I love Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark and am so glad to see that many of the earlier titles are being reissued. This one features our favorite badI love Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark and am so glad to see that many of the earlier titles are being reissued. This one features our favorite bad guy, Parker, who gets involved, much to his dismay, with a bunch of amateurs, stealing coins from a coin show. In the end, it's a fellow professional that causes all the grief. Good read....more
Originally published under a pseudonym, this is not one of McBain's finest. Probably should be 2.5 but I liked some of the navy stuff.Originally published under a pseudonym, this is not one of McBain's finest. Probably should be 2.5 but I liked some of the navy stuff....more
I suppose this book is best described as a companion to Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. Musk is certainly anI suppose this book is best described as a companion to Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. Musk is certainly an interesting fellow, and I have Isaacson's biography of him on my list. Lots of money does funny things to people. It's made Musk into a narcissistic autocrat who has taken Charlie Wilson's comment about General Motors ("What's good for General Motors is Good for the Country")** to heart. Substitute Twitter for General Motors.
You will remember that Musk offered $44 billion to purchase Twitter only to back down but then be forced to buy it. The company was saddled with a huge amount of debt (that continues to rise), Musk fired hundreds of employees, many of whom were involved with content moderation, others simply because they had the temerity to tell him the truth. Then he re-branded Twitter into X (he seems to have a passion for that letter -- personally I prefer the letter B for bullshit...) Advertisers began to flee in droves as the site became home to right-wing kooks and hate-mongers all in the name of free expression. What Musk did not recognize was that “Advertisers play an underappreciated role in content moderation,” says Evelyn Douek, a professor and speech regulation expert. “So much of the content moderation discourse has always been a highfalutin discussion on free speech, on safety versus voice. But content moderation is a product, and brand safety has always been a key driver in terms of how these platforms create value.”
Musk promised all sorts of things, including money, to some of the employees, promises he has yet to fulfill. Indeed, there are many outstanding lawsuits to force him to pay off on those promises. (Hundreds of millions in severance pay guarantees. As of today, April 1st, settlement talks have gone nowhere.)
It's important to remember that both of these books reflect the personal opinions and experiences of those willing to talk. Many of those remaining with the company were afraid to talk for fear of repercussions. As these author states: "This book is a snapshot of the lives of Twitter employees during a pivotal moment in tech history." Looking at the history of tech, lots of prominent, highly touted apps fall by the wayside, so I'm not sure just how "pivotal" Twitter/X is/was.
"But anyone seeking those answers discovered that the transition from Twitter to X wrought something entirely different. Musk’s intentions became clearer. In his mind, the company’s success had nothing to do with people’s work ethic or ability to think creatively. Instead, it was about placating the person at the top. Musk, after all, was the man with the vision. He was the one on the hero’s journey."
**This is the popular version of the quote. What he actually said was "Yes, sir; I could. I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the Nation is quite considerable.” (p. 26 of the transcript of his confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense.) Substitute Twitter for General Motors and Musk believes this. Source: https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/20......more
I've read several Frederic Brown titles. In those (including The Murderers) Brown takes great interest in getting inside the heads of the killers, whoI've read several Frederic Brown titles. In those (including The Murderers) Brown takes great interest in getting inside the heads of the killers, who all are convinced of their plan's ultimate success and cleverness. It inevitably backfires in a surprise ending....more
I have been leery of the Reacher series ever since I read the one where Reacher was self-described as looking like a condom stuffed with walnuts, an iI have been leery of the Reacher series ever since I read the one where Reacher was self-described as looking like a condom stuffed with walnuts, an image so outrageously revolting it turned me off the character. Another negative is the idea, not quite so prevalent in this earlier book, is the idea that if you determine you are in the right, then whatever actions you might wish to take are justified. The Hell with the law and the legal system; you're right so violence of any kind is justified. Were that kind of vigilantism be permitted by society, there would be no more civil society because each individual would determine his own "right." It would be one big free-for-all.
