is sometimes sloppily deployed as. Ullman is a former member of the Communist party; she has self-identified as a socialist.))

This is a collection of previously published essays. The good ones are great, the others are worth reading but not special. They were published over the last several decades, so merely seeing which themes and topics aren't addressed — social media is conspicuously absent from earlier discussion of the internet — is interesting in itself.

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Dan Harris and Jeffrey Warren with Carlye Adler

I found this a little too squishy for my tastes, with its "everything can be meditation if you do it right" thesis. I'm saying this as someone who struggles in my meditation practice, so I completely get the strategy here. They want to provide a gentle on-ramp to get non-meditators to give it a shot. I've got nothing against that as a goal or a strategy, but I'd still like a little more discipline from meditation instruction. Meditation isn't supposed to be (too) easy. (What worth doing is?)

Nevertheless, this was pretty good. I've recommended it to my wife, because I think she's a good target audience, much like Dan Harris' own wife. I think she'll appreciate the way different chapters cover various objections to starting a meditation practice (I can't find the time; it's self-indulgent; etc.).

I especially liked the way the authors framed how you should respond when you notice you're "doing it wrong" while sitting: not "shame on me; you're doing a bad job meditating" but "good job for having the self-awareness to notice you're getting distracted."

Cover of "The Dark Forest"

The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu

This is the sequel to Three Body Problem. The first 40% or so of this volume was very slow, but the remainder picked up speed. My chief complaint is that there were no new ideas introduced in the first portion. The translator has changed between the first volume and this one, which may have also contributed to the torpid pacing. (I read TBP some months back, so I can't remember the specifics of what might be different in the translation.)

I'm not sure exactly how to say this, but Dark Forest struck me as being very "Chinese" — the focus on ideological purity and morale in the population, the interest in political affiliations amongst industry and the military, etc. It was interesting to read for that perspective alone.

Dark Forest revolves around what I think of as a Hari Seldon-esque view of social science that I always find off-putting. I'm tempted to say this is another element that is a result of Liu's Chinese heritage, but it crops up so often in SciFi that I can't do that. (I think the actual cause is that many SciFi authors who like physics want history & sociology to be as rigorous and reductionist as physics is.)

A Little History of Philosophy, Nigel Warburton

Every chapter of this brief book is about one important philosopher from history. Warburton does a good job of tying them all together into a single thread. It's nothing ground breaking, but makes for a pretty good introduction/refresher. I enjoyed listening to it on dog walks/commutes, because the structure was very digestible: I could listen to one chapter (ten or twelve minutes?), do some learning, and then move on to a different book on a different topic. I don't think I would have been in the mood currently to plow through four hours of Intro Philosophy lessons if I couldn't chunk it up like that.

I first heard of Warburton as the host of the Philosophy Bites podcast, in which he interviews other philosophy professors about their work. I haven't listened in a long time, but I still recommend it. The serious-but-approachable style he uses in that podcast carries through to this book.

No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson

I had the same reaction to this that I have to most of the business books I've read: there's a kernel of good information here, but the authors spend twice as long convincing me of how relevant and useful the advice is as they do just giving me the advice. I think they also play a little fast-and-loose with neuroscience for my taste. I didn't notice anything egregiously wrong — and I think they do know what they're talking about — but it felt like they were trying a little too hard to layer on scientific respectability by giving folksy descriptions of brain science.

Nevertheless, there's some pretty good advice here. I think it's difficult to write a book about discipling all kids between the ages of 2 and 18. Maybe my opinion on that will change once mine get out of the toddler stage.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away, Bill Bryson

This is a collection of newspaper columns that Bryson wrote for an English paper after he moved back to America in the 90s. It's about what you would expect from a newspaper humorist. It's never as good as Bryson can really be, but it's pleasing in a homey, comforting way.

It was also nice to have an audiobook I could listen to where each chapter was only several hundred words. I could listen to one of these while knocking out a chore when a more complicated piece of narrative or non-fiction would be difficult to digest in four or five minute chunks.

The comparison of dealing with the Social Security Administration compared to the British immigration authority was the highlight for me.

Grave Peril, Jim Butcher

This is the fourth of Butcher's "Harry Dresden" novels. If you liked the first three, you'll probably like this. You'll probably like it more actually; Butcher seems to be getting better as a writer at this point in his publication history. Honestly I wasn't really paying enough attention to this book to be able to put my finger on why or how.

The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi

This is the first in a trilogy about posthuman gentleman-thief Jean le Flambeur. I first read it years back (October 2014), and decided to re-read it before picking up volumes two and three since it was dense with weird concepts and novel vocabulary and allusions. (Cryptarchs! Exomemory! The Engineer-of-Souls! The Dilemma Prison! The All-Defector!) Even the second time through, I found it difficult to keep up with what was happening, since Rajaniemi gives little to no exposition to introduce you to all of the wonderful concepts and terms. Still, this is recommended for its creativity.

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

Cover to "Wizard of Earthsea"

I first read this when I was probably 10, and again in college, and now again when I'm 35. It not only holds up, I think I like it more.

It's extremely refreshing to read some fantasy that doesn't feel the need to bulk up to 800 pages with descriptions of the dishes at every feast and the heraldry of every noble family.

This is one of the books that I'm really looking forward to reading as a bed time story when the wee ones are old enough for "real" stories. ((By "real" I mean "not finished in a single sitting."))

I can not recommend this enough if you haven't read it before.

Here's some of the Daoist-flavored aphorisms from Wizard of Earthsea that I wrote down this time around:

  • Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience.
  • The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.
  • For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.
  • To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

I've been leaning on that first one really hard with the two previously-mentioned toddlers in the house right now.

Pushing Ice, Alastair Reynolds

This is the second Reynolds books I've read in as many months, and I am a full-on convert now. So much fun.

The preface is set several tens of millennia in the future, and seems to give away what is going to go wrong for our protagonists in the present. The adventure comes from figuring how exactly things go wrong and how they deal with it. Then as you reach about the mid-point of the book or slightly after you realize that that disaster was only the first part of the challenge and things get much weirder than you imagined.

Like House of Suns, Reynolds captures the immensity of space and its psychological impact in a way that few other scifi authors have.

My only complaint is that most of the story takes place in a society of a couple of hundred people, but it seems to have the economic and social structure of a much, much larger population. Would a couple of Dunbars worth of people really be able to support restaurant entrepreneurship, as Reynolds mentions off-hand?

Cover of "Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou

Bad Blood, John Carreyrou

I devoured this over the course of a couple of plane rides. It has gotten tons of praise, all of it deserved. I'm not sure what to add.

I have no earthly idea how so many investors and partners would not demand to see a working demo of Theranos' capabilities. I really cannot conceive of agreeing to back a system without being able to compare it to a baseline. "Sounds great. Here's two blood draws from twenty people. You take half of each pair and I'll send the other to a conventional lab. I'm so excited to see how well they match up!" Is that so hard? I don't think I would even take a second meeting — to say nothing of investing nine figures — without seeing the results from that.

Maybe I'm an outlier since so much of what I do day-to-day is about replication? Maybe this is hindsight bias on my part? Maybe I would be just as hoodwinked by Elizabeth Holmes' reported charisma?

