Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert

Humans of gone to great effort to engineer nature to their designs. While this has often worked well in the short term, the long term is quite a different story. There are many cases of plants or animals that were introduced to help with a local issue, only to have caused even greater issues. People have also built many structures to combat one problem only to have another problem surface. The water control structures in Louisiana have helped prevent floods (when they work). Yet, the floods are what deposited sediment to keep the land.

After discussing the many unintended consequences of engineering the planet, the book pivots to climate change. We have spewed so much carbon into the atmosphere that we are impacting the climate. By some accounts, even if we stop all carbon emissions we are still on a bad path. That leaves reducing carbon in the air as a potential solution. How could that go wrong? The book first explores various carbon sequestering schemes in a positive light. Then puts on the cautious hat. Humanity does not have a good record looking at all the long-term consequences and impacts of the big projects. Alas, we are still continuing down the route. Will switching to electric cars really make a difference when the freeways themselves are impacting ecosystems? Could carbon captures just encourage more bad behavior? Or will it lead to a negative feedback loop in the other direction? Climate change does not have easy solutions.

The Very Nice Box

The "very nice box" is just that. It is a box that has all the details that make it useful. The protagonist works for a big design company and his spent almost all of her time engineering the box. She obsesses over the details and has her specific order of doing things.

We learn that she had come back from tragedy. She was a passenger in a car with her parents and her soon-to-be-fiance girlfriend. They crashed in a hit and run and she was the only one to survive. She sometimes has flashbacks and has trouble moving on.

One day, her boss retires and a super positive buzz-wordy Wharton graduate comes in to take his place. While she has her own obsessions with millennial tech startup life, she cringes at all his corporate positivism. However, she eventually falls in love with him. There relationship is an open secret and he ends up getting pushed to another office in Ohio. Meanwhile, people are protesting the new tower that the company is building.

The guy is part of "good guys" which is an organization that encourages men to be positive - but seems more like an excuse to justify bad behavior in positivity. She later learns that the guy has been dishing her all sorts of lies and that he is in fact the drunk driver that hit her. They end up in the factory where he conveniently gets locked away in a very nice box.

I found my loyalties shifting back and forth. There was sympathy for the corporate types. Then sympathy for the protestors. Then sympathy for the "millennial tech marketing bros" then sympathy for the engineers. In the end, everyone had their own good and bad. Nothing was absolute. Even in relationships, the lesbian main character ends up in an intense relationship with a guy. People were doing lots of evil to each other, and justifying it with some "higher rationale". The novel is almost grounded in plausibility, but clearly takes a step "out there" to be surreal. I really liked it at first, but was disappointed with the the rapid shifts at the ending.

Fangirl: A novel

Fangirl follows Cath, an introverted uber fan of Simon Snow (a Harry Potter-like fantasy series.) She is also one of the most popular fan-fiction authors, with a large following for her series. She grew up with her extroverted identical twin sister and bipolar father in Omaha, Nebraska. (Their mother left them when they were in elementary school.) The story follows her in her first year of college at University of Nebraska. She tries to avoid people, yet has a super outgoing roommate that forces the issue. Her roommates's hometown boyfriend, Levi hangs out there a lot and is super friendly towards Cath. Her twin sister Ren also goes to school there, but seems to spend most of her time partying. Cath is taking a writing class where she excels. She partners with Nick to do a lot of writing. She has almost all As. Then her world starts to turn upside down. Her writing teacher gave her an F on an assignment because she turned in a fan fiction story in the Simon Snow universe. She gradually does more stuff with Levi and helps read Outsiders to him. (He has a reading disability.) They kiss. Then she goes to a party and sees him kissing somebody else. Her father suffers from an episode and is hospitalized. Nick decides to turn their story in as his. She hardly talks to her sister. Even her mom tries to reappear in their life. She goes home and decides not to go back to school. However, she is convinced to go back and things end up happily ever after. (She talks to mom. Her sister is hospitalized for drinking, is forced to go sober. The novel then has a whirlwind end. Cath gets back together with Levi, re-ups for next year with her roommate, reconciles with her sister, shames Nick, and finishes her writing. It seems that the author just ran out of steam and tied everything up. The ending destroys the book. Cath's heartless rejection of Nick's proposed co-writing credit invalidates much of her growth. The hook-up with Levi was telegraphed from the first time they met, so it had to happen. However, it would be nice to see some more growth in his character. The book had potential, but did not quite deliver.