Recent Readings
The last few books I’ve read:
Leonard Mlodinow: The Drunkard’s Walk
This non-fiction talks about some of the ways probabilities are often very different from expectations when it comes to various kinds of randomness, and some of the reasons for it. It talks about the origins of mathematical probability theory, and several common cognitive biases such as the Gambler’s Fallacy. It also explains some very unintuitive statistical effects such as regression to the mean, which have caused some famous screwups in the past.
This is a very approachable book and a fun read if you’re interested in such issues.
Tony Rothman: The World is Round
A surprisingly refreshing take on the Big Dumb Object genre, and one I surprisingly only learned of recently. When starting into this book it felt like it was going to be a bit muddy, but it developed pretty quickly and coherently, mostly making sense all the way through. The big reveal turned out to be pretty much what I expected, but with an additional surprise that I think could have just as well been left out.
It does do a good job capturing the size of the featured world and the difficulties of living in an extreme and variable environment. Quite enjoyed this one in the end.
Charles Stross: The Rhesus Chart
It’s been a long time since I read any Laundry novels. One of the previous ones I read kind of put me off as I found it a bit tedious. But I knew I’d have to give the series another chance, and this entry, while not completely redeeming the series, at least will have me trying the next one as well.
I was also kind of put off at first when I learned that vampires were the big bad for this story, because that’s boring, but it ended up being a decent adventure after all.
I think the main issue I’m having with this series lately is Stross’s heavy-handed attempts to load it down with programmer, sysadmin, pop culture and general nerd jokes. Those are the humor of my people, and I employ them all the time myself, but maybe because of that it’s very predictable and overly constant to me.
John McLoughlin: Toolmaker Koan
An interesting an unusual first contact novel that manages to avoid most of the cringe common to that type of story. I only cringed a little bit.
Unfortunately I fully predicted the big surprise backstory bit shortly after the nature of the aliens was revealed. Despite that there was good adventure and the climax and resolution had surprises.
Not bad; I don’t regret reading it, but also not a book I’ll re-read.
Zombie disease is (almost) real
It just occurred to me that classic film zombie behavior is actually what humans would do if rabies affected us the way it affects other animals.
In humans, untreated rabies just causes a nasty and painful death. In susceptible animals, it lowers fear and raises aggression, causing the animal to see any other animal as a mortal enemy to be killed at all cost – thus spreading the disease further.
Why didn’t I realize this sooner? The modern virus-like version of zombism is not that far-fetched at all, and could easily be imagined as a mutated rabies virus. I wonder if part of the popularity of zombie stories comes from the unconscious realization that this is a real-world behavior.
Of course, wild outbreaks of super-rabies are still a stretch of the imagination, as we’re pretty good at controlling the spread of even incurable diseases these days.
Obligatory Post Too
It has come to my attention that today is the tenth anniversary of when those unpleasant terra-ist people flew those planes into those buildings and killed a bunch of Americans.
Like every other blogger in the world, for some reason I think this calls for a comment.
My comment is: Get over it already.
I don’t disrespect the people who died in that unfortunate incident, nor to I belittle the heroic work done by rescue workers, cleanup crews and hosts around the world in the days immediately following.
But to focus on those 3,000 deaths is to disrespect and belittle some much more serious problems. A casual survey shows that motor vehicle accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, influenza and diabetes each kill more than ten times as many Americans every year, and cardiovascular diseases kill more than three hundred times as many Americans every year. And that’s just American figures, not worldwide. These are real tragedies, going on around us all the time. Somebody do something, please!
Don’t pretend that 9/11 was such a big deal because it was shocking. It’s no surprise that a lot of people hate America, and many of them have good reasons for doing so. It is a little surprising that they actually succeeded in crashing not one but two of those planes. It doesn’t seem like a hard problem to prevent that, and it doesn’t require any of the ineffectual and invasive crap that has been going on in airports over the last ten years.
The American response to the terrorist attack ten years ago was wrong, and I said so at the time. Instead of saying, “Fuck you, you don’t scare us”, y’all just scurried away and hid under your security theater and foreign military meddling covers. You let Bush hand the terrorists their victory on a silver platter, and that victory was that their terrorist act worked. You got all scared and voluntarily sacrificed your own freedoms – the very things that once made your country great – for a thin illusion of security. It would have been inspiring and admirable if instead you had deliberately and explicitly rejected any responses that would have curtailed the rights and freedoms of Americans.
Anyway, I’m tired and rambling on. Instead of digging myself in deeper, what these people said.
Maps
For some reason the maps at the bottom of my posts often don’t show up right the first time. A page reload usually fixes it. Will investigate when I get a chance.
