Overview

Reading Log For 2001

BLACK NOTICE (1999)

Patricia Cornwell

Paperback

2000.12.29 – 2001.1.13

Maybe this would have made more sense if I’d read the rest of the series.
Kay Scarpetta: Head coroner of Virginia.
Benton Wesley: Recently killed by Carrie Grethen.
Lucy Farinelli: Kay’s neice in the A.T.F.
Jo Sanders: Lucy’s partner (in more ways than one).
Senator Frank Lord
Pete Marino: Richmond Police Captain.
Jack Fielding: Kay’s assistant.
Rose: Kay’s secretary. Am I the only one that thinks that it’s inappropriate for Kay to ask her secretary (paid from taxdollars) to do her personal chores.
Detective Rene Anderson
Department Chief Diane Bray: She is attractive and manipulative. You can read in here some of Patricia Cornwell’s resentment of women who succeed by their looks.
The plot involves a body found on the ship Sirius from Antwerp, Belgium. On the body was the writing, “Bon voyage, le loup-garou” = “werewolf”.
Police codes:

10-2 Weak signal
10-7 Out of service
10-10 Negative
10-22 Disregard

107: The title refers to the Interpol code for an unidentified body.
188 - 189: Rhetoric about how crime is so bad these days.
193: More pop psychology about how stuttering leads to tattoos.
320: Thomas Chandonne
322: The worst line in the book:

“in the Chandonne family, you call it suicide.”

359: Hypertrichosis = the growth of hair all over one’s body.

SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON (2000)

Orson Scott Card

Hardcover

TOR, New York

2001.1.15 – 2001.1.18

The children from Battle School had sat out the “League War”.
Petra and several others are kidnapped by Russia.
42: Petra is met by fellow captive Dink Meeker:

“If the war had been up to adults, there’d be Buggers at every breakfast table in the world by now.”

44: The Polemarch (a Russian according to p. 91) had tried to take over the I.F. and been defeated. Because the I.F. prevents nuclear strikes, this war will be fought conventionally.
45: Petra hides a message in a dragon picture that becomes a popular email signature:

Share this dragon.
If you do,
lucky end for
them and you.

64: Petra thinks about JFK:

who lost his PT boat through carelessness and got a medal for it because his father had money and political pull, and then became President and made and unbroken string of stupid moves that never hurt him much politically because the press loved him so much.

68: In Battle School, they had to test that Petra was really a girl.
90: The contents of the message.
79: One of those stupid vids where the hero can’t actually kill the bad guy who isn’t actually pointing a gun at him at that very moment.
79: Not a single assassin was liked by history (except maybe Brutus).
80: Sister Carlotta doesn’t want Bean to go to Hell because of his amorality. Bean points out that her ideas are not official doctrine.
86: The message was 2-byte text code.
97: The French pronunciation of Achilles is ah-SHEEL.
109: Vlad had broken like Petra.
116: Petra is “rescued” by a psychiatrist.:

“I knew you were stupid, because you became a talk-therapy shrink, which is like being a minister of a religion in which you get to be God.”

139:

“Abandon lunch, all ye who enter here.”

147: Ender’s parents were smart, but their religion(s) influenced them to have 3 kids, so they didn’t want to have professional careers that could be taken away. They aren’t so clueless after all. Shouldn’t that change the whole motif of their family’s relationship?
178: Peter finds out that they knew about his secret writing career all along.
184: Bean leaves messages about women loved by military leaders: Guinevere, Josephine, Roxane, Barsine, and signs them as their nemesis: Mordred, Hector, Wellington, Cassander.
Bean works with Suriyawong in Thailand.
India uses poor strategy, because China is planning to sweep in and take over.
Achilles flatters the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
221: They’ve done without a Strategos since the League War. The Hegemon names a Polemarch.
Virlomi leaves Hyderabad to look for Bean.
279: Sister Carlotta’s plane is shot down. She has a message sent to Bean.
299: When China invaded Taiwan, they destroyed the ruling class by denying education.
323: Sayagi says:

“We must declare victory and withdraw.”

326: Achilles kills Sayagi. He had subscribed to the philosophy of Satyagraha.

HAGAKURE

The Book Of The Samurai (1716)

Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Translated from the Japanese by William Scott Wilson

Paperback

Kodansha International, Tokyo

2001.1.18 – 2001.1.28

This is the translation used in the film Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai.
The title translates as “In The Shadow of Leaves”.
An interesting review at amazon.com makes the point that this was written as a romanticized version of a bygone era by a person who probably never saw war or bloodshed.
22: How to keep from yawning and sneezing.
22 - 23: On keeping certain information about the economy from the common people.
23:

Once when Lord Mitsushige was a little boy and was supposed to recite from the copybook for the priest Kaion, he called the other children and acolytes and said, “Please come here and listen. It’s difficult to read if there are hardly any people listening.” The priest was impressed and said to the acolytes, “That’s the spirit in which to do everything.”

Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige’s wall there was this one: “Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.” Master Ittei commented, “Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.”

29: While a council was deciding whether to promote a man who had been involved in a drunken brawl, someone recommended his promotion with:

“I can guarantee him by the fact that he is a man who has erred once. A man who has never once erred is dangerous.” This said, the man was promoted.

