Child Labor: A Global Crisis, Kathlyn Gay, 1998, isbn 0761303685
Counts as a success a school district’s boycott of child-stitched soccer balls.
What’sChild Labor: A Global Crisis, Kathlyn Gay, 1998, isbn 0761303685
Counts as a success a school district’s boycott of child-stitched soccer balls.
What’s missing is the larger picture:
Poverty is /because/ of wealth. Local elites and global corporations have taken all the land, control all the businesses, finance, and government. U.S.-subsidized agribusinesses dump commodities on the world market at less than cost, destroying farm livelihoods worldwide. Governments refuse to tax the rich nor regulate corporations.
The book takes a “those poor people!” tone—ignoring that, when labor anywhere is devalued, labor everywhere is devalued. When we stand on our brother’s neck, we both go down. An injury to Juan /is/ an injury to Al.
Focuses on ending child labor—ignoring that, unless adult labor earns a family-supporting income, kids will still be in a bad case.
Says nothing about NAFTA and other multinational agreements’ plundering of labor and the environment everywhere.
Despairs of enforcing workers’ rights—yet intellectual property rights are jealously enforced.
Tells us that, /except/ Somolia and the United States of America, all of the United Nations had signed the (1989) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (as of 12/31/1997, pp. 28–29). International agreements against child labor do /not/ prohibit trade in products of child labor.
The author congratulates Kathie Lee Gifford for calling on apparel companies such as hers to voluntarily comply with existing but unenforced laws in the low-wage countries she operates in. (pp. 68–72, 83)
This book is aimed at 12-year-olds in the U.S.
It’s written in a journalistic style: “critics contend …,” “some activists say they saw ….” No first-hand observation. Relies only on published reports, such as Associated Press articles and UNICEF commissioners’ reports.
Realm of Algebra, Isaac Asimov, 1961, 144pp. paperback, ISBN 0449243982 Asimov clearly, simply, conversationally, starting from arithmetic, explains thRealm of Algebra, Isaac Asimov, 1961, 144pp. paperback, ISBN 0449243982 Asimov clearly, simply, conversationally, starting from arithmetic, explains the basics of algebra, including: factoring polynomials; deriving the quadratic formula; how in principle to solve N linear equations in N unknowns; imaginary and complex numbers. He tells us who came up with the ideas, and when and where. No matrices. No graphs. No exercises for the reader. No e^(iθ) notation. The Kindle edition omits and misprints buckets of symbols, especially in the equations, but even in the text. Some places, there’s no way to know what the author was saying. Unfortunately, kindle is the only edition still in print. Get it on paper if you can. 459 worldcat libraries have a copy, as of 2019: https://www.worldcat.org/title/realm-...
The 1961 original printings were a 230-page hardcover, and a paperback, 143pp. plus 1-page index. The paperback was reprinted in 1982. The very-badly-typeset kindle edition came out in 2019.
ALGEBRA: OPERATIONS Algebra is a variety of arithmetic. When we use “literal” symbols (letters such as x), we’re in the realm of algebra.
In all of algebra, there are only 3 pairs of operations:
addition and subtraction
multiplication and division
powers (involution) and roots (evolution)
INVERSE OPERATIONS
Subtraction gives rise to negative numbers.
Division gives rise to fractions.
Roots give rise to imaginary and complex numbers:
For example, the cube root of (+1) is:
+1, or,
−1/2 + (1/2)sqrt(3)i, or,
−1/2 − (1/2)sqrt(3)i
where i is the square root of minus 1. (pp. 92, 96)
(Asimov asks us to trust him on this. He doesn’t prove it. This book doesn’t get into e^(iθ) notation, which makes it easy.)
IDENTITIES
1/(b/a) ≡ a/b
a(b + c) ≡ ab + ac
(ab)^n ≡ (a^n)(b^n)
(a^m)(a^n) ≡ a^(m + n)
(a^m)/(a^n) ≡ a^(m − n)
a^0 ≡ 1, a ≠ 0
a^(−n) ≡ 1/(a^n)
(a^m)^n ≡ a^(mn)
If a^n = b then a is the nth root of b.
a^(1/2) is the square root of a.
a^(1/n) is the nth root of a.
a^(m/n) is the nth root of (a^m)
DEFINITIONS
Each item being added or subtracted is a “term.”
An expression with 2 terms is a “binomial.”
An expression with more than 1 term is a “polynomial.”
RULES FOR EQUATIONS
You can add or subtract the same thing from each side.
Multiply or divide each side by the same number. (Don’t divide by 0.)
Raise each side to the same power, or take the same root of each side.
QUADRATIC FORMULA (pp. 109–113)
To solve a quadratic equation of the form
ax² + bx + c = 0
Divide by a
x² + (b/a)x + c/a = 0
Subtract c/a:
x² + (b/a)x = −c/a
Add (b/2a)²:
x² + 2(b/2a)x + (b/2a)² = b²/4a² − c/a
Factor the left side; give the right side a common denominator:
(x + b/2a)² = (b² − 4ac)/(4a²)
Take the square root:
x + b/2a = ±sqrt[(b² − 4ac)]/2a
Subtract b/2a:
x = −b/2a ± sqrt(b² − 4ac)/2a
Express as one fraction:
x = [−b ± sqrt(b² − 4ac)]/2a
This is the quadratic formula. It’s the general solution to
ax² + bx + c = 0
HISTORY
Decimal numbers, including zero, were first used in the 800s in India. (p. 6, chapter 1)
French mathematician François Vieta first used letters as symbols for unknowns, about 1590. He’s sometimes known as the “father of algebra.” (p. 10, chapter 1)
Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowarizmi wrote a book, ilm al-jabr wa’l muqabalah, “the science of reduction and cancellation,” about 825 CE. These were his methods of dealing with equations—rules for algebra. “Algebra” is a mispronunciation of the second word in the title of his book. (p. 12, chapter 2)
Italian mathematician Geronimo Cardano first used negative numbers, around 1550. (p. 17. chapter 2)
Not until around 1900 were mathematicians careful to state the axioms (presumptions) they were starting from. The first to do so were Giuseppe Peano (Italian) and David Hilbert (German).