A lot of Theranos' success is keeping the scam going was because so many of the insiders who saw through things were bullied into remaining quiet. Many of those who did want to blow the whistle were unable to exfil evidence. Would society be better or worse off if more people had the tradecraft to get the relevant documents out of places like Theranos? I'm guessing this would be a net negative since it would also allow more industrial espionage, more insider trading, etc., but the people who are motivated to do such things also have the motivation to learn how to get away with them, whereas it's the innocent potential whistleblowers who have never thought of a more advanced way to smuggle/maintain data besides "forward it to my personal email account" who are left without tools.

The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples, David Gilmour

Cover of "The Pursuit of Italy" by David Gilmour

This was a history of Italy-as-a-concept rather than Italy-as-a-geographic-region or Italy-as-a-nation-state. As Massimo d'Azeglio said after the Risorgimento: "We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians." The existence of a single country called "Italy" is highly historically contingent, and The Pursuit of Italy explores that contingency.

I had thought this was primarily going to be about the unification process of the Risorgimento, since I had heard it quoted so heavily in a podcast on that topic. ((Talking History: The Italian Unification.)) Gilmour actually covers much more ground, both before and afterwards. The book continues all the way up to discussions of contemporary politics, including Berlusconi, the Northern League, etc. I think I actually found the period preceding and following unification to be more interesting, as those chapters were more about culture than politics.

One take-away is that almost every Italian political leader since unification seems like a fool, including those with massive public monuments scattered across the country. (Exceptions: Garibaldi seems like a tactical dunce but strategically sharp and extremely charismatic, as well as principled. Mazzini also seems intelligent and principled, but he spent most of his life in exile as persona non grata and has not been fully retconned into the pantheon of Italian founding fathers.) Other than those two, the rest — Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, almost every minister in the 20th Century — look like fools. Even Mussolini seems to have bumbled his way into dictatorship.

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

This is another book that I've read multiple times before, but probably not since I was twelve or so. I listened to big parts of it while dealing with some severe jet lag, waking up at 3am or so and then drifting back to sleep to the rhythms of narration about herding goats and defending against cannibals.

I was expecting this to be, shall we say... "un-modern" in its philosophy and tone seeing as how it's now exactly three centuries old. And while Friday's eager subservience no doubt puts this on many campus' Index Librorum Prohibitorum, I was actually surprised by the proto-moral-relativism and non-interference that Crusoe adopts toward the natives. There's also a ton of good lessons in here about the nature of wealth, desire, satisfaction, deserts, etc.

Cover of "The Book of Kells" by Bernhard Meehan

The Book of Kells, Bernard Meehan

I didn't read the Book of Kells itself since it's (a) in Latin and (b) so ornate it is nearly unreadable, but Meehan's book about that Book. It has wonderful illustrations throughout, and they are cross-referenced throughout the text in a very clever and unobtrusive way. The Book of Kells is one of the pinnacles of the early Western manuscript tradition, and I love it as much for its numerous imperfections as its elaborate decoration. As a calligrapher I do wish that Meehan talked a bit more about the letterforms as opposed to the illustrations, but I understand that's not something most people would be interested in.

I read this in advance of a trip to Ireland, where I went to see the exhibit of the original manuscript at Trinity College Dublin. I didn't pick this out for any particular reason, Meehan's book just happened to be the one book at my local library on the subject. It also happened to be the one book that the gift shop at Trinity was selling about The Book of Kells, so I suppose that means it's pretty authoritative?

by jsylvest Posted on 12 July 2019
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BaRT: Barrage of Random Transforms for Adversarially Robust Defense

This week I'm at CVPR — the IEEE's Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, which is a huge AI event. I'm currently rehearsing the timing of my talk one last time, but I wanted to take a minute between run-throughs to link to my co-author Steven Forsyth's wonderful post on the NVIDIA research blog about our paper.

Steven does a fantastic job of describing our work, so head over there to see what he has to say. I couldn't resist putting a post of my own because (a) I love this video we created...

...and (b), Steven left out what I think was the most convincing result we had, which shows that BaRT achieves a Top-1 accuracy on ImageNet that is higher than the Top-5 accuracy of the previous state-of-the-art defense, Adversarial Training.

A result from our paper, showing accuracy for varying adversarial distances.
Accuracy of BaRT under attack by PGD for varying adversarial distances, compared to the previous state-of-the-art.

Also, (c) I am very proud of this work. It's been an idea I've been batting around for almost three years now, and I finally got approval from my client to pursue it last year. It turns out it works exactly how I expected, and I can honestly say that this is the first — and probably only — time in my scientific career that has ever happened.

If you want a copy of the paper, complete with some code in the appendices, ((Our hands are somewhat tied releasing the full code due to the nature of our client relationship with the wonderful Laboratory for Physical Sciences, who funded this work.)) our poster, and the slides for our oral presentation you can find it on the BaRT page I slapped together on my website.

by jsylvest Posted on 19 June 2019
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⁂ Asterisms in LaTeX ⁂

This is a snippet of LaTeX I put together so that I could use asterisms (⁂) when writing papers. I use them to mark off sections of text which will need further attention when editing.

unicode index:U+2042 (8258)
HTML escapes:⁂
⁂
UTF8:e2 81 82

I should really get around to cleaning up and posting the LaTeX macro files that I've been assembling over the years. And who knows, maybe there's some other STEM folks who get as excited over obscure typographical marks as I do. (There are dozens of us! Dozens!)

There are other macros floating around out there that will create asterisms, but the ones I tried don't work if you're not using single-spacing/standard leading. This one will do so — best I can tell — in addition to working with different sized text, etc.

Updated:

I've got a much, much simpler solution than the one I gave below, and it appears to get rid of the weird beginning-of-paragraph bug I sometimes ran in to with the solution I posted previously. I haven't tested it extensively, but it seems to work far better than the older version, and it's certainly much easier to understand.

\newcommand{\asterism}{%
\makebox[1em][c]{%
\makebox[0pt][c]{\raisebox{-0.8ex}{\smash{**}}}%
\makebox[0pt][c]{\raisebox{0.2ex}{\smash{*}}}%
}}

For the record, here's the old version:

\newcommand{\asterism}{%
  \smash{%
    \begin{minipage}[t]{1.2em}%
      \centering%
      \begin{spacing}{1.0}%
        \raisebox{-.15em}{%
          \setlength{\tabcolsep}{.025em}%
          \renewcommand*{\arraystretch}{0.5}%
          \resizebox{1.05em}{!}{%
            \begin{tabular}{@{}cc@{}}%
              \multicolumn{2}{c}*\$$!-0.5em]%
              *&*%
            \end{tabular}%
          }% end resizebox
        }% end raisebox
      \end{spacing}%
    \end{minipage}%
  }% end smash
}
by jsylvest Posted on 9 May 2019
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gifcrop.sh

Recently I had to crop a lot of animated gifs down for a project. This isn't hard to do with ImageMagick…

$ convert in.gif -coalesce -repage 0x0 -crop WxH+X+y +repage out.gif

…but it does require some repetitive typing and mental arithmetic and rather mysterious incantations if you don't grok what all the coalescing and repaging is about. (I don't.) So I put together this bash script to handle that for me. Didn't Paul Graham say that if your coding is repetitive then the problem isn't your project, it's that you're doing it wrong? Specifically you're operating at the wrong level of abstraction.

Because I found myself repetitively wrangling these ImageMagick commands into shape, I decided it was time to sidestep that problem and make a script to do the drudgery for me. Plus this way I can get things like the aspect ratio before and after the changes computed for me.