That being said, this book had far less of that mind-set than the later works and especially the movies. Reacher doesn't want to be in the situation, things are not as they seem, and there is far less of the usual Reacher misogyny, so I rather enjoyed this book....more
The very personal story of a young lieutenant’s gradual disenchantment with the war in Vietnam. What especially comes through is the distinctness, of
The very personal story of a young lieutenant’s gradual disenchantment with the war in Vietnam. What especially comes through is the distinctness, often becoming bitterness, the soldiers feel toward the ARVN and the total lack of empathy for the “dinks.” Everything seemed pointless, They would spend days and weeks taking a piece of ground, taking casualties, only to pack up and leave after a period. Just as a company would become familiar with territory and feel like they are making progress, they would be relieved by a brand-new company of recruits who will have to learn their lessons all over, taking casualties in the process. In the meantime, everyone knows the one constant will be the permanence of the Vietnamese people who will be there and return to an area as soon as the Americans leave.
Some relevant selections:
However, we traveled in a vacuum of understanding among the villagers and farmers because neither we nor they understood the other’s language. Whenever we found a booby trap in or near a village full of people, we were powerless to question anyone or do anything about it. We couldn’t take the whole village prisoner, so we were forced to vent our anger by destroying the hootch closest to the booby trap.
The American strategy was to draw them into a fight so we could use our superior firepower to destroy them. To win a battle, we had to kill them. For them to win, all they had to do was survive.
The trouble with Nam was that we didn’t control anything that we were not standing on at the time. Anything that moved outside our perimeters at night was fair game because the night belonged to the enemy and both sides knew it. The reality of only owning the ground you stood on meant making sure you continued to stay on that ground.
Why did we want to kill dinks? After all, we had been mostly law-abiding citizens back in the world and we were taught that to take another man’s life was wrong. Somehow the perspective got twisted in a war. If the government told us it was alright and, in fact, a must to kill the members of another government’s people, then we had the law on our side. It turned out that most of us liked to kill other men. Some of the guys would shoot at a dink much as they would at a target. Some of the men didn’t like to kill a dink up close. The closer the killing, the more personal it became... I didn’t believe in torturing or in allowing a dink to die a lingering death. In the jungle we never took prisoners if we could help it. Every day we spent in the jungle eroded a little more of our humanity away. Prisoners could escape to become our enemy again.
I stood alone on the side of the road, smoking a cigarette and thinking, perhaps for the first time, that we could lose this war. Standing alone under the cloudy sky, I felt alien in this land. We had just finished an operation back in the jungle and these men now were going out to a different part of the jungle to play the same deadly game of hide and seek with the enemy, probably with the same inconclusive result.
Perhaps the most authentic Vietnam War memoir I have read. ...more
I like this kind of book. It’s an irreverent view of the geeks and misfits who created Twitter, perhaps the most used but least necessary software on I like this kind of book. It’s an irreverent view of the geeks and misfits who created Twitter, perhaps the most used but least necessary software on the planet. That is, until Elon got a hold of it.
This book was first published in 2013 and so much has changed since then. Twitter (now X, in what has to be the silliest of rebrandings) has become perhaps less relevant than it ever was. Musk has seen the price fall through the floor and see value evaporate.
Fun book if you like business origin stories, but he really needs to do a follow-up, perhaps annually. Just started Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter by Zoë Schiffer, that, so far, provides an in-depth view of Musk’s demolition of Twitter....more
I am not a pilot, but I’m interested in aviation and especially in risk and how we measure and apply risk evaluations to normal activities.2nd edition
I am not a pilot, but I’m interested in aviation and especially in risk and how we measure and apply risk evaluations to normal activities. This book was recommended as the best comprehensive examination of risk in general aviation flying. Flying, in general, has become safer, although as Craig points out, the common trope that the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport, is true only for commercial aviation; it is definitely not true for general aviation. An analysis of comparative data reveals that general aviation is far more dangerous than driving.
Craig exams the problems with training, unintended consequences of otherwise valuable laws and regulations (e.g., the 1500 hr. minimum to be hired with the regionals placed emphasis on quantity rather than quality and meant that pilots would “bore holes in the sky” rather than seek experience with unusual conditions.) Changes in business practices can also have unintended effects. When it became possible to send digital copies of checks rather than the physical checks themselves, hundreds of pilot jobs were eliminated. Those jobs had provided important experience flying in adverse weather conditions and circumstances that were now much less available as a training experience. Craig points out that military pilots were flying combat missions with less than 400 hours, but were very successful because of the type of scenario training they had received.
