Saturday, June 30, 2018
The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole
Labels:
2017,
audiobooks,
books,
childrens books,
Laura Ortiz,
Michelle Cuevas
Getting to Yes: Negotiating without Giving In
Labels:
1981,
2011,
audiobooks,
books,
bruce patton,
Dennis Boutsikaris,
negotiation,
psychology,
roger fisher,
william ury
Pale Fire
The commentary seems to have nothing to do with the poem. The "explicator" uses minor bits of information in the poem to go off an a tangent about something totally different. There are a few main stories. One is about a King that escapes a fictional country. Another is about an assassin that is attempting to kill said King. The third tangent is somewhat more related to the poem and involves the life of Shade and his family and the relationship of Shade to Kinbote. The stories gradually become more intertwined, leading to some possible interrelations. Perhaps Kinbote is actually the King. Perhaps the murderer was trying to kill the King, rather than Shade. Maybe Kinbote is just a crazy stalker who has been much too obsessed with Shade and unable to accomplish significant scholarship on his own.
On one level, the work can be seen as a deep satire of academia. The Kinbote takes himself way too seriously and comes up with detailed interpretations that would be hard to justify based on the merits of the text. (Many long bits of commentary are related only in that Shade had written bits of the poem at the same time another event happened.) Even sections that may be somewhat justified are more highly influenced by the life of the commentator than the actual poet.
On another level, the use of a poem provides an innovative way to tell a "hypertext" story. Different sections can be followed back and forth to unearth the intertwined tales. They are a fiction wrapped in another fiction, making it open to many possible interpretations. I am not sure weather the fictional country is "real" in the universe of the story or if it is in fact made up in the mind of the "author." This opens many possible interpretations of the work.
Labels:
1962,
books,
poetry,
style over substance,
Vladimir Nabokov
The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life
Education was a little more questionable. It seems everybody likes to pick the part of the Finnish education success that best suits them. The author claims Finnish education was reformed primarily around equity. All schools were high quality and everybody had access to the highest level of education. (Even "private" schools would fall closely under the similar government scheme.) Alas, much of that is missed in the US. Seattle schools are obsessed with equity. Yet, the implementation method often involves lowering the bar. There is also the matter of private schools. If the public school district provides an equally bad experience for all, yet there are abundant, high cost, high quality private offerings is that really equitable? The author also noted some problems with "school choice" in other Scandinavian countries. Public school advocates will use this to fight against vouchers and charter schools. However, the school districts get into the same game with open enrollment, option schools and magnet schools. It is just school choice controlled by the education bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is the real difference. US schools have a significantly greater number of administrators per student. They also rely extensively on standardized tests. The antagonistic union situation results in teachers being treated more as cogs in a system rather than skilled professionals as they are in Scandinavia. School districts are also fragmented and rely on a local property tax base for funding. Nordic countries tend to be fairly homogeneous populations, however, there are plenty of states that are similar in population and homogeneity to Nordic countries. They could likely reform their education system to have similar success, but there will be big fights from both the parents and schools in order to get there.
The book lauds the social welfare benefits of the Nordic countries, while lamenting the lack of high cost of medicine and lack of social benefits in the United States. Taxes, however, are not too different in both. What gives? The United States often tries to do "socialism on the cheap". Rather than give a benefit like healthcare to everybody, it is only given out to a certain population under an income threshold. There are also a large number of tax breaks for different behaviors or activities. This makes for a highly complex system that is in many ways highly restrictive in behavior. You arguably have a choice in health plans in the United States. However, medicaid is only for the poor, medicare for the elderly, VA for veterans. There is a huge tax subsidy for private health insurance plans - but only if purchased through an employer. If you want to purchase insurance on your own, you lose out on most government largess (and tend to pay higher rates on top of that.) And this just gets you insurance which may or may not let you see the doctor you want. (And there is no guarantee that you can even purchase a policy that will let you see them.)