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$1" ]; then 
  echo "usage: gifcrop.sh infile.gif left right [top] [bottom] [suffix]"
  exit
fi

echo -e "  opening \t ${1}" 1>&2

# There are several ways to extract the name of the file that comes before
# '.gif' so we can rename it with a suffix:
# BASE=${1%.gif}
BASE=$(basename ${1} .gif)
#BASE=$(echo ${1} | sed 's/.gif/\1/')

# Set the margins to be cropped off (Left, Right, Top, Bottom):
L=$2
R=$3
T=${4:-0} #use argv[4] (or 0, if argv[4] is undef or empty)
B=${5:-0} #use argv[5] (or 0, if argv[5] is undef or empty)

SUFFIX=${6:-crop} #use argv[6] (or "crop", if argv[6] is undef or empty)

# Get the original size of the image
W0=$(identify ${1} | head -1 | awk '{print $3}' | cut -d 'x' -f 1)
H0=$(identify ${1} | head -1 | awk '{print $3}' | cut -d 'x' -f 2)

aspectOld=$(printf "%4.3f" $(echo $W0/$H0 | bc -l))
echo -e "  current size \t ${W0}x${H0}\t($aspectOld)" 1>&2

# Calculate the new size of the image
let "W1 = $W0 - ($L + $R)"
let "H1 = $H0 - ($T + $B)"
aspectNew=$(printf "%4.3f" $(echo $W1/$H1 | bc -l))
echo -e "  new size \t ${W1}x${H1}\t($aspectNew)" 1>&2

NEWNAME=${BASE}${SUFFIX}.gif
echo -e "  saving to \t ${NEWNAME}" 1>&2

convert ${1} -coalesce -repage 0x0 -crop ${W1}x${H1}+${L}+${T} +repage ${NEWNAME}

Simply save this as something like gifcrop.sh, and then run it like so:

$ gifcrop.sh coolpic.gif 10 20 30 40 _small

That will take 10 pixels off the left, 20 off the right, 30 from the top and 40 from the bottom. The result gets saved as coolpic_small.gif. The new version is saved as a second file with a suffixed name instead of over-writing because I found that I had to iterate many times to get the correct dimensions, so I wanted both new and original versions available for comparison.

The final three arguments are optional, since most of the time I found myself adjusting the width but leaving the height alone, and I never encountered a situation in which I needed an alternative suffix besides "crop". So these two commands are identical:

$ gifcrop.sh in.gif 10 20 0 0 crop
$ gifcrop.sh in.gif 10 20

This all depends on the format of the results that ImageMagick gives you from the identify command, which is used to get the current size of the input image. You may need to adjust these two lines:

W0=$(identify ${1} | head -1 | awk '{print $3}' | cut -d 'x' -f 1)
H0=$(identify ${1} | head -1 | awk '{print $3}' | cut -d 'x' -f 2)

On my machine, identify foo.gif | head -1 gives me this output:

foo.gif[0] GIF 250x286 250x286+0+0 8-bit sRGB 128c 492KB 0.000u 0:00.030

The awk command isolates the 250x286 part, and the cut command pulls out the two dimensions from that.

I should probably put in --quiet or --verbose options to suppress the output, but honestly I like seeing it as an error/sanity check and adding more optional args would put me in a place where I should really re-write this to take in key/value pairs instead of positionals. As an alternative to a --quiet option, you can just pipe the output of stderr to /dev/null to make it go away if it really bothers you, e.g.:

gifcrop.sh foo.gif 100 100 2> /dev/null

I suppose I can't have a blog post about animated gifs without including at least one animated gif. So here's the most recent use I've had for gifcrop.sh, editing a gif of the "Datasaurus Dozen" for use in the Data Science class I'm teaching.

Datasaurus Dozen
Original gif of twelve very different datasets, all with equivalent summary statistics.
Datasaurus Dozen, cropped.
The same scatter plots, but with the statistics cropped out so as not to ruin the punchline in class.
by jsylvest Posted on 9 May 2019
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Book List: 2019Q1

I think I did less reading this quarter than at any point since I beat dyslexia. Certainly less than any point since I started keeping track in 2011, and that includes the period when I finished my dissertation and had two kids. I'm teaching a course at a local college this semester, and lesson prep and grading has not left a lot of time for reading. But enough complaining...

slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, Nancy Duarte

Despite giving a fairly large number of presentations, I'm definitely not the audience for this. It's not really about presentations, but about sales presentations. If, like me, you have mostly factual & technical information to impart, I'm not sure how much this will help. There's a decent amount of advice in here if you're a complete graphic design novice, but there are probably better places to get that knowledge.

Cover of "The Relaxed Mind" by Dza Kilung
"The Relaxed Mind," Dza Kilung

The Relaxed Mind, Dza Kilung Rinpoche

There is perhaps a bit too much "woo" in the later chapters of this meditation manual, but it is still a good book for practice. If nothing else, I like having some meditation-related book on my bedstand/ipod: even if that book itself is not the best, it serves as an encouragement to keep practicing. The earlier two or three of the seven practices described here seem concretely useful. Maybe the latter practices will have more appeal to me as I become a "better" meditator?

Cover of "The Most Human Human," by Brian Christian
"The Most Human Human," Brian Christian

The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive, Brian Christian

I loved this. Christian has a degree in computer science and an MFA in poetry. I can't think of a better background to write about what the Turing Test tells us about talking with (and being) human. There's good history of AI, exploration of psychology and epistemology, and tips for what makes a conversation interesting.

I'm recommending this as a great book for other technologists to learn something about "soft skills" and for non-technologists to learn about AI. I can't think of another book that comes close to providing both benefits.

Lies Sleeping, Ben Aaronovitch

This is the latest in Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series, which I still love. I should really write these recaps as soon as I finish reading, because it's been long enough now that I don't have anything specific to say about it. But this is the ninth volume in the series, so if you don't already have an opinion about the prior eight, there's really no need for you to have one about this.

My wife, who reads mysteries almost exclusively, has recently started this series after hearing me talk about it since 2014. It's one of the few book series we both equally enjoy.

The Labyrinth Index, Charles Stross

(1) Copy-and-paste what I said above about not waiting to write these comments. (2) Copy-and-paste what I said about already having opinions about the series since it's long running, but replace "ninth" with "twelfth."

Cover of "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon
"Gravity's Rainbow," Thomas Pynchon

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

I'll be honest: I did not understand this book. I enjoyed it a great deal, but I did not understand it.

I like Pynchon as a stylist even when the narrative has me completely befuddled. As a result, even the confusing passages make for very good audiobook listening because I can let the language just wash over me.

Cover of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki.
"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," Shunryu Suzuki.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki

I also didn't fully understand this book, but I feel like I wasn't really meant to. ((Actually, now that I think about it, maybe Pynchon didn't really want people to understand him either.)) I'm not sure "understanding" is even a thing you're supposed to be able to do to Zen. I think I got a lot out of it regardless. It's definitely something I'm going to revisit in the future.

Cover of "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds
"House of Suns," Alastair Reynolds

House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds

This is another winner. I haven't had this much fun reading a sci-fi book in years. It has that wide-screen baroque space opera feel that I used to get from Iain Banks books. I can't think of another story that engages so well with the sheer scope — in time and distance — of the galaxy. Before I was half way through I was already putting all of the library's other Reynolds books on my list.