René Descartes in 1637 first used superscripts to indicate raising numbers to powers, as x² or x³.
Logarithms were developed around 1600 by Scottish mathematician John Napier.
In hot damp climate, window air conditioning units CANNOT remove enough moisture to keep cooled air from reaching dewpoint, promoting mold growth.
No books in basement.
No books directly against exterior walls. Even a foot of space increases air circulation, keeps condensed moisture on walls from creating a microclimate.
Open-backed bookcases (braced for strength).
Avoid space-saving shelving.
Airflow past spines of books.
Avoid closed cabinets.
Air conditioning to cool, then slightly heat air, to prevent high relative humidity.
No electrostatic air filters--ozone damages library materials.
Vacuum dust off all books regularly.
Fungicides and fumigants, even were they to kill 99%, little use where 1 spore grows to 100,000. All are toxic to humans, and damaging to library materials. Only alcohol OR (not with) orthophenyl phenol (Lysol) relatively nontoxic. ...more
Poverty is /because/ of wealth. 3% of landholdings--plantations for export--take 65% of the farmland. Leaving 90% of landholdings too small to subsistPoverty is /because/ of wealth. 3% of landholdings--plantations for export--take 65% of the farmland. Leaving 90% of landholdings too small to subsist on. [p. 16] Eisenhower's CIA deposed reformer Árbenz in 1954. Ever since, the U.S. has given money, arms, training to brutal military dictatorships. [pp. 21-22, 254] Any failure to worship the military was crushed. 200,000 were murdered. Kill "communists." The worst period was 1982-1983 under Reagan and Ríos Montt. Landless people slash and burn jungle to farm; this soil doesn't yield for long. Poverty is /because/ of wealth.
People with power /never/ give it up voluntarily. Though leftists won in Nicaragua in 1979, and were doing well at the time in El Salvador, Guatemalan leftists didn't know the extent to which /every/ U.S. president from Eisenhower through Clinton /loved/ to lavish money and military hardware and training on the Guatemalan army. (Carter was the lone exception. (view spoiler)[Carter's political enemies, servants of wealth, torpedoed his presidency by treasonously making a deal with Iran, arms in exchange for releasing U.S. hostages /after/ Carter's presidency ended. (hide spoiler)]) The leftist guerrillas had no chance. The peasant population was a casualty of the army's scorched earth policy, which Americans had learned in Vietnam.
The book is an academic cultural anthropology, focusing on one village in northern Guatemala, that turned out to be the center of the storm. All its inhabitants the army could find were massacred in 1982. Survivors eventually rebuilt; refugees returned from Mexico. But wealth is still hoarded by the few, who prey on the many poor. The author spent several weeks there, every year or every few years, from 1973 through 2003. (In 1973, the terror was not yet thought of.)
DISGUSTING The international space station has mold growing on the walls. There’s no water to wash hands—or anything else. Most of the water the occupaDISGUSTING The international space station has mold growing on the walls. There’s no water to wash hands—or anything else. Most of the water the occupants have to drink is the imperfectly-processed urine of the group. The less said about defecating in zero gravity, the better. Any object that drifts off—be it an important tool or a blob emanating from a human body or laboratory animal—will float to who-knows-where, and stay there. The author went months without changing clothes. The carbon dioxide level is headache-inducing, cognition-impairing. The space station has been continuously occupied for nearly 20 years.
CALLOUS NASA repeatedly ignored astronaut pleas to /permit the astronauts to turn on/ enough carbon-dioxide scrubbers to keep them from having constant headaches. Station air was 4% carbon dioxide. On Earth, it’s 0.04% (up from 0.035% in the mid-1900s, the extra .005% melting the icecaps). NASA ignored its engineers’ pleas not to launch the Challenger space shuttle in cold weather, when the O-rings could fail: the crew died. NASA ignored the problem of insulation hitting and damaging thermal tiles on the shuttle. The Columbia crew died. NASA retired its old, unsafe shuttles. Since then NASA has been contracting with the USSR and with private companies to rocket astronauts into space. In the year Scott Kelly was in orbit, two such rockets blew up; a third spun out of control. It’s just luck that these three were unmanned resupply ships. They were getting low on supplies, but nobody died this time. Of Scott Kelly’s group of 44 astronaut trainees, 5 had died by the time Kelly wrote this book. Human life and health is a disposable commodity, to NASA. Just as with the military generally. Counting his time as a jet pilot from an aircraft carrier, and a military test pilot, and as an astronaut, Kelly says over 40 of his friends and colleagues have died in crashes. The space station is constantly hit by tiny meteors and bits of space junk. The exterior is riddled with what look like bullet holes. It’s a miracle that the whole thing hasn’t depressurized. It’s also damaged by solar radiation. Metal bends like potato chips. While Kelly was in orbit, a large piece of space junk whizzed by with a closing speed of over 17,000 miles per hour. Mission control didn’t find out about it until too late to try to move out of the way. It came close, but, just luckily, missed. One of the main “experiments” being done during Kelly’s time in space was to see how his health is damaged by a long time in space. It’s not just astronauts who are endangered. Space stations, ships, satellites that are allowed to “burn up in the atmosphere” don’t completely burn up. Huge chunks of metal slam into the Earth at tremendous speeds.