The revolution of “glass cockpits” that replaced the old mechanical instruments made flying safer, but counter-intuitively, also more dangerous as pilots needed to become information managers more than “stick and rudder” pilots. There was the danger of thinking you are safer because of all the safety equipment and information overload that impinged on making the right decision. Was a pilot more likely to take off with a lower ceiling knowing he had auto-pilot and instruments that would have navigate through the weather. A very recent accident I learned about * involved a very experienced pilot (17,700 hours), in a very sophisticated airplane (pressurized Centurion) who mixed bad weather with night flying and poor cockpit management (fuel exhaustion) and got himself killed.
Craig examines the major types of GA accidents and analyzes them for lessons that can be learned from each. Ultimately, however, it will be the individual pilot’s decision-making skill, knowing when not to fly, and what circumstances to avoid, that will make more of a difference, I suspect. One of the biggest killers is “get-thereitis” and one NTSB investigator remarked that you should only fly if you have time to spare. Craig adds to that the admonition that in addition to their pilot’s license and logbook, pilots should be required to have an active account with a car rental company.
Review: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Bakker's Evangelical Empire by John Wigger
The sex and financial scandal of PTL creator and leader devolvedReview: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Bakker's Evangelical Empire by John Wigger
The sex and financial scandal of PTL creator and leader devolved into a battle between two versions of Christian evangelicalism: Pentecostal (represented by Jimmy Swaggert who wanted to bring down Bakker’s Empire) and A more standard for of evangelicalism represented by Jerry Falwell, who thought he could save and thus inherit everything. To his dismay, probably because he had not done due diligence, he discovered the situation was far more dire than he had imagined.
The creation of PTL and Heritage USA followed a well-established trajectory in American evangelicalism as it evolved from field preaching, to camp meetings, to big tent revivals, to radio and television and eventual financial scandal. Bakker began small in 1974 and soon exploded in popularity as Bakker early on recognized the power of TV at getting his message – and requests for funds – across to thousands of people around the world. They weren’t the first to use broadcast. Bakker’s genius was to create the Christian talk show – it didn’t look like a church service unlike broadcasts by Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, etc. With celebrity, however, came temptation and the desire for more.
Heritage USA was to become the Christian alternative to Disneyland. To be constructed on 2300 acres it would have hotels, water parks, restaurants, theme parks, and TV studios. It would also cost many millions to build. To finance it, Bakker came up with the idea of selling partnerships. Partners would be guaranteed that for a “gift” of $1000 they have lifetime access to a hotel room for 4-5 days and all the facilities each year. Problem was that these were very popular and as soon as the need for more funds grew, they had more partners than could ever be accommodated when they wanted in the hotels. So Baker wanted to build more hotels which needed more money which needed more partners, ad infinitum, especially as he kept adding more theme parks and attractions, none of which they could afford.
PTL’s board provided no oversight whatsoever and Dorcht and other Bakker lackeys kept giving the bakers (and themselves) more and more lavish bonuses (all with extra money so they were tax-free) that were off the books. They had millions coming in each month but it was nowhere near enough to keep everything afloat. (Prosperity gospel preached by Bakker and others paid no attention to debt and accounting. “The facts of accounting applied only to those who lacked faith. Second, it allowed ministries to aggressively raise funds, since by taking their followers’ money they were really doing them a favor. The more believers gave, the more God would give them in return.” If in doubt spend and buy, and if you give enough to the “church”, i.e. Bakker, Swaggart, etc., you will reap “tenfold.” Worked for a while for Bakker, although I’m pretty sure God had nothing to do with it. If he needed more money he would just have another telethon and the cash poured in. [Bakker} ““we knew the principle of giving, and those people that were watching the [PTL] satellite [network] have been fed on the word of God and God has prospered them. Oh, people, you can’t beat God giving, no matter how hard you try.” Accounting be damned.