29 - 30: He chastises Lord Asano’s 47 ronin for the long delay in their attack on Lord Kira! What if he had died of natural causes in the interim?
37:

For the most part, we admire our own opinions and become fond of arguing.

Last year at a great conference there was a certain man who explained his dissenting opinion and said that he was resolved to kill the conference leader if it was not accepted. His motion was passed. After the procedures were over the man said, “Their assent came quickly. I think that they are too weak and unreliable to be counselors to the master.”

38: On being resolved from the beginning to get wet during a rainshower.
38:

In China there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. His deep affection for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. It is said that he died of fright. He was probably a man who always spoke in big words but acted differently when facing the real thing.

41: While some believe the arts help a samurai, the Nabeshima clan believe the arts bring ruin to the body. Musashi Miyamoto wrote that the arts help a samurai become more well-rounded.
41 - 42:

according to what the priest Ryozan heard when he was in the Kamigata area, when one is writing a letter, he should think that the recipient will make it into a hanging scroll.

You cannot tell whether a person is good or bad by his vicissitudes in life. Good and bad fortune are matters of fate. Good and bad actions are Man’s Way. Retribution of good and evil is taught simply as a moral lesson.

Because of some business, Morooka Hikoemon was called upon to swear before the gods concerning the truth of a certain matter. But he said, “A samurai’s word is harder than metal. Since I have impressed this fact upon myself, what more can the gods and Buddhas do?” and the swearing was canceled. This happened when he was twenty-six.

43 - 44:

Master Ittei said, “Whatever one prays for will be granted. Long ago there were no matsutake mushrooms in our province. Some men who saw them in the Kamigata area prayed that they might grow here, and nowadays they are growing all over Kitayama. In the future I would like to have Japanese cypress grow in our province. As this is something that everyone desires, I predict it for the future. This being so, everyone should pray for it.”

44: Strange occurrences like eclipses will happen every so often and are just as much of a mystery as the sun rising and setting. The author was the original skeptic.
47: Make decisions within the space of seven breaths.
49:

Money is something that one can borrow from people, but a good man cannot suddenly come by. One should sustain a man kindly and well from the first.

It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. Therefore, it is inconsistent to hear something called the Way of Confucius or the way of the Buddha, and say that this is the Way of the Samurai. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all Ways and be more and more in accord with his own.

When one has made a decision to kill a person, even if it will be very difficult to succeed by advancing straight ahead, it will not do to think about going at it in a long roundabout way.

It is said that much sake, self-pride and luxury are to be avoided by a samurai. There is no cause for anxiety when you are unhappy, but when you become a little elated, these three things become dangerous. Look at the human condition. It is unseemly for a person to become prideful and extravagant when things are going well. Therefore, it is better to have some unhappiness while one is still young, for if a person does not experience some bitterness, his disposition will not settle down. A person who becomes fatigued when unhappy is useless.

66: Mentions The Three Universal Virtues of Confucianism:

If one were to say in a word what the condition of being a samurai is, its basis lies first in seriously devoting one’s body and soul to his master. And if one is asked what to do beyond this, it would be to fit oneself inwardly with intelligence, humanity and courage.

67: Folk remedies involving cloves and horse manure.
68: “The spirit of an age” It is interesting to contrast this statement where he waxes nostalgic about days gone by with the following statement where he is more accepting of the faults in historical figures.
69:

The brave men of old times were for the most part rowdies. As they were of the disposition to be out running amuck, their vitality was strong and they were brave. When I had doubts about this and asked, Tsunetomo said, “It is understandable that since their vitality was strong they were generally rough and went running amuck. These days rowdiness is nonexistent because a man’s vitality has weakened. Vitality has fallen behind, but man’s character has improved. Valor is yet a different thing. Although men have become gentle these days because of the lack of vitality, this does not mean that they are inferior in being crazy to die. That has nothing to do with vitality.”

71: On the tiered disposable lunchbox:

The end is important in all things.

Even if one’s head were to be suddenly cut off, he should be able to do one more action with certainty.

At a glance, every individual’s own measure of dignity is manifested just as it is. There is dignity in personal appearance. There is dignity in a calm aspect. There is dignity in a paucity of words. There is dignity in flawlessness of manners. There is dignity in solemn behavior. And there is dignity in deep insight and a clear perspective.

These are all reflected on the surface. But in the end, there foundation is simplicity of thought and tautness of spirit.

113: Long ago, Yamamoto Jin’emon encouraged his retainers to misbehave, believing that a man who was “correct” would never do great works. And:

Men like Sagara Kyuma also excused retainers who had committed theft and adultery and trained them gradually. He said, “If it weren’t for such persons, we would have no useful men at all.”

114:

Ikuno Oribe said, “If a retainer will just think about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will be able to do anything. If it is a single day’s work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day.”

146:

According to what one of the elders said, taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird. Even though it enters into the midst of a thousand of them, it gives no attention to any bird other than the one that it has first marked.

Moreover, what is called a tezuke no kubi is a head that one has taken after having made the declaration, “I will take that warrior wearing such and such armor.”