LITTLE TO GAIN Yes, they dissect mice in zero g, and grow a bit of lettuce, fill up their time doing any experiment anyone can think of to put in orbit. Even schoolchildren were invited to send experiments to space. But there’s little to gain. The experiments are a pretext and afterthought. Kelly repeatedly says they’re preparing to go to Mars. But there’s nothing on Mars for us. It will never be habitable. Nor will the moon.
MILITARY POSTURING The real reason all the countries have sent military personnel—the astronauts from all countries are military pilots, even though there is no piloting to be done, either of the rocket or the space station itself; everything is controlled by software—is to maintain a claim to the high ground. Don’t let another country’s military get the drop on you. Kelly doesn’t tell us this—but it’s always been true. We went to the moon as a game of one-upsmanship versus the Soviets. There was nothing on the moon we needed. Kelly does admit that the reason NASA sent Kelly to space for a year was that the Russians had sent someone to space for a year. AND that the Russians did so not for any particular reason: their schedule just worked out that way!!
FALSE HOPE The idea that we could one day reach an M-class planet, so it won’t matter if we destroy Earth, is a false hope and a very dangerous one.
ILLUSION OF ACHIEVEMENT The achievement of absurdly unlikely goals—putting somebody on the moon and bringing him back (even though the trip is entirely pointless) fosters a false attitude that people can do anything. And that Top Men are figuring everything out. The reality is that the space program is a hugely expensive military stunt, that takes us away from addressing our real problems. Scott Kelly is a cheerleader for achieving hard goals; he’s completely uncritical that the goals he’s pursued are worse than pointless.
23 pages. An estimated 5% of the U.S. workforce is unauthorized. A much higher fraction of the workforce works for less than a decent living wage. Wag23 pages. An estimated 5% of the U.S. workforce is unauthorized. A much higher fraction of the workforce works for less than a decent living wage. Wage theft and denial of workers' rights are rampant in the U.S. Unauthorized workers have no defense; authorized workers have little power enough. Workers' rights centers try to help workers fight the abuses. Occasionally they win one. http://www.wrcmadison.org/
no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. . . . by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.--Franklin Delano Roosevelt http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odn...
This tiny book doesn't touch on ways in which the U.S. government has damaged economies all over the world:
The Serengeti Rules, Sean B. Carroll, 2016, 213 pp. ISBN 9780691167428
Carroll tells us about how researchers find out how living systems (ecologies orThe Serengeti Rules, Sean B. Carroll, 2016, 213 pp. ISBN 9780691167428
Carroll tells us about how researchers find out how living systems (ecologies or individuals) work—usually by noticing the effects of a change. Change can have unlooked-for effects. We need to know the consequences of changes—and mitigate them.
Introduction:
In 1804, world human population reached 1 billion [up from perhaps 5,000–15,000 after the Tova eruption in Indonesia, 72,000 BCE—but Carroll doesn’t mention it]. Now, we’re adding a billion every 12 years. (p. 5) Ecologists estimate that Earth can sustainably regenerate enough plants and animals to support 4 billion humans. That line was crossed in 1980. The 2016 7-billion-human economy is using up Earth’s resources at about seven-fourths of the rate at which Earth can replenish them. (pp. 8–10) [This gives mass extinctions, mass destruction of unique habitats, catastrophic climate change. But Carroll doesn’t hit that note too hard in this book.]
In 1966, world lion population was 450,000. In 2016, it was 30,000: 40% in Tanzania. Zero in 26 African countries of its 1966 range. Ocean shark populations have fallen 90–99% in these 50 years. (p. 8) In 2016, there were 31 black rhinos in the Serengeti: once over 1000 there.
Chapter 1: effect of emotion on digestion.
Chapter 2: food chains.
Chapter 3: induction of enzyme production within cells.
17,500 feet elevation is the world’s highest permanent human population, on Mount Aucanquilcha, Chile. (p. 73)
Men with cholesterol over 260 mg/dl have 5 times the heart attack risk of men with cholesterol below 200 mg/dl. (p. 76)
Chapter 5. genetic causes of cancers.
Chapter 6: keystone species, without which biodiversity plummets.
A predator may be a keystone species: by preventing one prey species from exploding in population, the predator makes room for many other species. Examples:
Starfish in a tide pool keep mussel populations in check; many other species share the pool. Starfishless pools explode with mussels, excluding everything else.
Bass keep minnows in check, letting plants grow.
Sea otters keep anemones in check, letting kelp forest grow, which harbors a profusion of life. Seals and sea lions provide orcas something to eat besides sea otters, letting sea otters survive. Orcas extirpate sea otters where there are no seals, dooming the kelp forest.
Or, grazers can be a keystone: grazers eat the grass, so there’s less fuel in the dry season, so fewer fires, so trees can grow, so more species can exist that use trees. Dry areas of East Africa with too few grazers have many fires, few trees, few giraffes, few tree-using birds and other animals.