The Nordic model of benefits provides similar benefits to everyone. Anybody has access to the same health care at the same cost. Education, parental leave, unemployment and other benefits are provided by the government. This frees companies and citizens to focus on adding value rather that entrepreneurial risks will leave their family on the street. These benefits are covered by taxes. However, the tax rates are mostly flat, instead of highly graduated. They are still somewhat progressive, but not obsessively so as in the United States. In the US, it seems too much effort is spent on making a "progressive" tax system and then limiting benefits to those that are "in need". Then the tax code is filled with a bazillion loopholes to prevent these high taxes from negatively impacting "special interests". The result is a lower class that receives a large amount of benefits and pays no taxes and an upper class that can spend the effort to legally avoid taxes. This leaves a middle class that earns to much to qualify for benefits, yet doesn't have the resources to avoid taxes and thus pays away a large portion of their income. Public benefits tend to be stigmatized and associated with the "poor". (However, tax breaks carry no such stigma - even though they are essentially just another "payment" from the government. Would removing income validation change things? (It could also reduce some incentives for "reducing" income and working under the table to qualify for benefits.)
The book ends with the author becoming a US citizen. She was willing to sacrifice the Nordic safety net after falling in love with an American. Despite the challenges, there are advantages of the US way. I had met a Dane who was similarly desirous to move to the US due to the more dynamic start up culture. There may be something in the lack of safety net that pushes people to work harder. (Though there may also be the advantage of a much larger market.) There are many places in the US that would love to have a similar social welfare system. However, attempts often fall victim to entrenched interests (such as insurance companies and government agencies.) How can the United States keep the entrepreneurial spirit and move beyond third-world social welfare?
Labels:
2016,
Abby Craden,
Anu Partanen,
audiobooks,
books,
economics,
Finland,
Nordic,
social science
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Daisy Miller
Despite being written almost 140 years ago, Daisy Miller reflects some of the "American Elitism" that is seen today. Despite spending extended time in Europe, the Miller's still view Schenectady, New York as the source of everything great. Even far away from home, the American norms are expected to apply.
Labels:
1879,
audiobooks,
books,
henry james,
literature,
novella
Friday, June 15, 2018
Moby Dick
In addition to history, the novel explores human relations. Whaling was a true multi-cultural affair, long before "multi-cultural" was a thing. The novel begins with the narrator sharing lodging with a "cannibal", and goes to describe encounters with many others of diverse backgrounds. While the narrator is initially afraid of these different characters, he gradually treats them as respected crew members (though not necessarily as close friends.)
Even when the book gets into the "action sequences" as they are hunting wales, the author takes time to go into exquisite detail of how they process the whale onboard the ship and the intricacies of the "law of the sea" for who gets to complete a capture of whale.
It is not until the final few chapters of the novel that the focus is truly on being a novel. Now the ship and crew is enduring a typhoon and trying valiantly to battle Moby Dick. Ahab truly will stop at nothing (including his own demise) to help defeat the great whale Moby Dick. The action is intense. You could make a good abridgement by taken bits and pieces of the first 100 chapters and including the last few in their entirety.
Labels:
1851,
Adams Morgan,
audiobooks,
books,
fiction,
herman melville
Ace the Programming Interview
The first section of the book deals with general interview preparation. It talks about preparing a resume, going through the phone and in person interviews and even negotiating the offer. It also covers general preparation and pitfalls. Their is advice here both for interviewers and interviewees. The author points out some of the pitfalls that we we run into in interviews. Some times and interviewer will ask questions that are too specific, or expect a candidate to be able to provide the same type of answer that they have implemented for a given problem.
The questions and answers are interspersed with the review of CS fundamentals. The author seems to be moth experienced with windows technologies. However, others are also mentioned. The sections cover common things such as big O notation, as well as such topics ans choosing the appropriate tools.
Other interviews tend to focus more on the practical programming questions. This book has some of that. It also attempts to provide more coverage of language-specific programming questions. (Alas, that can make it quickly dated as languages evolve or go out of favor.) However, it shines more in the general theoretical questions. Why are software projects usually late? Why do programmers do certain things? It provides good insight for preparing for a general programming interview, but wont necessarily prepare you for the grind of Google or Amazon technical questions.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World
The Epilogue contained a few points that had proven successful for teaching empathy.
- Be friendly
- Break Down Barriers
- Give Kids a Voice
- Play Chess and Unplugged Games
- Create Parent Support Networks
- Build Caring Relationships
- Don't Give Up.
Labels:
2016,
audiobooks,
books,
cassandra campbell,
children,
michele borba,
psychology
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Soonish
While the focus is on the "optimistic" side of new technology development, the ethical and pessimistic side also comes in play. Programmable matter sounds great when we talk about assembling the tool we need right when we need it. However, if a hacker could cause the matter to suddenly transform into a destructive weapon, we could be in big trouble. Similarly, what if that new "smart limb" could be controlled by an external party. Robotic construction could eliminate many of the good blue collar jobs, leading to greater income inequality. Synthetic biology could result enable all sorts of terrorism opportunities. And interfacing a brain with a computer? Well, it does not take much effort to think of the negative possibilities there. This book would be a great source for all sorts of science fiction scenarios.
Some of the technologies described in the book will probably never become a significant part of our lives, while others will gradually seep into general acceptance. However, guessing which ones will make it is a difficult task. Lets just hope we don't cause a disaster by rushing too fast into the "wrong" technologies.
Labels:
2017,
books,
future,
kelly weinersmith,
technology,
zach weinersmith
Friday, June 01, 2018
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
when a ship arrived in port, a large group of laborers was needed for the work of unloading and loading. However, this work was not very regular, and the wages paid could change based on supply and and demand on both sides. This opened things up to bribes, and later unionization (which was often along ethnic lines.) One union controlled west coast ports, while another controlled the east coast. By having a stranglehold on all port traffic, the unions were able to exert greater control than other unions. When containers threatened to reduce the labor needed for handling ships, the longshoremen negotiated significant benefits for themselves. (In essence they would "share" the benefits of containerization.) It is scary the impact that a single union could have. The unions only reluctantly accepted the progress of the container and had done their best to delay their inevitable.
Railroads too engaged in stupidity at the dawn of the container. They preferred using their boxcars rather than shipping containers. They were ideally situated to transfer containers from the ports to inland locations. However, they did what they could to not get that traffic, thus hampering their own viability and giving significant advantage to long range distance trucks.
The military initially had its own small version of containers. However, the logistic challenge that was Vietnam encouraged them to adopt the standard commercial container.
The container encouraged big container ports, often at the expense of small ones. Instead of smaller ships calling at many ports, a massive container ship would run between a couple ports. In most cases, it was major ports that expanded to be the container behemoths. However, there are some that came out of nowhere to dominate container traffic. One of the most interesting was the port of Fleixstowe in Britain. It was a privately owned backwater port not organized by the union. While the union was busy battling out with London-area port, Flexistowe built up support for container traffic and came to become the prime container port before the unions could work out their differences with the other ports.
Container traffic enabled cheap reliable transportation of good around the world, and thus encouraged just in time manufacturing. I wonder why something similar has not been tried for transportation of humans? What if we got in our pod that then whisked of to the train station, connected us to the airport, flew us across the ocean, and then took us to our destination. We could enjoy the comfortable journey without the slog of transferring between multiple modes. Could we find a way for people transit to work the same way as goods transport?
Labels:
2016,
books,
business,
history,
logistics,
marc levinson,
shipping,
transportation
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The history of the revolution is secondary to the life of individual people through literature. The book is divided into four sections, each based on an author or work of literature. The book provides excellent literary criticism by weaving the story of the people studying the work with the characters and themes of the book. Lolita is in part a story of oppression, but also one of willingly taking the "easy path". Forcing everyone to fully cover themselves can be just as offensive as forcing people to not be covered. Great Gatsby superficially glamorizes "immoral" behavior, but deep down it is condemning it. The subtleties are lost on censors. The works are all fiction. They are presenting tales of the conditions of people to help us today.
While the first two sections tended to focus on individual works, the last two where geared more towards authors' as a whole - Henry James and Jane Austen. Nafisi finds parallels in the human condition and subtleties of reaction within the current Iran. Women's rights are greatly restricted in the Islamic republic. Even some devoutly religious find issues with their identity. With everyone forced to adopt the headscarf and covering, the devout no longer are set apart physically. Courtship and marriage takes on a very different meaning. People are not supposed to even look upon the opposite sex, yet they still have the sexual urges. They complain about hypocrisy among those in power, yet are often reluctant to challenge themselves within or without of the confines of the rules. Those in power in Iran are often portrayed as reactionary buffoons. One student sets himself on fire after no knowing how to deal with life after the end of the Iran/Iraq war. In another case, an attempt is made to murder a group of authors by getting them on a bus and driving them off a cliff. However, in spite of this, there is a reference shown to the unifying force of the death of Ayatollah.
In the end, the author leaves Iran to come teach in the US. Many of her friends have also left Iran, while at the same time Iran had made some small steps towards liberalization.
Labels:
2003,
audiobooks,
Azar Nafisi,
books,
Iran,
literature
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