164:

Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.

169: Last writing in “Late Night Idle Talk”:

How can one human being be inferior to another? In all matters of discipline, one will be useless unless he has great pride. Unless one is determined to move the clan by himself, all his discipline will come to naught. Although, like a tea kettle, it is easy for one’s enthusiasm to cool, there is a way to keep this from happening. My own vows are the following:

Never to be outdone in the Way of the Samurai.

To be of good use to the master.

To be filial to my parents.

To manifest great compassion, and to act for the sake of Man.

If one dedicates these four vows to the gods and Buddhas every morning, he will have the strength of two men and will never slip backward. One must edge forward like the inchworm, bit by bit. The gods and Buddhas, too, first started with a vow.

THE PRETTY GOOD JIM’S JOURNAL TREASURY (1999)

by Jim (a.k.a. Scott Dikkers)

Paperback

Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City

2001.3.29 – 2001.3.30

It was okay.
After reading the whole thing, I’m beginning to feel like a grown up.
The author was attempting anti-humor, similar to Andy Kaufman.
The author claims to have never read Camus before writing Jim’s Journal. Rather, he claims to have been influenced by Taoists.
Favorites include:

131:

It struck me what a tough, cutthroat place the copy store really is.

296: Girls had never been in a copy shop before.
310: What Ruth would look like with Jennifer Aniston hair.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (1980)

Frank W. Abagnale

With Stan Redding

Paperback (pre-movie edition)

Broadway Books, New York

Read entirely on 2001.3.31
post-movie edition:

Yes, I read this way before I heard about the movie, mostly because of entries on the Urban Legends web page (www.snopes.com). Some of the more amazing exploits were left out of the movie. When interviewed about the movie, Abagnale tends to say that Redding may have exaggerated somewhat.
Pilots get respect, women, and free rides, so Frank impersonated one.
He impersonated a doctor for several months. Luckily, he never had to actually practice medicine.
64: Planes flying West maintain even-numbered altitudes, while those flying East are at odd numbers.
157: After passing hundreds of bad PanAm checks, he finally gets a real one to copy from.
180: He dresses up as a security guard, so people hand him their bank deposits at the end of the day.
200: He recruits a “crew” of 8 students who want to be stewardesses and travels Europe.
I had no idea what a nightmare French prisons were.

BABYLON 5: The Passing Of The Techno-Mages

Book I: CASTING SHADOWS (2001)

Jeanne Cavelos

Paperback

Del Rey, New York

2001.4.5 – 2001.4.21

Elric, Galen’s teacher, is a member of The Circle.
181: The origin of Morden. He was born on 25 May, 2223 in Summit, New Jersey. His daughter Sarah was born in October 2250. She died with his wife in May 2256. The Io jumpgate had been destroyed in a terrorist bombing.
Galen only knew Isabelle for a few days, much shorter than he implied in the T.V. series Crusade. Maybe his memory is faulty.

HORNET’S NEST

The Experiences Of One Of The Navy’s First Female Fighter Pilots (1999)

Missy Cummings

Paperback

Writer’s Showcase, San Jose

2001.4.21 – 2001.5.5

31: Typical callsigns:

“Charlie” Brown
“Roller” Rink
“Notso” Bright
“Magellan”
“Chunks”
Cuny “Lingus”
“Master” Bates
“Jeeter” Bush

I never knew a woman pilot that was offended by these; we thought they were hysterical as well.

Her first callsign was “Medusa”, later “Shrew”.
158: On October 25, 1994 Lt. Kara Hultgren crashed her F-14 into the Abraham Lincoln. Cummings didn’t appreciate the posting of an article critical of Hultgren: “Did Navy Policy Cost Pilot Her Life?” USA Today, 10 May, 1995, 13A.
213: Cummings was issued SOD’s retroactively. This was her fourth, leading to an FNAEB.
221: Typical incidents from other pilots, including Cowboy ejecting from a perfectly good F/A-18.
She had lots of medical problems including unusual endocrine maladies and a cancer scare.
347: BOGEYS AND BANDITS (1997) by Robert Gandt contains thinly veiled descriptions of “Shrike”.
368: “Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups.” —Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL

The Fate Of Human Societies (1997)

Jared Diamond

Paperback

W.W. Norton & Company

2001.5.5 – 2001.5.20

This book could also have been titled “nuh duh”
21: People with blood types B or O have a greater resistance to small pox.
35 & 96: Note that archeological literature uses “B.C.” for calibrated and “b.c.” for uncalibrated ages. Dates between 1000 and 6000 B.C. are usually a few centuries and 1000 years earlier due to the change in Carbon 14/12 ratio.
47: Regarding megafaunal extinctions in America; they had already survived 22 previous Ice Iges. Therefore, humans must have been the root cause of the extinction.
91: In 1674 B.C. the Hyksos temporarily conquered Egypt because of their superior horsemanship.
123: He uses the British moth example. I bring this up because recently a high school student went on a crusade to correct these myths from science textbooks (unfortunately for Creationist reasons).
125 & 156: Apples were not domesticated until Classical Greek times. So when was the Garden of Eden story written?
157: Analogy to the first line of Anna Kerenina by Tolstoy:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