Chapter 7: In the Serengeti (among lions and hyenas), herbivores smaller than 300 kilograms usually die from predation; herbivores larger than 300 kilograms rarely die from predation.
[Hey! /We/ are smaller than 300 kg!! We’re gonna need some fire, sharp sticks, projectile weapons—whatever it takes!!!]
Chapter 8: human food requires keystone species too!
Shark overfishing off the Eastern United States allowed cownose ray populations to explode—which then extirpated the scallops that had been a millions-of-pounds-per-year human food source—down to zero.
Insecticide use killed the spiders that kept the insects from eating all the rice—causing Indonesia to become the world’s largest importer of rice. The insects gained immunity to the pesticides, and increased their egg-laying by a factor of 2.5 in the presence of pesticide. All leading to an 800-fold increase in rice-eating-insect density, without the spiders.
Fewer lions in Africa allowed baboons to explode in population, preying on human crops.
Chapter 9: Reintroducing keystone species.
Lake Mendota in Madison WI: without many bass and pike, small fish proliferated, zooplankton plummeted, and algae proliferated. Reintroduction of large fish (with fishing limits!) kept the small fish in check, allowed the zooplankton to increase, which ate the algae and made the water clearer. Just the reintroduction of big fish wouldn’t’ve done so much, but there was a massive dieoff of small cisco fish in a very hot summer. [Lake Mendota had clear water in the early 1960s, before Cherokee Marsh Subdivision was built—but Carroll doesn’t tell us that. He may not know. Carroll first saw Lake Mendota in 1987; he was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison 1987–2018. He’s now at Maryland. http://biology.umd.edu/sean-carroll.html also http://seanbcarroll.com/about/]
Yellowstone wolves were extirpated in 1926. Seventy years later, 95% of the aspen trees were over 75 years old. Without the wolves, elk proliferated, browsing almost all new trees down to the ground. Wolves were reintroduced in 1995. Ten years after releasing 31 wolves, there were 301. Winter elk population dropped from 17,000 to 8,000 by 2004. Trees are coming back. Beaver rebounded from 1 colony to 12 colonies in Lamar valley by 2009. But beaver have not returned to the streams most heavily eroded during the 70 overbrowsed years. Also, coyotes are down, so small pronghorn antelope are up. Ranchers lose 1% of sheep, 0.01% of cattle to wolves yearly. (pp. 179–180. Update: nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolves.htm)
Chapter 10: restoring Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.
Gorgongosa is so lush it can support some 8,000 kg of animals per square kilometer. (p. 200)
A violent faction in Mozambique expelled the Portuguese in 1975, becoming a violent government. Civil war destroyed the park: animals were slaughtered for meat; forests were cut for fuel.
Restoration was a combination of bringing back extirpated species, anti-poaching and anti-lumbering enforcement, and creating value for local people in preserving the park rather than continuing to despoil it. Locals were hired as law-enforcement rangers; shade-grown coffee was introduced, to earn locals more than they could by deforesting to grow maize; tourism was redeveloped, to give locals employment; hospitals and schools were started. Much of this was funded by a U.S. telecom billionaire [as a tax-free way to remake the world in his image, out of the /interest/ on his wealth. Applause for what he accomplished. Thumbs down on monopoly profit and tax-avoidance.]
Afterword
Smallpox was eradicated in 15 years, from 1965—10 million cases, 2 million deaths, in 59 countries containing 1.1 billion people—to 1980—zero cases. [The virus exists now only in biological-weapons labs in the United States and Russia. What could go wrong?] Smallpox was eradicated by an army of dedicated, imaginative health workers who did not know that experts said it was impossible. See the book, House on Fire, by Bill Forge, for the full story of how it was done. Forge lists 18 lessons from the effort, of which a few:
Global efforts are possible.
We don’t have to live in a world of plagues, disastrous governments, conflict, uncontrolled health risks, pollution, mass extinction, erosion, climate catastrophe. By good management and teamwork, we can bring about a better future.
Coalitions are powerful.
The objective may be global; implementation is always local. Local cultures and needs determine which tactics are successful. The global effort will be the sum of countless local initiatives.
Optimism can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. There’s a place for pessimism, but not on the payroll!
The measure of civilization is how people treat one another.
Sean Carroll adds these:
Nothing gets conquered everywhere at once. Progress is important wherever it can be made.
Don’t wait until everyone gets on board. The experts thought smallpox-eradication wasn’t worth trying. Get started.
Individuals’ choices matter.
So—the book was mostly about ecology; some about physiology and medicine. Carroll’s book titles, and chapter titles, give little clue to what it’s about. It ends well, with the positive message, get together, do what you can.
Asimov’s Treasury of Humor, Isaac Asimov, 1971, 420pp., ISBN 0395126657
640 numbered jokes.
Asimov also tells us what makes a joke funny in concept—a suAsimov’s Treasury of Humor, Isaac Asimov, 1971, 420pp., ISBN 0395126657
640 numbered jokes.
Asimov also tells us what makes a joke funny in concept—a sudden change in point of view, ideally in the last syllable of the joke—and gives advice on how to tell a joke, the difference between telling and writing a joke (p. 58, after joke 55), on joke-listening etiquette, and on when to stop. Asimov was quite the joke-teller, both in small groups and on the after-dinner platform, where he was a sought-after and frequent speaker.