The Sky-Blue Wolves, S. M. Stirling

I keep saying I'm going to stop reading this series, but then a new volume comes out just when I want a junk-food book and I read it anyway. Then I feel about as satisfied as I do after eating actual junk food. This is a fun world to mentally play around in, but Stirling is really phoning it in at this point. The Big Bad Guy that was supposed to require a world war to defeat just got knocked off in about a chapter of Dreamtime Ninja Shenanigans, and meanwhile two of our Intrepid Heroes (who happen to both be rightful heirs to continent-spanning empires) decided to have a love-child. Nice neat bow; everyone rides into the sunset.

by jsylvest Posted on 25 April 2019
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Art in Space

Today I'm going to put on my Tyler Cowen hat and speculate about what art work will be valuable when humans are space-faring.

That's a pretty big range of possibilities, so let's keep things to a realistic, near(-ish) future. That means ignoring Iain Banks-type, post-singularity futures in which people are molding entire continents on ring worlds for aesthetic value alone. For the sake of argument, let's imagine a future something like that laid out in James S.A. Corey's "The Expanse" world: large population centers on artificial habitats on Mars, the asteroid belt, Jovian moons, etc. with a stable-but-tenuous economic existence. (I've been watching the latest season of the TV adaptation recently, and the latest printed volume is on hold for me at the library, so it's on my mind.)

Concept art of an upscale district on Ceres for "The Expanse" TV adaptation, by Ryan Dening & Tim Warnock.

There are myriad ways that the technology of the next several centuries could change art, but I want to think about what effects living in space specifically will have, rather than generic sci-fi-ness of the future could have.

The art market itself is also extremely broad, so here I'm thinking of mostly the upper-middle of the market more or less: not the sort of stuff at Art Basel or Gagosian, but what you might find in the off-world version of Canyon Road.

If living in space maintains the frontier aspect that I am picturing — and honestly, why wouldn't it, since it will be harder than living on a deep sea oil platform, undersea habitat or antarctic base? — then I'd predict a lot more shift to crafts and folk/outsider art.

Most obviously, the volume of living space will be constrained in a way we're not used to. (Think of living permanently on a cruise ship, or perhaps even a submarine.) I'd think that the average size of visual art will decrease to match. On the other hand, the sheer size of a canvas will itself will become a signal: a huge picture will be a prestige item simply because it makes a direct claim about how much living space you have.

Concept are for a rougher district on Ceres, also by Denig & Warnock.

This would not apply as directly to digital art, which I would expect to proliferate. For one thing, it is massless and volume-less — a nice feature when momentum, conservation of energy, and other orbital mechanical constraints play such an important role in life. Furthermore, it can be swapped out with any other work of art in a display effortlessly, which allows for both variety and flexibility in the event that living in confined conditions change our norms of privacy and personalization. (Hot-swapping living space would necessitate either bland, lowest-common-denominator, hotel room artwork, or similarly hot-swappable artwork.) The supply of digital art may also increase: with millions more people relying directly and tangibly on computerized navigation, life support, logistics, etc. it seems reasonable to suspect that some people will take their digital skills into more creative roles.

"Table Piece CCLXVI," Anthony Caro, 1975.
"Table Piece CCLXVI," Anthony Caro, 1975.

Will there be more sculpture? A lot of the economy of space seems (in Expanse-world, that is) to be based on mining, drilling, fabrication, etc. Will having many more people able to work a plasma torch and MIG welder lead to a proliferation of Anthony Caros? I can see an increase in supply, but on the demand side not so much. I have had dealers tell me that there is already low demand on Earth for sculpture because it is perceived by potential buyers as being awkward to display. Buying a big chunk of decorative rock or metal or ceramic would be more prohibitive in space than it is in the here-and-now.

Sci-fi designers seem to love non-rectangular corridors with lots of protruding bulkheads and other features that seem intentionally wasteful of volume. I have no idea if real space ships will actually end up like this in a case of life imitating art, but let's assume they do. This will: (a) make it difficult to hang canvases because the walls are often inexplicably not vertical, and (b) leave you with a lot of little nooks and crannies into which you might be able to fit sculpture. How would your aesthetic sense change if you didn't have blank walls to cover, but instead had lots of interstitial space between all the assorted conduits and ducts that needed to be filled?

I would expect other traditional hand-crafts to increase. A population of artisan workers — possibly with limited entertainment options due to being physically isolated from large population centers — may very well turn to crafts as a method of expression and to pass time. Textiles, perhaps? Limited living space would also mean limited possessions. Would there be a resurgence in, for instance, needlework to personalize jumpsuits? ((Because if there's one thing the sci-fi of my youth universally agreed on, it's that people on space stations will wear jumpsuits.)) Perhaps jewelry would be another outlet, if there is access to machinist skills and tools. This form of wearable sculpture would bypass the limitations of size & weight mentioned in the previous paragraph. Both jewelry and needlework might have added appeal if clothing becomes more standardized for safety or utilitarian reasons.

A yosegi jewelry chest by Affine Creations.
A yosegi jewelry chest by Affine Creations.

Materials will also be a limitation. There are no trees in space, so forget one of my hobbies, wood-working, or carving or turning. However I could see an increased demand for small wooden objects like boxes and small scale cabinetry as semi-luxury items, both because they would act as a reminder of Earth, and because living on a moving vessel would create a practical need for things to be put in containers. (Again, think of being on a ship.) Perhaps there would be a big demand for intarsia or yosegi? These both become easier with CNC tools (even if that is sort of cheating), and I assume these tools would be well provided for in space. All sorts of veneer work could be in higher demand: it can be used to mask the metal or synthetic materials that habitats would be made out of without costing significant mass or volume.

Of course, paper also becomes expensive. I've seen arguments that cheap paper in the 14th century was a necessary condition for the emergence of more realistic painting styles in the Renaissance, since it allowed artists to do orders of magnitude more practice than before. I don't think this will be a limiting condition given the availability of digital tablets, but it is probably a safe assumption that print-making, calligraphy and other works on paper will not be common on Ganymede.

I would expect some advanced technology in terms of chemistry and materials science. What new possibilities for pigments, substrates, etc. will this open up? The exploration of hostile environments will require advances in sensor and processing technology. What effect will this have on computational photography or digital rendering? AR/VR as an artistic medium will probably be helped along.

Many beginners are often tempted to paint from photographs as source material. This often leads to problems matching colors and values well since cameras and displays don't come close to capturing the full dynamic range of human vision. Will this mismatch between cameras and our retinas cause difficulty painting landscapes if the artist's vision has to modulated through some variety of sensors or visors to protect them from radiation when observing the environment? Forget painting en plein air.

The skills and tools for ceramics and glasswork seem like they would be more common in a space ecosystem, but does the utility of materials that shatter easily go down if you live on a moving vessel? I would think so. Perhaps there is a divide between those living on moons & asteroids and those living on ships, with the former being interested in ceramics and the latter not. Perhaps one of the materials science advances is more durable ceramics, and this point becomes moot.

More broadly, will interior decoration be divided between spaces that are rigged for acceleration and those that aren't? Or those that have a definite up/down axis due to (pseudo)gravity and those that do not? Will visual artists adjust to create works that don't have a defined top or bottom so that they can be appreciated better in zero-g? Or will the opposite occur: the use of artwork and decorations to subliminally orient occupants of a space in a common direction when there is no proper "down"?

How do the aforementioned CNC and 3D printing technologies fit into purely aesthetic pursuits? Too early to tell for me.

