Freakonomics Twentieth Anniversary Edition: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Freakonomics Twentieth Anniversary Edition: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

This is a classic book on economics applied to everyday life. The views to be very politically agnostic, with a focus on what the data says. Very often the data tells something different than conventional wisdom. In one controversial piece, a strong correlation is found with legalized abortion and later drops in crime rates. The theory logically holds - if children are unwanted there are more likely to seek life of crime. However, this doesn't mean it leads to a policy. (If one assigns a non-zero value to the life of a fetus, then the trade off becomes much harder to justify and becomes more like Minority Report crime prevention.)

This relates to conversation about drug dealers. Being a low level drug dealer pays poorly and carries high risk, but it is one of the few opportunities visible in the projects. The top of the chain do live well, but only very few get there. The underground economy actually operates very similar to typical corporate structures.

Parenting may seem like a solution. However, the biggest parenting correlations are with what the parent is rather than what they do.  Even safety structures like car-seats provide little benefit. Television watching doesn't correlate with outcomes. Books in the house does. However, just getting books in the house will not likely make kids better. Schools are somewhat irrelevant. With school choice system, those that make the great schools perform similar to those that don't. The attributes that cause one to seek out the school tend to be more important than the school itself.

The book has many other insights that seem counter-intuitive, yet make sense and has aged well.

Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus

Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus by Isaac Asimov

The book starts with a 1970s apology by the author. When he wrote it in the 1950s the understanding of Venus's atmosphere was much different than it was in the 1970s. Alas, the understanding of Venus was the least of the problems with this book. The general understanding of people and supremacy of scientists also seems very dated. They thought they would have a perfect world where scientists could use objectivity to solve problems. Alas, people are still people with their own desires and opinions. Plenty of harm has been done in the name of science.

There is some strange telepathy going on. Seems that some native V-frogs have ability to control human minds. However, they are simple creatures, and it is actually a human that is using those for his own power. There is a bit of Sherlock Holmes deduction that has nothing to do with the surface of venus (but is very far fetched.)

On the Beach

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

After a big nuclear war takes place, the northern hemisphere is pretty much toast. Though it started with a small scale conflict, it soon spread, causing radioactive damage that impacted most places that were not destroyed by the initial war. Australia is one of the lost places surviving. They explore destruction in other places, but know that their end is near. One of the hopes they have is that they can go out at the same time. Even when that is squashed, a man fakes his illness to give comfort to his wife. Nuclear weapons had great potential for massive destruction. Especially during the early cold war, this was all too real.

Refugee

Refugee by Alan Gratz

Refugees go full circle in this book that tells the stories of three different refugee families. One is fleeing Nazi Germany, hoping to go to Cuba. A half-century later, another family is fleeing Cuba, hoping to get to Florida. Finally, in 2014, a family is fleeing Syria, hoping to get to Germany. They had connections. A man in the boat fleeing Cuba had been a young police officer in Cuba that had helped prevent the Jews on the ship fleeing Germany from staying in Cuba. The matriarch of family in Germany that took in the refugees from Syria had been a little girl on that ship that tried to go to Cuba. After being denied deboarding in Cuba and the US, they were finally granted asylum in France - only to have the Germans occupy the country shortly thereafter. She was one of the few people in her family to survive the war.

The book brings alive the plight of refugees. They often had good lives previously and would have preferred not to leave. However, circumstances changed, often in the form of war and oppression. They were willing to spend great sums of many and make significant sacrifices in hope of a better life. They may have been professionals before, but now would take whatever they could get. Along the way, they find people that help them as those that will take advantage of them. Some places will take them in, while others will just detain them. It can sometimes be dumb luck that controls the outcome.