Virtually all the jokes that mention a woman are misogynistic. Asimov admits, “If I were to refuse to tell any jokes in which women were unfairly treated, I would scarcely be able to tell a single joke that involved women at all, and I simply cannot carry my idealism that far.” (p. 77, after joke 79)
Asimov tells us about gambling: “My father said, ‘Thank God you lost.’ He was probably right. Winning first time might have hooked me. As it was, I never played again.” (pp. 82-83, joke 88)
Asimov mentions words and phrases that have changed meaning. “How many times have you heard the phrase ‘The exception proves the rule’ used to argue that a rule is all the stronger and more meaningful when you can point out times when it may be broken? The phrase, however, uses the word ‘prove’ in its older meaning of ‘test.’ Closer to the real meaning is, ‘The exception probes (investigates the validity and finds it wanting) the rule.’” (p. 93, between jokes 108 and 109)
I laughed longest at numbers 307 and 584. (Which tells you something about me, but nothing about whether you will laugh.) I laughed at numbers 1-6, 12-30, 32, 35, 41, 44, 46-52, 54-57, 62-66, 68, 73, 76-83, 89, 98-99, 104-106, 108, 110 (I know what God looks like)–112 (uselessness of education), 114-115, 118-119, 123-125, 129, 132, 136-138, 140, 142 footnote–144, 147, 150-151, 154, 159, 160, (July 20, 1969), 164, 167-168, 170, 177-178, 180, 182-183, 186, 188-189, 199, 204-205, 207-209, (Mark Twain is Asimov’s favorite writer: he always had the right word.), 214-215, 219-228, 236, 238, 241, (kids bring home puns with the zeal, and the effect, of a cat bringing in a dead mouse p. 171), 246.9, 247, 252, 254-255, 257-262, 264-268, 270-275, 277-279, 281, 283, 295-299, 301-303, 307, 313, 316-317, 319, 322-323, 326-331, 333, 345-346, 350.5, 353-359, 361-368, 370-371, 385, 387, 389-390, 392, 394-395, 397-398, 401, 405-408, 410, 412, 414-415, 418, (419 to Boston hospital: “to hell with the Pope!”), 422, 426, 432, 435, 438-440, 442-446, 448-451, 454, 456.5-458, 462-463, 465, 467-472, 475, 477-482, 184.5-485, 487, 492, 494-497, 499, 503-504, 508-510, 526, 545, 554, 565-570, 573-575, 578-579, 582-586, 593-594, 596-600, 610, 615-619, 621, 623-625, 635-640. Your mileage will vary. Part of what makes a joke funny is, you haven’t heard it before.
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell, 1956, 273 pp., ISBN 9780142004418
Budding zoologist Gerald Durrell, age 10–15, explores the Greek island oMy Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell, 1956, 273 pp., ISBN 9780142004418
Budding zoologist Gerald Durrell, age 10–15, explores the Greek island of Corfu, teeming with collectible wildlife, off the coast of Albania, living there with his widowed mother and his three older siblings, 1935–1940.
He describes magpies’ near-human intelligence, mischief, and sense of humor. His pets know which parts of the house they may and may not enter. Brother Larry’s room they’ve never been allowed into: he screams abuse and throw things at them when they try. They wait until he’s swimming at the beach with his window open. They open tins, strew paper clips and bicarbonate of soda everywhere; knock over ink and track it everywhere; pull the ribbon out of the typewriter; defecate repeatedly on the keyboard; scatter manuscript pages everywhere, and poke holes in them. Author Larry was “Upset? Upset? Those scab-ridden vultures come flapping in here like a pair of critics and tear and besmatter my manuscript before it’s even finished, and you say I’m upset?” Larry’s books: goodreads.com/author/show/8166.Lawren...
Then the birds are caged on the porch. “Confined as they were, they were able to devote a lot of time to their studies, which consisted of getting a solid grounding in the Greek and English languages, and producing skilful imitations of natural sounds. Within a very short time they were able to call all members of the family by name, and they would, with extreme cunning, wait until Spiro had got into the car and coasted some distance down the hill, before rushing to the corner of their cage and screaming, ‘Spiro . . . Spiro . . . Spiro,” making him cram on his brakes and return to the house to find out who was calling him. They would also derive a lot of innocent amusement by shouting “Go away” and “Come here” in rapid succession, in both Greek and English, to the complete confusion of the dogs.” They also waited until the chickens had just gone to roost, then imitated the maid’s chicken-food calls—bringing the hens hurrying to the magpie cage, where the magpies chuckled at them. (Chapters 15 & 16, pp. 205–213, 220–222, 257–258)
When it comes to wooing, it’s half the battle to get a line on the adored object’s
Young Men in Spats
Fate
Tried in the Furnace
Trouble Down at Tudsleigh
When it comes to wooing, it’s half the battle to get a line on the adored object’s favourite literature. Mug it up and decant an excerpt or two and she is looking on you as a kindred soul and is all over you. Next moment Freddie was hareing off for a Collected Works of Tennyson. Relieved, because, girls being what they are, it might easily have been Shelley or even Browning.
Tennyson is soppy. Don’t you think his girls are awful blisters?
The Amazing Hat Mystery
Good-bye to All Cats
The Luck of the Stiffhams
Noblesse Oblige
Uncle Fred Flits By
I don’t know if you happen to know what the word ‘excesses’ means, but those are what Pongo’s Uncle Fred from the country, when in London, invariably commits.