201:

1 Copy of Gene for for ethnic group Protects against

Sickle Cell Blacks Malaria

Tay-Sachs Ashkenazi Jews Tuberculosis

Cystic Fibrosis Northern Europeans Bacterial Diarrheas

205: The smallpox “Plague of Antonius” killed millions of Romans in A.D. 165 and 180.
209: The myxo virus was introduced to Australia in 1950 to reduce the rabbit population, but the rabbits adapted.
225: Cyrillic alphabet invented by Saint Cyril, a greek missionary to the Slavs in the Ninth Century A.D. The Gothic alphabet came from Bishop Ulfilas, a missionary living with the Visigoths (currently Bulgaria) in the Fourth Century A.D.
227: Semitic letters came from familiar objects: aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, etc.
228: Sequoyah develops the Cherokee alphabet, listed on page 229.
230: Hangul alphabet invented by Korea’s King Sejong in 1446.
243:

Thus, invention is often the mother of necessity, rather than vice versa.

Edison’s phonograph and automobiles did not have markets at first.
249: In A.D. 1340 England’s earl of Derby and earl of Salisbury witnessed Arabs using cannons on Spaniards at Tarifa.
256: Methods of technology transfer:

Huguenots expelled from France bring glass-making abroad.
Islam gets Chinese paper after the battle of Talas River in 751.

279: Romans left Britain between 407 – 411.
296: Robert Burke and William Wills tried to cross Australia. They were saved many times by Aborigines, but ended up starving despite having guns.
419: Hitler was in a traffic accident in 1930. The truck braked just in time.

IMAGINE THERE’S NO HEAVEN

Voices Of Secular Humanism (1997)

Compiled by the editors of Free inquiry: Matt Cherry, Tom Flynn and Timothy Madigan

Paperback

The Council for Secular Humanism, Amherst, NY

2001.5.16 – 2001.5.20

The Night I Saw The Light by Gina Allen

8: She was influenced by The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Godless Hero Of Africa: An Interview With Tai Solarin

Solarin was the founder of the Mayflower School in Nigeria
22: He instructs every student to learn a poem about self-reliance, Invictus by William Ernest Henley:

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeoning of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years,
Finds and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Viruses Of The Mind by Richard Dawkins

30: First paragraph after epigraph:

A beautiful child close to me, six and the apple of her father’s eye, believes that Thomas the Tank Engine really exists. She believes in Father Christmas, and when she grows up her ambition is to be a tooth fairy. She and her schoolfriends believe the solemn word of respected adults that tooth fairies and Father Christmas really exist. This little girl is of an age to believe whatever you tell her. If you tell her about witches changing princes into frogs she will believe you. If you tell her that bad children roast forever in hell she will have nightmares. I have just discovered that without her father’s consent this sweet, trusting, gullible six-year-old is being sent, for weekly instruction, to a Roman Catholic nun. What chance has she?

41: On the day that Dawkins wrote this, the Japanese translator of THE SATANIC VERSES (1988) was found murdered, a week after the Italian translator was nearly killed.
45: Last paragraph:

Many children emerge from the worst that nuns and mullahs can throw at them.
...
Am I unduly alarmist to fear for the soul of my six-year-old innocent?

Do Children Need Religion? An Interview with Martha Fay author of When Do Children Need Religion? (1993)

53: Last line:

You have to raise your child by your own example. You have to do it by constant attention to the issues that religion concerns itself with. If you’re not talking about these things at home, if you’re not answering your children’s questions about the world and the way it works, the mystery, the injustice, nothing else will do that job. There’s no free ride.

Sacred Cow: The Dark Side Of Mother Teresa: An Interview With Christopher Hitchens

He is the author of a book on Mother Teresa with the “sophomoric” title The Missionary Position.

THE ILIAD

And

THE ODYSSEY

Homer

Translated from the Greek by Samuel Butler

Hardcover

Barnes & Noble Books, New York

2001.5.20 – 2001.5.31

This translation was done in 1898.

The Illiad

There were many features of these stories that have entered the popular lexicon (e.g. Trojan Horse), that were not very well spelled out. Part of this is due to starting in medias res.
By Book V, it becomes apparent that this is the original proxy war. Gods are using humans to fight their battles in the same way that the Superpowers used Third-world countries during the Cold War.
The mortality rate of the battles seem quite high. Virtually every spear kills someone. Quite a few people are named only as they are slain.
They offer sacrifices and interpret omens constantly. Favor from the Gods is usually gained by sacrifice, but not always.
130:

And King Agamemnon answered: “Sir, you have reproved my folly justly. I was wrong. I own it.”

Lesbians: the gift that keeps on giving.
136: Achilles:

“Cattle and sheep are to be had for harrying, and a man may but both tripods and horses if he wants them, but when his life has once left him it can neither be bought nor harried back again.”