The Glass Hotel: A Novel

The Glass Hotel: A Novel by Emily St. John Mandel

The novel revolves around the people that are involved in the life of a woman named Vincent. The start centers on her half brother Paul, a drug addict who is struggling with school. He eventually meets up with Vincent and gets a job at the remote hotel where she is bartending. However, shortly after he starts, he agrees to write a very negative message on a window. This brings us to the other major thread. The message was targeting the owner of the hotel, a rich financier named Alkaitis. He meets people at the hotel, including a man in shipping (Leon Prevant) and Vincent. He falls for Vincent and has him become his "wife" (though they are never officially married). She initially enjoys the life of luxury with unlimited spending on his credit card. However, she eventually tires of it. Later the financial empire crumbles in 2008 when it is revealed to be a Ponzi scheme. Alkatis goes to jail. Vincent changes her look and goes off to live on a container ship. She eventually dies when she falls overboard trying to film during a storm. Leon Prevant is called in to investigate the circumstances of her death. He had "retired" from the shipping firm and then lost everything he invested in Alkatis's scheme and was desperate for a gig.

The book moves back and forth in the timeline and bounces around focus, yet it works very well. It all seems to come back to the hotel in remote part of British Columbia.

Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution

Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli, translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell

This book explores the history of quantum mechanics using the experience of scientists in Helgoland as the base. It has a more euro-literate feel than the other quantum mechanics book I read at the same time. This is rather short and includes experiences to make the history interesting.

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

According to this book, AI is a useless technology that can't do much of anything. It is only technology company hype that is driving the interest in what is just old technology. Companies are using it as a way to pay creatives less to edit instead of create. The book criticizes both the AI boomers and doomers. The authors don't think that AI will amount to much of anything. Is there some truth to their argument? Maybe. But the argument is so one-sided that it is hard to believe.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley had a rough childhood in Boston. Things did not get much better when he moved to New York City. There he got by as a con artist. He would impersonate the IRS to get extort money from people. He also remembered details from conversations with people and would use that to fake friendship or mutual connections. 

Mr. Greenleaf was a wealthy man who wanted help getting his son back from a bohemian lifestyle in Italy. He believed Tom was a friend of his son Dickie and hired him to go help bring him back. Tom went to Italy and ingratiated himself with Dickie. Things start to go sour after Dickie catches Tom wearing his clothes. One day while alone in a boat away from land, Tom decides to kill Dickie and carries it out. He then lives alone in Italy, pretending to be Dickie and forging his signature to cash trust fund checks. After a while, a friend of Dickie's tracks him down. Tom kills him, too. However, this body is quickly found and investigated. He also learns that the boat was found and the authorities suspect Dickie of murdering Tom. This leads Tom to go back to being himself. 

Tom concocts a story of Dickie being mentally unstable. Tom even forges a suicide note and will. Tom survives a few clothes encounters with Dickie's father and on-and-off girlfiend Marge. He also evades the authorities, with them believing that Dickie likely murdered his friend and then committed suicide. Tom now could live a life of wealth.

The book is a story of a mind that escalates to worse and worse things as he continues to get away with it. Punishment came early in life and is totally disconnected from his behavior.

Breakthrough: Spectacular Stories of Scientific Discovery from the Higgs Particle to Black Holes

Breakthrough: Spectacular Stories of Scientific Discovery from the Higgs Particle to Black Holes by Marcus Chown

This book looks at physics breakthroughs of the last century, with an emphasis on electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. The narrative works well with a good balance of personal details of the participants with stories of the physics and the actual breakthroughs. Stories include the prediction of Neptune with Urbain Le Verrier, electromagnetism with Maxwell and Faraday. Hertz, Hoyle and Dirac also get sufficient coverage.

Mom Genes: Inside The New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct

Mom Genes: Inside The New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct by Abigail Tucker

This popular science book explores motherhood. Moms act different in many ways. Humans are also fairly unique in that they can engage in full motherhood for kids that are clearly not their own. The placenta has a lot of dad influence and tries to take over the mom's body. Dad's have different priorities in child rearing than moms, though they do tend to work together. 

The book is as much an exploration of the author's experience raising children as it is on motherhood in general. The conclusion at the end tend to be more about modern policy preferences than deep scientific analysis. With science historically very male focussed, we have a ways to go to fully understand motherhood.

Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion

Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion by Nick Spencer

Science and religion have been much more closely related than many would have us believe. Science had been historically the domain of church leaders. Historical attacks on science by religion were often exaggerated to display their point. Figures like Galileo were attacked or politic as much as actions. The condemnation for going against established orthodoxy would be just as it would be today. The core difference is that in the past church was seen as arbitrar of the truth and holder of the consensus. Today, "leading scientists" hold that same position. Religion has often been fairly fragmented. Even when Catholicism was the religion in Europe, most localities were fairly autonomous with the local authorities being most important. In the Islamic there was not even the equivalent of the pope. After the protestant reformation in Europe there were different religious practices with their own beliefs. The conflict was more often between scientists attached to one faith tradition vs. another than to scientists vs. religion.

Things pivoted over time. Religion at times would use science to explain religious teachings. Later religious teachings would be used to explain science. During the cold war, the USSR was atheist, so the US became extra religious in part to counter it. Even more recent science vs. religion actions such as the Scopes Monkey Trial were really much less about science vs. religion. That angle was primarily brought up in later dramatizations and interpretations.

Religion and science had have their conflicts, yet they have also worked together for advancement. The full separation can be problematic. They each have their expertise and together can help humanity.

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace

The book ends with dad's death as he turns into a fish. The rest of the book details various parts of his life. He was a larger-than-life character that had great stories. The experiences were all grounded in the real world, but got exaggerated and carried away. He helped talk down a giant from eating the town. He helped rescue a woman's glass eye from a group of fraternity brothers. In one case, he even bought an entire town. When he found one hidden lot that wouldn't sell to him, he fell in love with the owner. Most of the short book takes place in Alabama. Maybe things are just a little different there.

To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

A fisherman rents out his services to others from his home in Key West, Florida. He rents it to various not-so-legal causes. He is ok at outrunning officials as he transports contraband and other no-so-legitimate things. He meets his end when he transports some Cuban revolutionaries. However, before he dies, he does take all of them out. He leaves behind a family at the end. It is a shot Hemingway book that seems right at home compared to Old Man and the Sea.

Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America

Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America by Brendan Ballou

Private equity firms has been able to exploit legal loopholes in order to transfer wealth from society to themselves. Their playbook includes mechanisms that insulate themselves from responsibility and allow them to profit even if the companies they acquire eventually fail. Leveraged buyouts will use debt that the company takes on itself in order for private equity to buy the company. The company then pays the firm a fee for the privilege of being managed as well as regular dividends. This necessitates significant belt tightening and leaves companies heavily vulnerable. Financial engineering, such as selling the real estate and leasing it back further harms the company prospects, while also helping to enrich private equity.

This book focuses on the negative wealth extraction and financial engineering performed by private equity. Operational improvements and long-term focus are barely covered. The book talks about failures like Toys R US, without even mentioning successes like Dell. Many of the areas that private equity has infiltrated have additional structural headwinds. Private Equity firms swoop in and separate the assets into good and bad. They make money off the good, then discard the bad. Alas, "discarding" often involves hoisting it on to the government. This type of financial engineering ends up harming society as a whole. Making the businesses lean leaves little buffer for downturns and also hurts customer service. They can also take advantage of industries where there is a big disconnect between who pays. In prisons, governments like the chance to get kickbacks from criminals. In hospitals, there are many parties involved, limited transparency and few options. There are great chances to financial engineer and frew responsibilities for doing so. Public healthcare may be the only true fix for the private equity mess there.

Sorrow and Bliss: A Novel

Sorrow and Bliss: A Novel by Meg Mason

A woman suffers from a mysterious mental illness, X. Her mother knew this early on, but never told her. The woman's marriage fell apart. She was intent on drawing attention to her self-destruction rather than trying to overcome it or caring about others. It goes on for a bit too long and using an unnamed mental illness feels like a cop-out.

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles

An aristocratic Count was placed under house arrest in a hotel at the time of Communist Revolution in Russia. He maintained his spirit even as things gradually changed. In the name of "equality" he was demoted from the suite to a regular room. The service of the restaurant steadily declined as communist principles overtook ability as means for employment. Eventually he eventually escape (which he does in part with an antique gun.) A girl which he had raised had defected to the US embassy while on a musical trip. It is a bit long, but has an interesting take on the communist revolution.