Regarding performance arts, I have little opinion. Will scarcity of large, open spaces make theatre less common? Will live music proliferate for the same reasons I speculate that crafts might (i.e. isolated communities looking to make their own entertainment)? Or will people be sailing off into the deepness with such large digital entertainment libraries that this is unnecessary? If people become used to working and living in space suits, communicating via radio, and seeing others primarily through screens, will that increase or decrease the desire to see and hear unmediated, live performances? ((Will the choral traditions of mining communities like those in Wales or South Africa be replicated by miners of asteroids?)) I have no idea what the sign of the effect is, to say nothing of the magnitude. One thing we can be confident about is that zero or low gravity environments certainly open up huge possibilities for dance, acrobatics, etc.

To what degree are artworks made in space demanded on Earth? I once bought a (rather ugly) change dish/ashtray only because it was cast out of lava on Mount Etna in front of me. Would there be enough people on Earth that would want decorative paperweights made of chunks of Iapetus or Pallas? Will art produced in space demand a premium on Earth because of its exotic origin, or will it be scene as an inferior good from a cultural/economic backwater?

Going in the other direction, will art that is conspicuously from Earth have extra luxury status in space? "I paid to haul this dead weight up out of the gravity well just to look at it."

What themes will be explored in space-based art? My first guess is that desire for landscapes and other natural scenes of Earth would increase, to compensate for people not being able to be in "natural" environments personally. On the other hand, perhaps the early settlers in space are proud enough of their pioneer spirit that they turn their back aesthetically on Earth. ("Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you've done your work..." etc.) Psychologically, it seems like the most salient themes of living in space would be isolation and danger; I would expect those to be explored. Are there any thematic elements linking the art of nomadic cultures or those living in very hostile conditions? I'm not well-versed enough to think of any, but perhaps they exist.

A common connection in my speculations is that the supply and demand may move in opposing directions (e.g. easier to make sculpture, but fewer people want them). Another is that there could be a more bifurcated art market, with higher demand for luxury items (e.g. made of wood) among a narrower portion of the space-faring population, but a broader demand for more folk-art and crafts.

I mostly don't have answers to any of the questions I raised. I think the only thing to do is hoist ourselves out of the gravity well and find out what happens.

PS I hope you read the title of this post in the same voice Mel Brooks used at the end of the History of the World Part I. I certainly did.

Edited: I just thought of another art form that could adapt to space well — bonsai. Agronomy will be critical not just for food, but for life-support systems in general. This could lead to increased prominence for horticultural pursuits.

Bonsai seems especially well-suited, given the volume constraints of space-living. I could sum up the entire goal of bonsai ((To the extend I understand it, and my experience boils down to visiting a few arboretums and attempting to grow one juniper that almost immediately succumbed to a fungal infection.)) as "let me take untamed Nature, and form it into a bite-sized version to keep inside my home," which I can definitely see the appeal of if you're traveling away from Earth and out into The Beyond. I also think an over-looked aspect of space travel is how long it will take to get anywhere translunar, so a slow form of art creation may have an intrinsic appeal.

A fukinagashi (wind-swept) style bonsai tree.

I'm very curious how forms of plants and human tastes would adapt to low- and zero-g, especially since many traditional bonsai styles are either about succumbing to gravity (cascades) or reacting strongly against it (upright). Simulating the effect of wind on a tree is also a common technique, but wind might be a somewhat foreign concept to people residing in space. ((Unless we build something like O'Neill cylinders that have coriolis winds.))

by jsylvest Posted on 22 April 2019
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Book List: 2018Q4

Cover of Colin Tudge's, "The Tree"
Colin Tudge, "The Tree"

The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter, Colin Tudge

Exactly what it says on the cover: all about trees. This was exceptionally well organized. As an amateur woodworker, the first few chapters were particularly helpful to sort out all of the different common and trade names and how they relate to actual species. (Short version: it's a total ontological train wreck.) This book felt exceptionally well outlined; the organization of such a broad topic was very easy to follow. My primary complaint is that I listened to this as an audiobook, which made it difficult to stop and do image searches on some of the weirder species that were lovingly described.

The last 10% or so shifts from positive to normative, which is considerably weaker. For example, Tudge advocates that more buildings should be built of timber rather than steel and concrete and also that the price of timber ought to rise. These may both be desirable, but he gives absolutely no acknowledgement that these goals are in conflict. He also sets up urbanization/industrialization as being in opposition to growth of forests, without addressing the Kuznets curve phenomenon of reforestation.

Overall, highly recommended.

Pyramids, Terry Pratchett

I've never not loved one of Pratchett's Discworld novels. This is no exception. It's not one of the best, but even mediocre Pratchett is wonderful.

How To Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

You already know about this book. I put off reading it for years, figuring that it was all common sense that I already knew. And frankly, it kind of is. But there can be tremendous utility to being told things you already know. It might not teach you something profoundly novel, but it will likely help you realize when and how to put into practice the things you know.

It's been re-edited several times over its eight decades, and the result seems a little mixed up. Most especially, some of the examples seem drawn from very different points in time, which would be a positive if they were more clearly tagged. As is, it was difficult to get the right context for the interactions being described.

There was also plenty of horn-tooting about how useful different people have found Carnegie's instruction, but the amount of self-back-atting was actually less than I've found in the few other business/self-help books I've read.

Overall I think this book has become under-rated by virtue of being too often over-rated, if that makes sense. Read it.

Cover of Travis Corcoran's "Causes of Separation"
Travis Corcoran, "Causes of Separation"

Causes of Separation, Travis Corcoran

This is a sequel to Corcoran's Powers of the Earth, which I recommended last quarter. If you are interested in moon bases, AI, uplifted dogs, anti-gravity, augmented reality, anarcho-capitalism, etc. then you will probably like this. The psychological profile of the protagonist continues to be well done, but the antagonists are still a bit of a travesty.

Robopocalypse, Daniel Wilson

Hard to recommend. A co-worker tells me there is a very interesting twist in the sequel, which I will not reveal. It was a decent enough action book with killer robots, but since becoming a parent I have a much harder time being excited about dystopic fiction in which bad things happen to children. Wilson leans on that heavily to create drama, which ends up feeling artificial.

The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami

I don't even know what to say about this. It's a very, very weird and discomforting magical realism story. It reminded me mostly of the sort of proto-horror folk tale that the Grimm Brothers would have been told.

Cover of Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country"
Bill Bryson, "In a Sunburned Country"

In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson

Bryson is always delightful. This is a travelogue of a couple of trips to Australia. As usualy, Bryson uses this frame as a jumping off point for whatever weird bits of history he finds interesting. Perhaps because Australia doesn't yet have that much known history ((No offense to the aboriginal population. Obviously there's been people in Australia for a long time, but they haven't left behind much historical record. Australia probably has the highest ratio of "weird pre-historic forests and strange rock formations" to "palaces, art museums, and other structures in guidebooks" of anywhere.)) he also includes a lot of natural history, with a particular emphasis on all of the weird and deadly fauna to be found. (Six foot long earth worms! Jellyfish with enough neurotoxin to kill an ox! ((Which is a total mystery, because they eat krill. What do they need with that much chemical warfare firepower?)) )

One take-away was just how inept the British colonization and exploration was. I'd give you more colorful examples, but the one that comes to mind is establishing the first colony (incidentally a penal colony) with exactly zero people who had ever farmed before. I think they had one guy that was briefly an assistant to a gardener and put him in charge of food production.I was expecting violent-but-hyper-competant Victorians but Bryson's telling is a lot more clueless-and-bumbling. It left me honestly shocked that such doofuses built an empire upon which the sun never set.