136 - 137: Achilles’ mother Thetis told him that if he fought, he would die but his name would live forever.
150: Autolycus stole a helmet from Amyntor. Is this the Bruce Campbell character from the Hercules series?
Patroclus dons Achilles’ armor but is killed.
294 - 295: Why is the author suddenly talking about another city?
342 - 343: Achilles’ speech before killing Hector is not the one I remember from Space: Above & Beyond.
After killing Hector, there are contests of skill. The Illiad ends before Troy is sacked.

The Odyssey

412: Zeus has the best line, but it is inconsistent with the rest of the story:

“See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.”

426: Another ironic quote:

“Go home, old man. . . I can read these omens myself much better than you can; birds are always flying about in the sunshine somewhere or other, but they seldom mean anything.”

542: Odysseus is to take an oar to a place where people don’t know what it is. This was also in a tall tale about a seafarer who gets sick of the sea.
624:

“But a man cannot hide away the cravings of a hungry belly; this is an enemy which gives much trouble to men. It is because of this that ships are fitted out to sail the seas, and to make war upon other people.”

680: Even though they offer to make restitutions, Odysseus kills the suitors to Penelope.
708: Yet another elaborate, unnecessary lie; this time to his father.

GOD & THE NEW PHYSICS (1983)

Paul Davies

Paperback

Touchstone, New York

2001.6.3 – 2001.6.8

References Cults of Unreason (1974) by Christopher Evans
21: The Big Bang is supported by the final ratio of Hydrogen to Helium in the universe.
29: During the first billion-billion-billionth of a second, a temperature of a billion billion billion degrees created 1-billion-and-one protons for every billion antiprotons.
53: A low entropy gravitating system is geometrically simpler than in a high entropy state.
92: Argues that we perceive that we perceive, i.e. we know that we know. I can think of instances where my mind was elsewhere during conversations, yet was rattling off facts that I didn’t “know” at the time.
115: Wigner thinks that consciousness actually creates one’s reality. Which might be extrapolated to be thought that God’s thinking creates all reality.
136: LaPlace says that if we know the position and velocity of every particle, we know all the future and past. I haven’t done much to validate this, but I suspect we would also have to know more about forces and accelerations to predict the future. . . to say nothing of the past. We touched on this in college Math. Yet viscosity tends to mess things up.
138: On Determinism:

Ordinary people cannot avert world war or prevent the devastation of a city by the impact of a huge meteor.

But I contend that they can!

THE BORDERLANDS OF SCIENCE

Where Science Meets Nonsense (2001)

Michael Shermer

Hardcover

Oxford University Press, Oxford

2001.6.9 – 2001.6.17

He starts off with a little bit of “fuzzy sets”
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957) by Martin Gardner is THE skeptic classic.
53: H. L. Mencken said in the 1920s “that if you heave an egg out of a Pullman car window anywhere in the United States you are likely to hit a fundamentalist.”
78: A line from the Frankenstein movie (1931) was censored:

“now I know what it feels like to be God.”

92: 60 to 90% of athletic variance is genetic. Per-Olof Astrand said in 1967:

“I am convinced that anyone interested in winning Olympic gold medals must select his or her parents very carefully.”

Shermer dwells a bit too much on the “revolutionary” theory that birth order determines personality.
125: The Vestiges of Creation (1844) published anonymously (by Robert Chambers) was lambasted by critics, and consequently convinced Darwin to tread carefully.
141: Galilee muttered “eppur si muove” = “it moves anyway”
219: Carl Sagan was rejected by the National Academy of Science.
242: Newt Gingrich told the Boston Globe on 20 May, 1995 that there were “long periods of American history where people didn’t get raped, people didn’t get murdered, people weren’t mugged routinely.”
Shermer writes about the Beautiful People Myth, e.g. the Noble Savage.
Writes a lot about Wallace.
297: A good, 1-paragraph summary of zero-sum games, based on THE SELFISH GENE (1976)

FALLING STARS (2001)

Michael Flynn

Hardcover

TOR, New York

2001.6.17 – 2001.6.23

After two of the most boring books ever (ROGUE STAR (1998) & LODESTAR (2000)), we finally have some action!
An economic recession delays spending on altering the asteroid’s course. Mariesa invests her own fortune into Planetary Defense Bonds.
At first, I thought Chapter 6, “Maiden Flight” (p. 112), was too in-depth. But when it was discovered that the cause of the problem was sabotage, it made sense. Flynn certainly knows his orbital mechanics. Some day these novels will be required reading for SSTO pilots.
154: Mysterious deaths and “accidents” for those who stood in the way of the Planetary Defense Committee.
176: A shoestring Lunar colony was established “just in case...”
188: Buckytubes are used to hold Hydrogen in cars, to prevent explosions.
Project Lariat: magnetic sail
Operation Intercept
Project Sabre
Project Redoubt
Coined internet word: “scread” = “scrolled” + “read”
272: DSV Billie Mitchell: Chase, Jacinta, and Flaco.
286: Upon reaching planetary escape velocity:

“Goodbye Ptolemy; hello, Kopernick.”

Other ships sent to intercept: Sikorsky copiloted by Total Meredith; and Jackie Cochran.
331: Engines light at aphelion. But is that really the optimal place?
358: Chase helped Jenny Ribbon run away. She founded the sisterhoods.
387: Cosmic rays could use your eyeballs as a bubble chamber.