By 1984, just 10 years after their start, financial cracks were becoming crevices. “The main concern…is whether PTL will be able to continue as ‘a going concern’ based on current assets of only 8.6 million against 28.5 million in current liabilities. Part of the problem… was that the lifetime partnership program had shifted how people gave to PTL. “More and more of our funds were coming from lifetime partnerships” while “monthly contributions dropped off drastically,” he later said.” Bakker’s response to this negative view was to turn “ to an old trick that he had used many times in the past: launch a new project and use the funds raised for the new project to pay old debts. It was like getting a new credit card to make payments on an old card that was maxed out. Though the Heritage Grand was still several months away from opening, in September 1984 Bakker announced a new lifetime partnership program for a second hotel, the Heritage Grand Towers. “When in doubt, build something more!”
Then the Jessica Hahn scandal hit. Bakker had had a tryst with Hahn, a church secretary. She claimed she was drugged and raped. She was paid off with PTL money to keep quiet. That information and persistent rumors that Bakker was indulging in gay sex with some PTL staff he had hired, finally led to his resignation as PTL began to circle the wagons to prevent a very hostile takeover by Jimmy Swaggart who didn’t like the Bakker form of evangelism.
Of course in typical Trumpian fashion, Bakker turned all blame away from himself. It was the Fault of the media, especially the Charlotte Observer that had written numerous stories detailing the financial house of cards he had built. The IRS had begin an investigation into the use of funds that had been allocated for specific purposes by donors but were bing used for personal bonuses and other projects. The IRS was Satan (always handy to be able to blame a nonentity.) “He portrayed the IRS audit as an attack of Satan. “The larger a ministry grows the more you become an enemy of Satan,” he declared on the air. Satan’s tool was “government agencies” that were “anti-Christ and anti-God,” Bakker said.”
Heritage USA is no more. It closed in 1989. Oral Roberts’ City of Faith, medical facility Roberts claimed to have been ordered by God to build following the death of his daughter in a plane crash, also closed in 1989. (You may remember Roberts said he would die if people didn’t send money to keep it going; instead, it just siphoned money from his TV ministry. Falwell’s son who took over after the death of Jerry became involved in his own sex and fiscal mismanagement crisis.***
The numerous scandals resulted in serious drops in giving; people were tired of giving money only to discover it was enriching the celebrities rather than helping or converting people around the world. Go online, though and you can still find lots of ways to buy prayer requests, etc. Hard to tack them to a church door, though.
I have read all of Rex Stout's wonderful Nero Wolfe books. This one is the 2nd time around and still lots of fun. I have read all of Rex Stout's wonderful Nero Wolfe books. This one is the 2nd time around and still lots of fun. ...more
I read and enjoyed the first novel in this series, and I usually like Winslow. It's mandatory you read the first volume before this one. The second inI read and enjoyed the first novel in this series, and I usually like Winslow. It's mandatory you read the first volume before this one. The second in the series of three just fell flat. I got about 2/3rds of the way through it and just quit. VERY different from the first one. Doubtful I'll bother with the third when it appears....more
The effect of Sputnik on the United States was electrifying. I was about 10 at the time. As it happened, we were on the 2nd and last year of our sojouThe effect of Sputnik on the United States was electrifying. I was about 10 at the time. As it happened, we were on the 2nd and last year of our sojourn in Germany where my father was researching at the University of Heidelberg. The effect there was minimal, but from what I’ve read since, everyone in the U.S. was horrified at the pity shown to the United States, now clearly in a distant 2nd place. There is no doubt it had a substantial impact on the presidential election in 1960 along with the non-existent missile gap.
The author begins with Soviet initiatives, but most of the book, which covers but a year up through 1958, is devoted to American political in-fighting and initiatives. It was former Nazi rocket scientists like Werner Von Braun(1) and his German colleagues who created their own little enclave near Huntsville, Alabama, that gave the U.S. an edge.
Aside from the interesting technical details, D’Antonio provides a broad picture of life in the fifties and especially the cultural changes that were wrought by enormous sums of money poured into places like Cape Canaveral and Huntsville; places that had been mere backwaters exploded into rapidly expanding subdivisions with concomitant increases in real estate values.