You Suck: A Love Story, Christopher Moore

This is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story. It was a fine distraction, but I don't have strong feelings about it.

The Hard Thing about Hard Things, Ben Horowitz

Recommended for people interested in the software business.

This was suggested to me as a general purpose business advice book. It's fairly good along that dimension, but Horowitz is really only talking about software start-ups. For instance, he discusses the problem to scaling at one point, and explicitly states that the only thing holding you back is hiring more developers and sales people. He is (rightly) unconcerned with the factors that influence growing other businesses, like suppliers, real estate, distribution channels, etc.

More people should write books like this though. I want less memoirs about how brilliant the author is, and more advice based on the challenges that people have survived.

As an aside, this exchange between Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen that was quoted in the book stood out:

Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke:
Marc: "Do you know the best thing about startups?"
Ben: "What?"
Marc: "You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find the lack of sleep enhances them both."

As I commented on twitter, this makes the rise of interest in Stoicism in Silicon Valley either intensely ironic or completely inevitable, but I can't decide which. It's also a good encapsulation of why I haven't been interested in doing the start-up thing in California: no terror or ataraxia for me please; give me some nice even ataraxia.

Cover of Marc Levinson's "The Box"
Marc Levinson, "The Box"

The Box, Marc Levinson

This is an excellent history of the shipping container. This seems like too humble of an object to need it's own history, but that is very far from correct.

The most striking thing to me was the shocking speed with which containerization swept the industry. We like to think things like smartphones or social media are unique for their incredibly rapid uptake, but their spread is hardly unparalleled. Levinson details multiple ports where containers went from essentially zero traffic to a majority in a year or two. Competitors, regulators and trade unions were caught completely unprepared for the pace of change over and over.

The other take-away was the ineptitude of almost everyone involved in post-War shipping: the Interstate Commerce Commission, trade unions, shipping lines, the railroads, the Pentagon, standards bodies — not a single one of them acquits themselves well. To take just one example, ISO set out to establish standards for shipping containers, and invited every interest group they could think of except the only two companies in the world that were already using shipping containers. Because who needs actual experience, right?

Malcolm Maclean — the originator of containerization — is as close as this story comes to having a hero, and even he seems more like someone who took lots of crazy risks that just happened to pay off rather than someone who really knew what he was doing. (After selling off SeaLand, his legitimately world-changing shipping business, to R.J.Reynolds, ((Because a cigarette company owning a shipping line is totally something that makes sense in the world of mid-century corporate conglomerates.)) he experienced a string of business failures, which cements my opinion that he was luckier than he was wise.)

Royal Assassin, Robin Hobb

Assassin's Quest, Robin Hobb

These are the second and third books in Hobb's "Farseer Trilogy." I think both are better than the initial title, Assassin's Apprentice, as they have more psychological depth. What I appreciate is that the main characters face actual moral conundrums. Most fiction, are perhaps especially more fantasy, presents the protagonist with a clear choice between doing what is difficult-but-right and what is easy-but-wrong; Hobb's characters have to juggle competing imperatives and make for difficult decisions with no right answers.

My only complaint is that Assassin's Quest is as long as the first two books together. It should probably be two separate volumes. There is actually a pretty natural breakpoint in the story line about half-way through, so it would not surprise me if this was initially planned as a quartet and the final two installments were smashed together.

How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Answers, Sarah Bakewell

This is part biography, and part work of philosophy. It's an excellent combination. I was struck by how much 16th century France seemed like 21st century America in many respects. Definitely recommended.

There was a tiredness and a sourness in Montaigne's generation, along with a rebellious new form of creativity. If they were cynical, it is easy to see why: they had to watch the ideals that had guided their upbringing turn into a grim joke. The Reformation, hailed by some earlier thinkers as a blast of fresh air beneficial to the Church itself, became a war and threatened to ruin civilized society. Renaissance principles of beauty, poise, clarity, and intelligence dissolved in violence, cruelty, and extremist theology. Montaigne's half-century was so disastrous for France that it took another half-century to recover from it—and in some ways recovery never came, for the turmoil of the late 1500s stopped France from building a major New World empire like those of England and Spain, and kept it inward-looking. By the time of Montaigne's death, France was economically feeble, and ravaged by disease, famine and public disorder. No wonder young nobles of his generation ended up as exquisitely educated misanthropes.

The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis

The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis

The Great Divorce reminded me of a theological version of Games People Play. It was interesting enough, but not that impactful.

The Abolition of Man, on the other hand, was excellent. This is also a book that feels like required reading for the beginning of the 21st century, despite being several decades old. I listened to an audio version of this, and will probably need to read a physical copy before I could offer any detailed analysis.

by jsylvest Posted on 24 January 2019
Posted in Book List, Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Book List: 2018Q3

We Are Legion (We Are Bob), Dennis Taylor

For We Are Many, Dennis Taylor

All These Worlds, Dennis Taylor

A sci-fi series about a cryogenically frozen software engineer thawed out several centuries in the future by a theocratic state and uploaded against his will into a von Neumann probe. I think there was a lot of potential here, but it never lived up to it. The potential comes from having multiple nearly-identical copies of the same character, which gives you the option of playing with themes about identity and cognition and narratively the ability to interleave lots of different stories together. The latter of these was accomplished. To me, one of the defining characteristics of a von Neumann probe is exponential growth, and the character(s) decide for unclear reasons not bother growing much. They remain production/population constrained throughout the decades of the narrative. This rubs me the wrong way, perhaps because whenever I play Civilization or any other 4X game I go hard for industrial base every time.

For what it's worth, I believe this was semi-self-published — the publisher on Amazon is listed as a literary agency — and probably as a result the design of these books was not pleasing. I know I care more than most about books as physical objects than most readers do, but I'm mentioning it anyway. The title and author were printed in the footer of each page rather than the header, which was disorienting but not objectively wrong. All three volumes I got from the library were set in Lucida Bright, which is an idiosyncratic choice, but more importantly the text of all three were blurry/rasterized. It was not a good reading experience, and these books deserved better.

Powers of the Earth, Travis Corcoran

Another sci-fi adventure, this time with a very strong anarcho-capitalist/libertarian bent. Quite good, if the politics doesn't turn you off. It's got moon bases, AI, uplifted dogs, and more. Also features a real-world economy complete with reasons for being in space in the first place, which very few other books bother with. (One exception is Andy Weir's Artemis.) I will give Corcoran credit for writing a protagonist with character flaws that actually matter for the story. On the other hand, the antagonists are farcically inept. It is difficult to take them too seriously, and the drama suffers as a result.

Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu

I think enough has been said about this one already, the majority of it positive. I'd agree.

Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie

The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie

Red Country, Joe Abercrombie

A follow-on trilogy to Abercrombie's "First Law" series. These three books are only loosely connected, taking place a few years after that in the same world, with some minor characters re-appearing. If you like George RR Martin but find his worldview too cheery and optimistic, this may be the book series for you. (Indeed, I read it partially because GRRM recommended it.) I particularly like the glimpse you get of the cosmic struggle going on just below the surface of the story, hidden from almost all the characters, and the depth of the world out on the fringes of the map. You get comparatively less of both of these in The Heroes and perhaps a little too much in Red Country. All three are recommended, especially because it's nice to have a fantasy series that offers some self-contained stories instead of having to chew through ten thousand pages before you get a conclusion.

milkMilk, Mark Kurlansky

Kurlansky's Salt and Paper are two of my favorites. I'm a sucker for non-fiction about common commodities. Milk was good, but not as good as those. It's less well organized, bouncing back and forth between passages on nutrition, health, history, culinary uses, etc. A better road-map would have been appreciated. It was peppered with historic recipes, which was at turns amusing and annoying.