THE MIND OF GOD

The Scientific Basis For A Rational World (1992)

Paul Davies

Hardcover

Simon & Schuster, New York

2001.6.28 – 2001.7.2

71: On baby universes: to us it would look like a Black Hole, then it would disappear.
77: Japan’s Kowa Seki independently developed calculus and a procedure for counting p.
133: Omega defined by Gregory Chaitlin as the probability that a computer program will halt if its input is a random string of binary numbers (obviously close to 1).
147: Mathematics is time-dependent. Some things weren’t possible close to the Big Bang. However, this is based on the universe-as-a-computer metaphor, which I don’t like (for example see page 123).
173: Voltaire on Leibniz:

“O Dr. Pangloss! If this is the best of all possible worlds, what must the others be like?”

205: A minor point: look how Oxygen, etc. on earth is suitable for life... No! Oxygen was poisonous to early life!
207: Photons cause magnets. I don’t think so.
Overall, I got the impression that few of his statements were supported by real facts.

MISS WYOMING (1999)

Douglas Coupland

Hardcover

Pantheon Books, New York

2001.7.5 – 2001.7.11

Susan Colgate: Survived a plane crash then disappeared for a year. As a child, her mother moved them to Wyoming where she would have a better chance at winning a state beauty contest.
43:

“guys who don’t want to feel like they’re consorting with hell-bound floozies, who believe that a cozy chat beforehand will absolve them of moral contagion.”

This reminds me of Jack Kerouac chatting with the (very young) prostitute in ON THE ROAD (1957).
133: List of things that would amaze someone 100 years ago.
Ryan: Works at a video store and sells screenplay Tunguska.
Vanessa: Ryan’s girlfriend, who works at RAND. Together, they do various crazy stunts.
243: Vanessa’s origin.
254: MSP: Miss Spell Checker; a computer program used to find individuals base on their mis-spellings.
465: They use clover seeds to spell out messages on the manicured lawn of a corporate headquarters.
498: They intend to put Big Tobacco out of business by getting potatoes infected with the tobacco mosaic virus from Prince Edward Island. If this were possible, Coupland could be setting himself up for a big lawsuit.

THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT

How The Mind Creates Language (1994)

Steven Pinker

Paperback

Perennial Classics, New York

2001.1.30 – 2001.3.24

10: Chomsky is one of the 10 most cited writers in the humanities.
21: Children exposed to pidgin develop creole language.
23: “-ed” may have come from “do”. For example, “he hammer-did”
54: “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax”. It was a Boston WBZ-TV meteorologist who coined the word “snizzling”
61: He cites Coleridge’s story about writing “Kubla Khan” from a drug-induced dream. Which is generally accepted to be a myth!
62: A test in having people read letters at various angles, . The letters seem to “revolve” back upright in people’s minds at a rate of 56 RPM.
73: Children would inevitably Creolize Newspeak from NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR (1948).
78: The longest English sentence was from Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner
131: Some terms from “The New Hacker’s Dictionary”

Ambimoustrous: the ability to use a mouse with either hand.
Barfulous: would make someone barf.
Depediate: cut the “feet” from dot-matrix printouts.
Mumblage: the topic of one’s mumbling.
Pessimal: the opposite of “optimal”

133: Joke: A woman lands at Logan Airport (in Boston) and asks the taxi driver: “Can you take me someplace where I can get scrod?” He answers, “Gee that’s the first time I’ve heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive.”
142: Listime: the smallest unit of a memorized list
155: Oronyms

The good can decay many ways.
The god candy come anyways.

163: A certain order for vowels. For example, “fiddle-faddle” not “faddle-fiddle”
171: Where to put the “f—ing”
186: All modern phonetic alphabets appear to be descended from a system invented by the Canaanites around 1700 B.C.
210: Ambiguous newspaper headlines and test such as “No one was injured in the blast, which was attributed to the buildup of gas by one town official.” Somehow, I don’t think these are unintentional.
216 - 217: Sample legal contract. I’ve always maintained that legal ambiguities are put in place purposely to keep lawyers and judges occupied. If you wanted clarity, you would have engineers write laws. In my experience, technical reports which can be matters of life-and-death are NEVER ambiguous.
234: “...no language forms questions by reversing the order of words within a sentence...” This is flat-out wrong. German does exactly that: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” vs. “Bin ich ein Berliner?”
246: “a whole nother thing” This is one of my pet peeves (though I say it enough myself). It should be “another whole thing”. I’ve even seen it written wrong!
255: The Kurgans (Highlander, anyone?) were the first to use horses for the military around 3500 B.C.
255 - 256: Breakdown of of Indo-European language families.
301: Natural selection is faced with a trade-off between benefiting youth or old age. “This asymmetry is rooted in the inherent asymmetry of death.” Further:

The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age is the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