Sputnik had enormous policy and cultural implications and changes. Soon, in the guise of protecting America from the Red Menace, every group imaginable from the NEA and National Science Foundation, to politicians who wanted more money for their districts, to weapons manufacturers, to the Air Force and Army at loggerheads on which service was to control missiles, was clamoring for huge increases in the federal budget for their projects. Articles in the press, naively drawing on PR the Soviets were putting out, talked about Russian nuclear trains, ships, airplanes and satellites. So, not only was there a missile gap (ironically thanks to the U-2 Eisenhower knew this was a chimera)(2), but a science gap, and education gap, a you-name-it-gap, and anyone who suggested otherwise had to be a Commie. People who formerly had been unalterably opposed to federal support for local education, now changed their tune and bellied up to the trough. Eisenhower was in a touch position. He warned of the military-industrial symbiosis, but the political pressure from both sides was just too much.
In the meantime, rocket launches at Cape Canaveral were beset with all sorts of failures, some spectacularly public, others seemingly mundane. In one case, because some special paper had been loaded backwards into the printer, the results appeared to be the opposite of what was good, and the missile was destroyed fearing it would go off course or explode uncontrollably.
PR became crucial in the battle between the Army, Air Force and later NASA for control of rocketry. Eisenhower was anxious to have civilian control of space, while the military and people like Edward Teller were anxious to dominate the Russians using military control of space. The perception was the Russians were ahead and they clearly had more powerful rockets, but that dominance vanished quickly. This was the time of Public Relations. Edward Bernays had revolutionized how we view control of consent, and his book Crystallizing Public Opinion and Engineering Of Consent became bibles of the industry. I will have to read them.
It’s astonishing today to see what they got away with in the fifties in the name of science. Project Argos, for example, exploded low-yield high altitude nuclear weapons in space to determine the effect of radiation on all sorts of things, but the main objective was to study the Christofilos Effect hoping that it would be possible to protect against a Soviet nuclear attack by exploding nuclear bombs high over the Pacific. The idea was to create a barrier of electrons that would fry the electronics of Soviet warheads, and possibly also to blind Soviet radar to a U.S. counter-attack. I suppose one could argue the tests were a great success because we learned it wouldn't work. It was all terribly secret, of course.
A truly fascinating look into the culture and history of the U.S., and to some extent Soviet, space race.
(2) Beschloss, M. (2016). Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 affair. Open Road Media. Jacobsen, Annie. Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America. Little, Brown, 2014. Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair...more
When I was in high school many years ago, we lived for a couple of years in Neuchatel, Switzerland, in a 13-story building. On a very (very) clear dayWhen I was in high school many years ago, we lived for a couple of years in Neuchatel, Switzerland, in a 13-story building. On a very (very) clear day, we could see Mont Blanc far in the distance. Even at that distance, it was a majestic site. I like looking at mountains, but the idea of climbing would never enter my mind. The thousands who have now climbed Everest, with the help of guides to carry their bags and technology, have trivialized what once was an extraordinary accomplishment.
So it was for the Alps in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were considered unclimbable, harsh, and forbidding monuments to death and destruction. Avalanches regularly killed many, and the physics of glaciers were not understood. Fleming has written a detailed examination of how and why that all changed.
It was a combination of thirst for scientific knowledge about the Alps coupled with myth that was layered with romantic views of Byron and others. Killing the Dragons refers to the legends that the Alps were populated by Dragons. Crossing the Alps was a very hazardous undertaking because of swift changes in the weather, glacial crevasses, and falling rocks. (One avalanche sent boulders into a lake creating a tsunami of epic proportions inundating a town.
After Mt. Blanc was climbed successfully, the story continued, moving from dragons to a virtual advertising campaign. Much lie Everest today, climbing Mt. Blanc became the thing to do. The Alps were transformed into a thing of beauty and respite, attracting hoards of visitors, rather than something to be feared.
Before you know it, the Alps and Switzerland benefited from another kind of myth, that of the health giving clean air and wonderful resorts. Towns and villages that had been considered mere provinces of swine, were now sought after resorts and the Swiss, clever people they are, soon had a train (!) running up though the Eiger close to its summit for people like me who would rather ride than climb.*
It’s a fun read (I listened to the well-read audio version)
*The train continues up inside the Eiger and Mönch mountains, with another 5 minute stop at the Eismeer (Ice Sea) viewing point until it reaches Jungfraujoch, 3,454m or 11,333 feet above sea level, the highest railway station in Europe and billed as The Top of Euro...more
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