I often complain that the books I read are good, but the economics in them is below part. This is another example of that. Kurlansky offers this assessment for example: "An oddity of the milk business in America and in Europe was that its growth was not determined by demand." How is that supposed to work? How were people being induced to buy something they didn't demand? I understand rhetorically what's he's attempting to convey, but logically what does this mean? A case could be made for increased supply being the principle factor at work, but he doesn't make that case. He just leaves this sentence there as if it explains everything.

In a similar vein, his treatment of regulation, etc. on consolidation, farm size, profitability etc. is confused. He almost acknowledges that regulatory compliance is a fixed cost that is easier for larger producers to bear, but then it slips past in favor of explaining consolidation as the outcome of some sort of capitalist conspiracy.

Good enough, but definitely not the first Kurlansky book I would recommend.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara W. Tuchman

This is a history of the late middle ages, centering on France and the Hundred Years' War. The format is interesting: it traces the life of a particular nobleman — Enguerrand VII de Coucy — from northern France with ties to both the English and French thrones. The result limits the book in geographic scope, but this is more than made up for in thematic scope, resulting in a good trade-off. Like much of the medieval history I've been reading lately, it also seems oddly appropriate for helping to understand the world right now.

[Eustache Deschamps'] complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.

Definitely recommended.

The Art of Language Invention coverThe Art of Language Invention, David Peterson

Also highly recommended. Peterson is a creator of constructed languages (conlangs), with credits including both Dothrakai and Valyrian for the "Game of Thrones" TV series. This book is partially about the process of language creation, but also serves as a general introduction to linguistics. Foreign language classes were always my worst subjects in school by a mile. I loved being able to learn about what's going on under the hood rather than merely being given tables of conjugations and common phrases to memorize. I had a few minor complaints with the orthography chapter, which is a subject I know a small bit about through my interest in calligraphy and typography, but otherwise this book was excellent.

1632, Eric Flint

A small town in West Virginia is somehow transported back to Bavaria in the middle of the Thirty Years' War. I'm a sucker for this subgenre, but did not care for this at all. All of the characters are Lake Wobegonian, i.e. everyone is above average in all ways. I lost track of the number of perfect couples who fell in love at first site. The worst flaw is that there is no real challenge to the West Virginians: they are in complete command of the situation at all times, and never face a real threat, either from actual enemies or from the sorts of logistical disruptions you would imagine trying to keep a modern town running in a pre-modern world. There is apparently a whole universe of sequels that have been developed with what sounds like an innovative, open-source scheme, but the first book was not good enough to justify reading the sequels.

Labyrinths coverLabyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges

More computer scientists in particular should read Borges. This volume has a mix of short stores, non-fiction essays and "parables." I had read many of the stories, but they are always worth reading again. The non-fiction was harder to follow, but it has inspired me to move Don Quixote further up my reading list. The parables were delightful but weird enough that I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from them.

I was told to get this particular edition because of the foreword by William Gibson. I like Gibson, but I didn't find anything particularly insightful or interesting in his introduction here. Don't avoid it, but don't go out of your way for it either.

On Desire coverOn Desire: Why We Want What We Want, William Irvine

Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy is one of my all-time favorite books. On Desire is good, but not nearly as good. That aside, I can give it a strong recommendation as a form of bibliotherapy and a round-about way of meditating on the Second Noble Truth. It will not provide you with many answers with respect to desire — and I don't think Irvine would claim that it does offer answers — but it will help you ask good questions, which is a necessary step.

Chuck Klosterman X, Chuck Klosterman

I don't want every other review here to degenerate into "good, but the author's other books are better" but... this is good but Klosterman's other books are better. This is a recycled collection of essays, articles, reviews, etc. that Klosterman has published in other venues previously. Some are good, some are indifferent, some will depend for you on how interested you are in the subject, which tends to cover his typical range of popular music and sports.

by jsylvest Posted on 18 October 2018
Posted in Book List | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Book List: 2018Q2

Here are the books I read in April, May and June. Since it's already August, I'm going to forego commentary on some of these and just hit publish.

Cover of "The Professor and the Madman," Simon Winchester
"The Professor and the Madman," Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester

This was far more interesting than a book about lexicographical history has any right to be. James Murray ("the Professor") is a fascinating Victorian autodidact. IIRC he dropped out of school at age 16 (the age at which schooling was no longer free in Scotland) by age 19 he was the headmaster of a school. William Chester Minor ("the Madman") is the sort of charming — albeit homicidal — lunatic that I didn't think existed outside of movies. Plus you get to learn about the OED!

The Truth, Terry Pratchett

This is Pratchett's "Discworld" story about the invention of movable type and newspapers. I've yet to read a Discworld book I didn't enjoy, and this is no exception.

The main character, and inventor of newspapers, is named "William de Worde." I thought the surname was a little on the nose even for Pratchett. It turns out that William Caxton's partner and co-introducer of movable type to England was named Wynkyn de Worde, so in reality truth is stranger — or at least as strange as — fiction.

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Kory Stamper

This was a great read. I loved both the behind the scenes info on what it's like to be a lexicographer working at Mirriam-Webster, the history of dictionaries, and the general discussion of language. The chapters about what their role in society is, as contrasted with what people think it is or want it to be, were especially good.

This is yet another book that I can file away under "the more I learn about language the less of a prescriptivist I become."

Cover of "The Popes," J.J. Norwich
"The Popes," J.J. Norwich

The Popes: A History, John Julius Norwich

This was good but not great. I like the overall organization, which is important in such a wide-reaching history. As such, I recommend this if you're interested. I have three complaints though.

(1) The coverage was very uneven. I recognize this was a history of the papacy specifically rather than the Catholic church more broadly, but some capital-B Big events are fairly glossed over, like the English Reformation or the spread of Catholicism to the New World.

(2) Norwich had a habit of mentioning that such and such institution was reformed to do things in a new way without ever explaining what the old way was. It's tough to appreciate why something changing is important if you don't know what the status quo ante was.

(3) When we get to the modern period (say, post 1848), Norwich makes a very common mistake by assuming that theological positions are just like political positions. When the R.C.Ch. is at its best, it is not deciding its "policy" about, e.g. married priests, on the basis of what is popular or expedient or diplomatic or modern. (When it is at its worst and it fails to do this, you get the Reichskonkordat.) Norwich treats the church like a political party choosing a platform. By that standard, it has done a remarkably bad job in the last century and a half.

The R.C.Ch. is not choosing its position on the basis of "what will attract voters parishioners" but instead based on what it believes God thinks is correct. You might think that's silly, or that it makes that determination incorrectly — which as an agnostic non-Catholic, I typically do — but don't make the mistake of thinking it's solving the same problem that a politician is solving when deciding whether to support some new legislative reform. Personally, I think too many of the powerful people in the world — politicians, businesspeople, celebrities — are making decisions based on what is popular, and I'm content with at least some institutions in a poly-centric order not doing that. ((See also: reasons to not want the US Supreme Court to become a democracy of 9 voters.))

Two other less contentious takes:

(a) A shocking number of these stories had a coda along the lines of "but he didn't live to enjoy his triumph; he was dead within k weeks" for very small values of k. Princes and prelates were dropping dead all the time. I wonder what modern politics would be like if people were dying at the same rates.