302 - 303: Again, the media exaggerate the “grammar gene”
328 - 329: He says the crux of the “grammar gene” is that genes make proteins. But the 1-gene, 1-protein idea has recently been found to be incorrect. The human genome contains far fewer genes than expected.
335 - 336: Identical twin studies. Again, this is NOT credible.
336: There are 50,000 genes including one for sneezing in elevators. Not anymore.
346: Chimps didn’t really learn any true ASL (American Sign Language) signs.
369: Biologist J. B. S. Haldane said that are two reasons why humans do not turn into angels: Moral imperfection and a body plan that cannot accommodate both arms and wings.
387: “Shibboleth” This was an episode of The West Wing.
399 - 400: Richard Lederer rants that “English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.” Includes discussion of “head over heels”, etc. (mentioned in CONTACT (1985))

BABYLON 5: The Passing Of The Techno-Mages

Book II: SUMMONING LIGHT (2001)

Jeanne Cavelos

Paperback

2001.7.29 – 2001.8.4

First complaint: why does EVERY shadow vessel need to be piloted by Anna Sheridan?
As explained in the book, virtually everything from the episode from which Technomages was drawn was an illusion. In addition, there were critical scenes left out of the episode which completely change its character. For example, we lose the mystique of Elric by knowing that he was weak and had migraines. Having the novelization completely contradict the TV show puts the cart before the horse.
The evacuation plan obviously wasn’t very good if dozens of technomages had to die.

IF CHINS COULD KILL

Confessions Of A B Movie Actor (2001)

Bruce Campbell

Hardcover

Autographed with “COME GET SOME!”

LA Weekly Books, New York

2001.9.16 – 2001.9.18

Includes his personal history and some of his philosophies.
Includes portions of his essays from his web site, www.bruce-campbell.com. However, I was disappointed that the essay about the fox did not include the “fuzzy little testies” comment.
The difficult process of raising money.
Creative control is very important.
196: Elaborate practical joke about a used car.

BLIND MAN’S BLUFF

The Untold Story Of American Submarine Espionage (1999)

Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew

Paperback

Perennial, New York

2001.7.14 – 2001.9.14

29: An invitation to a Naval Intelligence function read that they were engaging in the world’s “second-oldest profession”, one with “fewer morals than the first”.
39: Aboard the Gudgeon, Doc Huntley waved a .45 saying it was his job to shoot “spooks” if the Soviets tried to board.

“You could take a green pill, or I could shoot you.”

41: Gudgeon surfaces due to a Soviet patrol. The signalman translates to the crew, “Thanks for the ASW exercise”.
63: In January 1966, a B-52 collided with an air tanker off the coast of Palomares, Spain, and lost an H-bomb.
58: Halibut was converted into a deep sea recovery and reconnaissance submarine.
71: Describing Captain James F. Bradley, Jr.’s office in the E Ring on the fifth floor of the Pentagon:

Three sets of locked doors barred trespassers. Guarding the entrance was a receptionist armed with a well-practiced look of confusion and a standard answer to unwanted inquiries.

88: Halibut takes photos of a sunken Soviet Golf sub including a body.
90: CIA + AF = NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). CIA + Navy = NURO (National Underwater Reconnaissance Office).
91: John Craven and Bradley try to convince the CIA that recovering a submarine won’t work.
96: 27 May, 1968: USS Scorpion (SSN-589) is lost with 99 men. A WWII submarine by the same name vanished without a trace.
109: Standard procedure for a “hot run” torpedo is “right full rudder”.
149: 9 Oct., 1969: The New York Times reports “New Soviet Subs Noisier Than Expected”
150: Lapon followed a Soviet Yankee for 47 days.
152: At least twice, the U.S. went on nuclear alert when Yankee subs opened their doors.
159: Sealing a flooding compartment without looking through the porthole to see who would drown, as he was trained.
Operation “Ivy Bells” was the bold program to tap a Soviet underwater cable in the Sea of Okhotsk.
194: On shore, after a particularly dangerous mission, the crew (fueled by alcohol) almost mutinies. Aux. Chief John White “de-volunteers”. Despite being one year shy of 20 years, he is given full retirement benefits.
196: Halibut hits the bottom.
198: Bradley, who came up the idea for “Ivy Bells”, did not have a “need to know” to listen to the tapes.
202: Journalist Seymour Hersh (who broke the My Lai Massacre story) learns of “Project Jennifer” to raise a Soviet submarine with a ship built by Howard Hughes. Colby convinces him and several other reporters to hold off reporting.
210: The operation was a failure, and $500 million literally sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
211: Khruschev’s memoirs say he feigned outrage and canceled a summit in 1960 when Eisenhower admitted the existence of U-2 overflights.
215 - 216: The Senate Church committee investigates CIA. In the House, Pike (D-NY) wanted to investigate spying.
217: At the hearing, Colby has Secret-Service-looking types sweep the room to add drama.
231: New Soviet tactics imply a leak.
238: Self-destruct charges were required on cable-tapping subs.
241: Reagan’s Navy Secretary, John F. Lehman, Jr., gains a reputation of l’enfant terrible.
244: While filming the movie Hellcats of the Navy, Reagan almost destroyed a real submarine by giving fictional orders over the intercom.
248 - 249: Seawolf takes on sand and is mired for two days.
263: 8 March, 1983: Reagan outpreaches the preachers at the National Association of Evangelicals. This was the “Evil Empire” speech, given two weeks before his famous “Star Wars” speech (see WAY OUT THERE IN THE BLUE (2000)).
271: Spy #1 was John A. Walker, Jr., a retired submarine communication specialist.
272: Walker also recruited his son. His ex-wife turned him in before he recruited his daughter.
274: Spy #2 was Ronald W. Pelton, formerly of the NSA. He was arrested on 25 November, 1985, yet was suspected three years earlier.
275: Seawolf was sent to tap a Libyan underwater cable in the Mediterranean.
284: “Doveryai, no proveryai” = “Trust, but verify”
289: It was General Powell who said that the military budget would have to be cut by 25% at the end of the Cold War. Neo-conservatives like to blame this on Clinton.
292: SEALs were on standby in the Mediterranean in 1989 in case of a hostage incident.
384: Alvin B. Wilderman, captain of the USS Plunger, was killed when passing under the Golden Gate bridge in 1973.