Virginia Woolf in 90 Minutes

Virginia Woolf in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern

Virginia Woolf had a somewhat brief and literary life. She came from a literary family was into "modernism" and helped support authors that the modernist criteria. (This would sometimes exclude those that are now greatly respected.) I should read more of her books. She was mentally unstable and tried suicide a few times before succeeding. Her life seems very similar to Sylvia Plath's.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

This book is just dark and icky. It is violent and the characters are unsympathetic. It takes place in the American West from around 1850 until the 1870s. The characters do violent things, fight against natives and others. 

Record of a Spaceborn Few: Wayfarers 3

Record of a Spaceborn Few: Wayfarers 3 by Becky Chambers

There is a science fiction "utopia" where everyone lives in a perfect communist society. All necessities are provided and they do work that they enjoy. Then some others come in and start messing things up. There are various aliens. Some don't need to breath, but have organs that allow them to talk. There is a disaster that changes around life. The book goes through various episodes of different characters. It felt too long. Parts were interesting but others got boring.

The Heart

The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor

Some suffer a tragic car accident. One has severe brain damage and will not recover. However, his heart and other organs are in good condition. The novel then explores the widespread impact of this heart. The family and friends of the surfer must deal with their grief. There is great need of a heart to help others, but it is important to make sure the loved ones do not have regrets. The novel explores the lives of the many people involved, from the doctors, the "donor" and the "recipient" and everyone related to all of them. It all takes place in the very short period of time. There is much history involved in a final action that happens within the span of a day.

Transcription: A Novel

Transcription: A Novel by Ben Lerner

The narrator goes to visit Thomas, aging academic who served as his mentor. Shortly before the interview, he ruins his phone by dropping it in water. He learns to navigate the world without the phone. Since that was to be his recording device, he has the conversation with his mentor without recording. Later he gives a talk and confesses to relying on memory and fabrication to write details of the mentor interview. The book then pivot's to Thomas's son, Max, and his family. Max's daughter refuses to eat. The family tries to be healthy and technology restrictive, but they will let anything go to get the daughter to eat. One time she does surprise them by eating a lot - only to throw up. 

The book explores our dependence on technology and the flakiness of memory. It is very short, though a bit pretentious.

Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany

Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany by Rebecca West

I felt the book was short and episodic. A later learned that it was expanded from four New Yorker articles. That explained things well. Lord Haw-Haw was a British voice for the Nazi Germany. When he was caught, he was tried for treason. He nearly was able to let away scott free. His defense was that he could not be arrested for treason since he was not a British subject. He was born in America and immigrated to Germany, becoming a German citizen at a time when the US was at peace with Germany. Alas, he had secured a British passport and renewed it right after hostilities had started. He was executed, but was able to get a reprieve for his wife.

Ava and Taco Cat (Ava and Pip Book 2)

Ava and Taco Cat (Ava and Pip Book 2) by Carol Weston

Ava is an 11-year old aspiring writer struggling through life as a tween. She names the cat they get from the animal shelter "taco cat" - a palindrome to go along with the palindrome names she and her sister Pip have. Her family regularly explores palindromes and word play. 

The cat takes a while to warm to her and the family. She uses her experience with the cat to write a story in school. This is picked up by the newspaper along with a picture of the cat. This leads the original owner to come and ask for the cat back. Despite others being reluctant to give up the cat Ava gives it up. Later the original owner returns and offers it back, giving the story a happy ending. The book even concludes with a long list of palindromes. There is plenty of fund word play worked in without being overbearing.

How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now

How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now by Stanislas Dehaene

Humans have an ability to learn. There seems to be some special innate ability to learn languages. Babies start learning language in the womb and "unlearn" phonemes that are not in their language. Learning is a key part of how society grows. Active learning is more successful than passive learning. Tech has challenges duplicating the learning process that brains undergo.

The author is very pro-education. Alas, the education institutions do not necessarily follow the best practices. Are these best practices even the best?

The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us About Being Human and Living Well

The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us About Being Human and Living Well by Julian Baggini

Here is an interesting exploration of Hume as a philosopher within his environment. The author explores various areas of Hume's life. Occasionally the buildings are still standing, but even those have often been repurposed. These biographical bits are intertwined with Hume's philosophy. This connection of thoughts and person is a great way to explore philosophy.