Archibald and the Masses
The Code of the Mulliners
The Fiery Wooing of Mordred
Uncle Fred Flits By and Good-bye to All Cats are gems.
The heroines are a bit rough on the heroes in some of the others.
Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, 2015, 360pp. ISBN 9780393088816
Bleeding-edge science for the generaNick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, 2015, 360pp. ISBN 9780393088816
Bleeding-edge science for the general reader. Lane has plausible, partly detailed explanations for how life may have arisen from natural geochemical processes—and how complex life may have arisen from bacteria and archaea.
He has new ideas—including testable hypotheses, and is testing some of them.
The atmosphere 4.4–4 billion years ago was mainly carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrogen, sulfur dioxide—oxidized volcanic gases.
Conditions for new life:
Alkaline hydrothermal vents in mildly acidic, metal-rich sea: thermal currents of carbon- and energy-rich fluids through microporous semiconducting iron-sulfur catalytic rock, proton gradients form across thin walls. Proton gradient drives formation of methyl thioacetate and acetyl phosphate; carbon and energy metabolism; ‘dehydrate’ to form polymers including nucleic acids and proteins. (pp. 135, 148) Organics accumulate. Vents persist at least 100,000 years, 10^17 microseconds (pp. 110–120). Organics interact; fatty acids precipitate into vesicles; amino acids and nucleotides could polymerize into proteins and RNA.
Lane and his team have built a reactor to mimic these conditions, and are testing their ideas. “We’ve produced ribose and deoxyribose, acetyl phosphate, and other organics” (p. 119, 134).
Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry. (p. 27)
Cells form:
Lipid bilayers form spontaneously from fatty acids. (p. 135)
Genetic code forms; heredity; self-replication. (p. 135–136) Catalytic dinucleotides could generate amino acids from simpler percursors.
Today’s oceans are no longer conducive to starting new life in that way: there’s too much oxygen and too little carbon dioxide now. (p. 112)
Life arose on Earth perhaps 4 billion years ago—half a billion years after Earth was formed—including archaea and bacteria, which had Earth to themselves for 2 billion years. Eukaryotes arose maybe 1.7 billion years ago—cells with a membrane-bound nucleus, mitochondria, straight chromosomes, dynamic cytoskeleton, and other complex structures, and sexual reproduction: plants, animals, algae, fungi, protists. (pp. 26, 160)
Complex life (eukaryotes) likely started from a bacterium entering an archaeal cell as an endosymbiont. The endosymbionts became mitochondria, losing all but 13 of their protein-coding genes to the host cell’s nucleus, and specializing in energy production.
Nick Lane is a good writer and a voracious reader, collaborator, researcher and author in his field.
Whereas a university student can spend a scholastic career learning only orthodox dogma, what was learned in bygone generations—in this book Lane introduces us to big questions to which the answers aren’t known. But the answers to some of them might be knowable. He lets us in on how he and his colleagues are trying to find out. Well done.
False data. One of his introductory graphs is of company size vs. income. Shows income near $1 million/year for a 1-person Throws lots of ideas at us.
False data. One of his introductory graphs is of company size vs. income. Shows income near $1 million/year for a 1-person company. If true, we'd all do it. For his fraction-of-people-surviving-this-long-vs.-age graphs, he gives us a smooth curve, then a stairstep one, for the same thing--he wants to identify supposed causes of death, so he redraws the curve to fit what he wants to say. Early in the book there's a plot showing all animals have essentially 1 billion heartbeats per lifetime. Later there's a graph showing larger animals such as horses with lower heartrates and much shorter lives than us. Walking speed is /negative/ in small cities? And nowhere more than .6 m/s (2.16 kph)? (Fig. 42)
No, it won't do. If you don't start with a commitment to true data, your conclusions can have no value.
Starts by trumpeting the value of log-log plots for the kind of relationships he's looking at. Correct. Then retreats to linear plots for just the kind of graphs that need to be log. His log-log plots have a different distance per decade on the horizontal compared to the vertical. So you can't tell by looking at it what the slope is. Numbers an axis, "10^1, 10^2, 10^3," /in thousands of dollars/! Don't do that to us. Say ten to the 4, 5, 6, /in dollars./ Labels axes, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5--meaning ten to the that many people in the city. No. Label 10,000 100,000 1,000,000. City population "6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16" (Fig. 42) means what? No log or linear scale I can think of makes sense of these numbers as range of city populations.
Mishandling graphs really isn't excusable in a book /about/ visually representing relationships among quantities.
He's quite taken with himself and his fellow Deep Thought Thinkers....more
A lifetime’s collection of mathematical curiosities: properties of whole numbers, geometry, topology, logic. Also defines the big unsolved problems in mathematics for which prizes have been offered (pp. 126–129); tells us of recent (and ancient) discoveries in math. A wealth of content in a short book. Some highlights:
Pi, pp. 23–26, 39–40, 197, 208–211, 217 355/113 is good to 6 places. p. 23 Mnemonic in French and English, p. 39–40, Several formulas for pi, pp. 208–211, 217
e, base of natural logarithm, pp. 172–173, 197
Pythagorus, pp. 46–49. b. 569 BCE on Samos. Probably met Thales of Miletus; Pythagorus attended lectures by Anaximander, student of Thales.