(b) Rome's weather is the under-rated player in this drama. Seemingly every chapter included either a noble entourage or an entire army fleeing the miserable summer heat. Yes, it's very nice that you brought your overwhelming French and/or German army down to smack some sense into the Curia at swordpoint, but then *boom* malaria. The Holy Roman Emperor was constantly racing down the peninsula in the spring, only to spend about three weeks in the muggy summer sun glaring impotently at Rome's walls, before racing back north to get to the Alps before the passes closed for the winter. If the Popes followed Diocletian just 300 miles up to Mediolanum/Milan a lot of things would have gone very differently.

It wasn't just armies either. I lost count of how many Cardinals and Princes just high-tailed it out of town because of bad weather. ("Yes, yes, I know the fate of Europe hangs in the balance of this election... but the humidity is murder on my hair." ((Actually, I'm doing them a disservice. The humidity was actually, literally killing people. See the point about malaria above. But still, many of them seem to have fled just because the weather was interfering with their lifestyle.)) ). Not that I really blame them. I've been to Rome in August, and I wouldn't stick around either if there weren't some frosty Peronis to help me through it all.

Spoonbenders, Daryl Gregory

Super powers plus grifters plus organized crime plus family drama. It was unclear until pretty far into the book how much of the fantastical elements were real and how much they were part of a con job. I liked that dynamic.

Every Anxious Wave, Mo Daviau

The recipe for this is about six parts toxic nostalgia as filtered through rock music, four parts fat acceptance, and one part appreciation of hunter gatherers. It's a weird combination that didn't really hold together for me, but I'm probably not the target audience, so your mileage may vary.

The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings, Lars Brownworth

Pretty much what it says on the tin. Thorough and accessible.

Scourged, Kevin Hearne

This is conclusion to Hearne's "Iron Druid" series. I loved the series as a whole, but this was a little flat. It felt, especially in the first half, like he was trying very hard to tie up lose ends that weren't actually that loose and didn't need to be addressed. The final resolution was good, but it felt like he was trying too hard to avoid "... and everyone walked away happily into the sunset" and so there is some element of a "unhappy ending" that feels a bit forced.

I'm not sure how the writing schedule worked out, but in terms of publishing dates, the first volume (A Plague of Giants) of Hearne's next series ("The Seven Kennings") was released before this was. I can't help but wonder if his interest had already shifted to that work and his heart wasn't really in wrapping up "Iron Druid."

(These paragraphs make me seem much more negative about Scourged than I actually am. It was overall still a fine book.)

Dark Run, Mike Brooks

A good space adventure with a bit of a Firefly vibe. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the next two volumes. This is only one of two sci-fi books I can think of in which software engineering is treated as an indispensable part of spaceflight in general and combat in particular. (The other being Vinge's "Zones of Thought" books, with the "programmer-at-arms" role.)

Bone, Volume Seven: Ghost Circles, Jeff Smith

Bone, Volume Eight: Treasure Hunters, Jeff Smith

River of Stars, Guy Gavriel Kay

This is set in the same universe as Under Heaven, but is almost entirely unrelated. I need a genre descriptor for books like this that are not really fantasy, but do have more than zero unrealistic elements. (In this case, one of the main characters is given a tattoo by a spirit. There is also discussion of ghosts, but these seem to be in the imaginations of the characters rather than "real" in the world of the story.) Regardless, how can I not like a book which revolves so heavily around calligraphy?

Cover of "The Book" by Keith Houston
"The Book," Keith Houston

The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time, Keith Houston

Recommended. The design is excellent, as is befitting for the subject. You can see on the cover that various features are labeled. This device is re-used to good effect throughout. (So rather than having a little image of a page, with an arrows pointing out where the footer, gutter, etc. are, those arrows are just printed right onto the actual text of the book. This turns the book into a self-illustrating example.)

The book is divided into four sections, about paper, printing presses and movable type, printed images, and book binding. For the first section, there was little I didn't already know from Mark Kurlansky's excellent Paper. There were also some bits left out that I have thought were quite important, such as the Hollander beater. The other three sections were quite good though.

A theme running through this books is "someone thought of this invention a long time ago, but couldn't make it practical, then someone else re-invented it years/decades/centuries later (and got the credit)." Honestly, I'm okay with this state of affairs. We lionize that spark of genius inspiration, but the getting-it-to-be-useful phase of technological innovation deserves way more credit.

Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation, Ammon Shea

Allow me to copy-and-paste the following line from my review of Word by Word, above:

This is yet another book that I can file away under "the more I learn about language the less of a prescriptivist I become."

Every chapter of this book is about a thing that pedants have told you not to do, followed by lengthy evidence that their rule is spurious and ahistorical.

One tidbit I did not realize but should have: Latin was "native" to England before English was. If you had asked me when the Romans got to Britain and when the Angles got their, I would have given you the correct centures, and this would have become obvious but it was still a (minor) shock to me. It points out the futility of returning English to some prelapsarian state when it was free of xenolinguistic influences.

Time Travel: A History, James Gleick

Gleick addresses both the science surrounding time travel and the way it has been treated in literature. Well done to him for so seamlessly bridging the STEM/Arts-and-Letters divide. You get Wells, of course, and Einstein, but also Borges and Heraclitus and Proust and Bohr. (And David Foster Wallace, but only to discuss his philosophy thesis paper on fatalism, not any of his fiction.) There is a strong feedback loop between the Two Cultures on this subject, and any treatment of it that didn't address this would have been severely lacking.

Cover of "Gnomon" by Nick Harkaway
"Gnomon," Nick Harkaway

Gnomon, Nick Harkaway

I tweeted back over the winter that this was the perfect book to be reading during the first annual Conference on AI, Ethics & Society, which was true. Unfortunately I had to return my library copy shortly thereafter, and only got around to finishing it a couple of months later. This made it difficult to appreciate such a dense book, so probably don't trust my judgment on this one.

Nevertheless, I think this was good, but inferior to Anglemaker and The Gone-Away World (I have not yet read his fourth novel, Tigerman but very much want to). I suspect the problem may be that Harkaway started Gnomon with the themes he wanted to cover and wrote a story to match, rather than writing a story and letting themes emerge. I have no idea though; I don't want to engage in too much armchair-analysis-from-a-distant, especially since I'm basing this off of a short preface and sporadic reading of his Twitter feed. And regardless of whether this analysis is true, these are themes I'm interested in: technology, surveillance, experimental polities & "choosing in groups", altered mental states that aren't drug related, non-monocentric selfhood, cognitive monitoring, etc. So: good, but not his best.

Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer

I very much enjoyed this. It's got a wild post-Nation State, poly-centric socio-political system that I loved. It reminded me of how exciting it was reading Diamond Age back in the day.

The downside to this thrillingly exotic setting is that it took several hundred pages before things started to make sense. On top of the setting there's also a self-conscious 18th-Century style combined with 21st Century gender neutral language, and other stylistic choices that made it difficult to get my narrative footing. Even at the end I'm still not sure where the dividing line is between high technology and magic. It was all still very much worth it.

One complaint about the poly-centric, distributed nations: I find it a little implausible that there would be so much concentration, with only seven tribes. Why wouldn't they fracture further? What's holding the Cousins or Gordians together? I would enjoy a long discussion between Palmer and David Friedman on the political economy of this world.

by jsylvest Posted on 7 August 2018
Posted in Book List, Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment