Thursday, December 31, 2020
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
What Technology Wants
Monday, December 28, 2020
Hamnet
Sunday, December 27, 2020
The Overstory: A Novel
Thursday, December 24, 2020
The Lying Life of Adults
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Zizek's Jokes: (Did you hear the one about Hegel and negation?)
Midnight at the Well of Souls
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes Novel)
Monday, December 14, 2020
Seeker
Saturday, December 12, 2020
The Arctic Incident: Artemis Fowl, Book 2
Friday, December 11, 2020
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
Neanderthals lived in "recent" prehistoric times. There is fairly large amount of available fossil records. However, most of the work has been done by making inferences based on the state of the skeletons and the related material. Death rituals and eating habits can be more easily be determined by looking at the bones and those of related animals. However, we are somewhat constrained in dealing with the "well preserved" remains. Are sample may not represent the population as a whole.
Genetic analysis has made for some interesting discoveries. There has been interbreeding between humans and early Neanderthals. However, the later Neanderthals did not appear to mate with humans. There are a number of open questions as to what happened to Neanderthals. Did humans wipe them out? Are they a cautionary tale of what humans can do to each other and those that seem different?
Wednesday, December 09, 2020
Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem
Some of the mythology gets in the way of understanding Columbus. He, like many educated people of the day knew that the earth was round. However, he miscalculated the size of the earth. America happened to be right where he thought Asia would be. He was a great navigator and went through great efforts to launch his voyage. He had to spend time wooing monarchs in order to get funds to sail into the unknown.
Religion was an important part of his reasoning for sailing - and one of his political talking points. He thought of the expedition as a great chance to help convert the Great Khan and his subjects to Christianity. He also saw it has a chance to accumulate gold to finance a crusade to retake Jerusalem. He also saw his discoveries as part of the steps needed for the oncoming of Christ's millennial reign, which was to come in about 150 years. Towards the end of his life he published a work that detailed many of his religious views.
Crews were initially reluctant to join him. However, after he succeeded on the first voyage, he had many more people willing to join him. This was perhaps a bigger challenge. Now in addition to navigating and exploring, he had to manage people. The "elites" didn't want to do the hard work of colony building. Men were also eager to abuse the natives and found the unclothed women especially tempting. Columbus's first settlement of La Navidad was totally destroyed by the natives after the settlers had behaved poorly with the natives.
Many of the Spaniards saw the natives as inferior and felt no qualms of abusing them. Columbus was often at odds with his fellow Europeans. They preferred to live in their "European" style and treat the natives as slaves. These Europeans were often high ranking. They would use their position to report vitriol against Columbus, even sending him back to Spain in chains at the end of one voyage. Columbus even had concerns with the religious leaders. He wanted to make sure that the natives could be instructed in the teachings of Christ before they would be baptized.
The "Indians" that were encountered were not a single entity. There were different groups. Some shared common customs and got along well with each others. Others were not so friendly. Some of the Carib Indians had customs that were seen as especially barbaric, such as cannibalism and sodomy. It became a question of how best to punish them. Some were brought back as slaves. (Slavery of non Christians was commonly accepted at the time.) Other friendly Indians were also brought back to Europe.
Columbus died still thinking he found Asia, not a new continent. He had a special love for Santo Domingo, yet was upset with the poor behavior of those sent to rule there. Each generation has tried to make Columbus in their own image. As scientific rationality took hold, the "science" of this voyage took the forefront, with the religious point of view brushed aside. In today's anti-racist climate, the poor behavior of his crews and later followers have led people to accuse Columbus of genocide, mass murder and slavery. Alas, this all tries to simplify a complex man and put him in mold of the current day. Even the primary sources we can find can be somewhat misleading. (Columbus had plenty of enemies who loved to exaggerate or make up horrible claims.) The irony of those spewing negativity is that Columbus was one of the more liberal, peaceful men of his days. He had much greater respect for the "Indians" and their land than did the typical European sailor.
Sunday, December 06, 2020
The Courage of Hopelessness: A Year of Acting Dangerously
He is a strong leftist, yet finds good things to say about the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Clinton would have just continued the corporatist politics as usual. Trump spoke out in a vulgar fashion and aligned himself with "the people". He had much more in common with Sanders in his disovowel of the "ruling class". Alas, in 2020, Biden was brought back in to succeed where Clinton didn't. His election was possible in part by the voters that "settled for Biden" in hopes of getting Trump out. However, Trump still came close. There is a demand for more all out reform. Alas, it may take more time.
The refugee crisis in Europe has some additional clashes of civilizations. On one hand, these are underprivileged minorities. On the other hand, they tend to have conservative Muslim values that are at odds with those in Europe. How does one react?
Why does capitalism always seem to win out? Even so called communist states like China end up creating a highly effective capitalist machine. How do we go about effecting system-wide changes?
The Brain: The Story of You
Thursday, December 03, 2020
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
He describes the "1%" as the ruling class of the United States. These are the people that are in political and corporate power. They are also those with lots of money that can make donations to political campaigns. While "legal", these contributions are viewed as a form of bribery. The institutions of the state (such as police, laws, courts, etc.) are set up to provide benefit to the 1%. Foreclosures are an example of the apparatus of the state being used to support the 1% against "the 99%". The current system of laws and regulations is so vast that it is impossible to enforce everything. The result is a selective enforcement. The protestors were hit with citations for crimes that were rarely charged. There is almost always "something" illegal that is being performed by somebody. It is up to those in authority to pick and choose what is enforced. This allows for fully "legal" discrimination on those that are out of favor. This also extends out of the state to unions and other organizations. (A bus-drivers union can cause a massive slow down simply by "working to the rule".)
The occupy movement did not have a leadership structure and used consensus to make decisions. Consensus ensures that everybody has a voice and nobody is forced to go along with something they do not believe in. Alas, it does not scale. He does give examples of reducing consensus decisions to those that are important to the body as a whole. (Universal agreement is not needed for designing a logo.) A consensus society would be an ideal. However, implementing it would be close to impossible. Some of the pre-Columbian societies in the Americas may have had the anarchic structure. However, they were also easily destroyed by the hierarchical Europeans.
The author advocates "real" democracy. He criticizes voting as just a means to promulgate the leadership by the elite. The masses are given a small choice between a few elites as a means of keeping them subjugated. There is rarely a choice between vastly different systems. The left can't understand how working class voters chose Republicans, seemingly against their own self interest. However, the voters realize that the Democrats are merely throwing them a few bones. There is little significant difference between the two parties. The constitution specifically did not have direct democracy, but merely a system of elected officials.
Full democracy is common in protest movements, but has rarely succeeded on a large scale. Pirate crews would often implement a democratic structure - after they had mutinied against their original ship leadership. Small communes have also had varying degrees of success with full democratic organization. On a large scale, there are just too many people and too many decisions to maintain direct democracy. These problems eventually led to the downfall of the occupy movement.
The Long Ships
The protagonists of the main religions of the day. A Jew helps lead them to a a great deal of plunder. However, they later fall victim to a Muslim leader who enslaves them. They take what happens. One viking is able to pick up the language. The vikings fight valiantly for their Islamic leader, adopt his religion and save his life. Eventually, the time arises for them to escape and they commandeer a ship to return home.
Back home, there are bouts of armed combat to resolve issues (often leading to the death of the loser.) Christianity has come to Scandinavia and many vikings convert. They often take a practical view to the religion. In Iberia, they convert to Islam as that god seems strong there. Later they convert to Christianity to restore their luck. Sometimes there are bits of confusion with the different religions. The strong loyalty to family and one's word is often the predominant factor in guiding their life decisions regardless of the current religion.
The book is episodic, with many of the sections easily standing alone. The style seems to have been an inspiration for the Brotherband books by John Flanagan
Wednesday, December 02, 2020
The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
The Joy of x starts simple and takes nothing for granted. An example from Sesame Street calling for "fish fish fish" begins the introduction into numbers and counting. Subtraction begat the need for negative numbers. Square roots gave us the need for imaginary and complex numbers. Parabolas and other conic shapes have the ability to concentrate and amplify due to their structure. Geometry, calculus and algebra all help us explain real world phenomena.
"School math" often focuses on isolated equations or contrived story problem. Connecting it to the real world does a good job of making things alive. There are always the assumptions in word problems that we are asked to take to solve them. In high school, wind resistance always drove me crazy. Riding my bicycle, I knew that the wind and hills made a huge difference in speed and effort. Yet, all word problems seems to assume that all travel was done in a flat vacuum. The math to account for those details was "too complex" for the moment, but important for the real world. Even acknowledging those factors helps increase the "joy" in math.