Pythagorean Triples, pp. 58–59, 61, 71 You know the 3-4-5 and 5-12-13 right triangles—but what other whole numbers work in Pythagorus’s theorem? Here’s the answer! It’s called Diophantus’s Rule: For any two integers, n > m Take: a = n² − m² b = 2nm c = n² + m² Then a² + b² = c² That is, (n² − m²)² + (2nm)² = (n² + m²)² For example: (n, m) a–b–c (2, 1) 3–4–5 (3, 2) 5–12–13 (4, 1) 15–8–17 (4, 3) 7–24–25 (5, 4) 9–40–41 (5, 2) 21–20–29 (6, 1) 35–12–37
Fermat’s Last Theorem, pp. 50–58
Leonhard Euler, pp. 43–44
Carl Friedrich Gauss, pp. 146–149
Regular polyhedrons: faces plus vertices = edges + 2, pp. 174–179
Pick’s Theorem: area of a lattice polygon = ½ number of boundary points + number of interior points minus 1, pp. 125–126
Expanding universe, pp. 95–96
Golden number phi: phi minus 1 = 1/phi, pp. 96–98, 197
Fibonacci numbers, pp. 98–102
Plastic number, pp. 103–104
When will my MP3 player repeat? pp. 131–134
The game of life, pp. 223–228 but see ERRATA below.
Goldbach Conjecture: ways a number can be expressed as sum of two primes, pp. 154–155
Which slice of spherical loaf has most crust? All are same, if slices equal thickness. Means in making a flat map of the globe, a projection onto a cylinder, then rolled out, is an equal-area projection, if the z-axis of the cylinder is preserved as linear. Pp. 246, 309.
Different sizes of infinities: Hilbert’s Hotel, pp. 157–161
Most likely digit 106–109
Cutting a Mobius strip: pp. 111–113
Fake coin puzzle: Given 12 coins, 1 of which is heavy or light, find which one is wrong and whether heavy or light, in just 3 weighings of coins vs. coins on an unmarked 2-pan balance. pp. 32–35
Four-color theorem, pp. 10–16. Describes how Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel solved it in 1976.
Constant bore, pp. 49–50, 264–266 A solid metal sphere with cylindrical hole bored through the center, if the resulting bored sphere is of a given height, say 1 meter, weighs the same regardless of the original diameter of the sphere: whether the hole is vanishingly small or as large as you like.
Close packing, p. 305
Square wheel pp. 84–85
Marital Mistrust puzzle, pp. 86–87, 273: a harder version of the “get the goose, grain, and fox across the river without leaving goose alone with grain or fox” puzzle.
Opposition (parity of number of moves) in chess, pp. 214–215
Prof. Stewart is great at making up names:
Lord Elpus
ERRATA In Game of Life section, p. 225, diagram 10, if center square is (0, 0) then only the squares at coordinates 2 and 3 along each axis should have dots. And diagram 11 should be empty.
P. 226, the right traffic light does not produce the left one. The dot 2 squares from the center along each axis vanishes. And the next diagram should be empty.
P. 293: squares are supposed to be all different. The first two in top left are the same.
Great historical novels. The story of the making of England, behind the human story of individual people (fictional and historical). King Alfred "The Great,” 866 CE and later. Many times it seems that England should have been Daneland—Saxons eke out one unlikely victory after another. Cornwell writes as though he’s stood in a shield wall and gutted his enemy; as though he’s raced a viking longboat through a rocky channel on a flooding tide. Cornwell puts you there—much better than either a dry recitation of facts or a worshipful biography. Each book ends with an exciting battle. Protagonist Uhtred of Bebbanburg was born 857 CE.
The Flame Bearer (The Saxon Stories, #10) 917 CE, Northumbria, East Anglia. Uhtred hopes to retake the almost-unassailable fortress of Bebbanburg. Against him are the warriors of his usurping cousin, of the West Saxons, of the Scots, of the Norse, and of a treacherous mad bishop.
Lords of the North (The Saxon Stories, #3) England and surrounding seas, 878–880 CE. Danes, Saxons, Scots and churchmen contend for control of Northumbria. Exciting finish. Slavery and sea trade.
The Pale Horseman (The Saxon Stories, #2) Southern England, 877–878 CE, Alfred's West Saxons try to keep Guthrum's Danes from completing the conquest of England. Bernard Cromwell writes with "you are there" immediacy. Wonderful stories.
The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1) Great historical novel, England 866–877 CE, Danes take northern England, Alfred's West Saxons fight to save the south. Our protagonist is the son of an English earl, captured and raised by the Danes who kill his father, age 9–20. Well-drawn characters, a page-turner.
Cornwell’s approach is to put his heroes in a difficult situation, then see how they get out of it. Works a treat!
Uhtred is delightfully irreverent: “small group of priests I admired and liked, hugely outnumbered by the corrupt, venal, ambitious clerics who governed the church.” (book 9 p. 132 of 481) “Good decent men rarely achieve power in the church. Sly and ambitious ones gain preferment.” (book 8 p. 141 of 296) “I wouldn’t trust your god to save a worm.” (book 9 p. 271 of 481) “The Christian god was just as capable of losing his temper and slaughtering children as any god in Asgard. If the purpose of life was to be an unpredictable, murderous tyrant, then it would be easy to be godlike.” (book 9 p. 308 of 481)
The books are fiction but mostly consistent with what’s known to have really happened. Cornwell will take a terse note in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and write a story around it. Uhtred is fictional—but people like him existed. There’s a Historical Note at the end of each book where Cornwell “confesses his sins”—admits some of his main departures from history.
The chronology is pretty close to true, with departures for the sake of the story. In Cornwell’s books, Alfred’s grandson Æthelstan (actually born 895) is about 9 or 10 in 911 CE (book 8, pp. 4, 48, 56 of 296), 14 or 15 in 914 CE (book 9, pp. 10, 56 of 481), and 22 or 23 in 917 CE (book 10, pp. 138, 281 of 284).
Cornwell says he started writing because he was refused a green card by the Carter administration: writing novels was a job you don’t need a government permit to do.
Cornwell says it takes him about 6 months to write a 125,000-word book. Amazingly prolific: and his stuff is good.
There's a TV series, The Last Kingdom, but it bears little similarity to the books....more
Paine justThomas Paine, Rights of Man (1792). Abridged from 90,000 down to 7200 words by Glyn Hughes in this pdf: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&s...
Paine justly knocks monarchy. He supposes representative government will abolish many of the world's ills. Sadly, no.
England had Rule by Landowner enshrined in law.
The 21st century world is increasingly ruled by an aristocracy of wealth. As Noam Chomsky explains in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, real power is in the private economy. Corporate wealth dictates a race to the bottom in its obligations, and to the top in its freedoms and rewards. As Chomsky understands and Paine did not, it's the owners of wealth who control the world, not the nominal form of government.
Thomas Paine failed to predict that the minuscule-government, negligible flat-rate taxes and Sacred Right of Property he championed, would lead right back to the hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power he abhorred.
Paine also put the constant warring among nations down to abuses inherent only to monarchy. Paine would've been surprised at the hundreds of military campaigns the U.S. has waged, between the states and around the world.
"Monarchy (banditry), by admitting a participation of the spoil, makes itself friends." [pp. 14, 16 of 20, of the pdf linked above]. Capitalism does the same thing, even more effectively.
Paine saw that only the corrupt could be elected to Parliament [p. 17 of 20]. He didn't predict that, 200 years later, /no/ president could be elected without kissing Wall Street's ring. Nor that representative government represents the loudest voice: nearly always the voice of wealth. He couldn't have known that laws would be written by armies of lobbyists, paid by corporate wealth, the laws being enacted without even being /read/ by the congressional representatives and senators. He didn't know that the public would need not just to elect a representative but to also hire a lobbyist on every issue that wealth lobbies on. Largely, we the people have not hired a lobbyist. So we have no voice. https://politics.theonion.com/america......more
The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, 1692. Translated with an introduction by John J. Delaney, 1977.
Brother LawrThe Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, 1692. Translated with an introduction by John J. Delaney, 1977.
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection was a simple monk, who found a way to be always in the presence of God. Habitual, silent and secret conversation of the soul with God (5th letter). Trust God. Accept God’s will. Continually converse with God.
Not shocked at the misery and sin we hear of every day. Considering the malice the sinner is capable of, surprised there is not more of it. (1st conversation)
God seems to choose the greatest sinners to bestow his greatest graces on. (2nd conversation) (Compare Mark Twain, Edward Mills and George Benton)
Brother Lawrence felt more united to God in his ordinary activities than when he devoted himself to religious activities which left him with a profound spiritual dryness. (3d conversation)
The least turning away from Him is hell for me. (3d letter)
He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, offer Him your sufferings, thank Him for graces. One need not cry very loudly. He is nearer to us than we think. (4th letter)
Ask God not to be delivered from suffering but for strength and courage. (14th letter)
Born Nicholas Herman in Lorraine, in 1614, according to his abbey's necrology. Fought for Lorraine at age 18 in the 30 years war, 1632. Wounded by Swedes during their intervention (1630-1635) (ages are approximate.) Haunted by savagery of war. Joins abbey 1640, age 26. Professed a monk 1642, age 28. First decade in the religious life was spiritual anguish (c. 1640-1650, age 26-36) (5th letter) Four conversations with his abbot, Joseph de Beaufort, 1666-1667 (Bro. L. age 52-53) Sixteen letters, 1682-1691 (age 68-77). Dies 1691, age 77. Abbé Joseph de Beaufort gathers his few papers. (Note that Brother Lawrence. often overstates his age in his letters and conversations. His birthdate in his abbey’s necrology is probably correct, according to translator John J. Delaney. It matches with the Swedish Intervention in the Thirty Years’ War.)
The Golden Phoenix: Eight French-Canadian Fairy Tales, by Marius Barbeau, retold by Michael Hornyansky, 1958, 144pp.
Excellent fairy tales you haven't The Golden Phoenix: Eight French-Canadian Fairy Tales, by Marius Barbeau, retold by Michael Hornyansky, 1958, 144pp.
Excellent fairy tales you haven't heard before. Great attitude. Playful and satisfying. Fun. None of the grimness of German fairy tales.
"I collected these at first hand from raconteurs over many years. They are presented here in a polished retelling by Michael Hornyansky. Their treatment in his skilful hands deserves praise, for you must remember that the /habitants/ and lumberjacks who used to tell these stories were often crude, though natural, simple, and lively. Mr. Hornyansky and I aimed at a literary uplifting similar to that of Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault."
"We folklorists have already recorded many hundreds of stories from old people, but they are soon to die out because of a changed world." -- Marius Barbeau, 1958.
For more on the Canadian sources, see the author's /Les Contes du Grand-père Sept-Heures/.
Thomas Ray
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