THE BIBLE UNEARTHED

Archaeology’s New Vision Of Ancient Israel And The Origin Of Its Sacred Texts (2001)

Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman

Hardcover

The Free Press, New York

2001.10.8– 2001.10.14

3: Putting things into perspective:

How tiny their royal city [Jerusalem] would have appeared to a modern observer!

5: Their main thesis is that the Bible was compiled in Jerusalem in the Seventh Century BCE.
12: Richard Elliott Friedman wrote Who Wrote The Bible?
13: The “Book of Law” was “discovered” by the high priest Hilkiah in 622 BCE (2 Kings 22:8 - 23:24) (as mentioned in THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD (1996))
35: A direct reading puts Abraham leaving Canaan in 622 BCE.
Moses & Aaron are 4^th generation descendants of Levi while Joshua was a 12^th generation descendent of Joseph.
37: Camels were not widely used in the ancient Near East until after 1000 BCE. They are mentioned in Genesis 37:25.
“Gum, balm, and myrrh” were traded in the 8^th and 7^th Centuries BCE.
39: The story of Jacob’s marriage with Leah and Rachel is a metaphor for Aram and Israel.
According to their stories, the Hebrew’s neighbors to the East are the product of incest.
40: The story of Jacob and Esau was a reference to Edom.
43: Abraham’s connection to Jerusalem would be like Pre-Columbian history taking place in Manhattan or D.C.
44: Israel was liquidated by the Assyrians in 720 BCE.
55: The Hyksos, who ruled the Hebrews, were in fact Canaanites.
83: The end of the 13^th Century was climactic.
85: Egyptians and Hittites clashed at Kadesh; both sides claimed victory.
91: Legends of landmarks include the phrase “to this very day”, but when was that written?
94: Josiah’s coronation in 639 BCE.
125: Samuel warns of monarchy in a rant (I Samuel 8:10 - 18).
128 - 129: David and Solomon are not mentioned in Egyptian or Mesopotanian texts, except for one artifact that mentions the “House of David”.
158: The Northern state, Israel, was “fully-developed” by 900 BCE.
159: Israel became a power in the region when confronting Assyrian King Shalmaneser III as the battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE.
161: Near the end of the 10^th Century, Egyptian Pharoah Shishak raided northward.
172: Jezebel, a non-Hebrew, was a corrupter.
185: An elaborate water system at Megiddo dates to the Omrides, who were not thought of well in the Bible.
194 - 195: Omri and successors were hated in the Bible because they were successful. By the time the story was written, their kingdom was destroyed. Blame was placed on the marriage to foreign women.
214 - 215: Israel suddenly wants independence from Assyria, which was a mistake.
217: Sargon II came to the Assyrian throne in 722 BCE.
222: A significant number of Israelites stayed in the hill country of Sumaria.
231: Extra-Biblical chronicles.
232: Jehoshaphat = YHWH: Yeho + shaphat = “YHWH has judged”
240: Mention of cult prostitutes I Kings 14:22 - 24. (these are discussed in SNOW CRASH (1992)).
242: Asherah as YHWH’s consort.
276: “Finding” the Book of Laws.
285: Unique laws of Deuteronomy: protection for the weak and the individual.

THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (1962)

Philip K. Dick

Paperback

Vintage Books, New York

2001.10.21 – 2001.10.26

The U.S. loses to the Axis powers and is divided up between Japan and Germany.
25: The Mediterranean is drained
Mr. R. Childan: Owns American Artistic Handcrafts, Inc.
Japanese want to buy American antiques, but most of them are fakes.
Frank Fink: Jewish jeweler.
42: Baynes tells a German that he’s a Jew.
63 & 66: FDR was assassinated by Joe Zangara in Miami. America never recovered from the Depression to fight WWII.
77: Germans went to Mars, but can’t get TV to work.
2001.10.24: Someone posted on randi.org that a Japanese Admiral had balked at invading the U.S. because of the Second Amendment, which sparked a debate over whether the Japanese ever had any intention to invade.
157: A book-within-a-book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, describes what TV is like. Costing less than $1.00, they are dropped into Third World countries to teach important skills.
175: Earrings to not have “wabi” but do have “wu”.
185: General Tadeki: Former Imperial Chief of Staff.
I read a description of this book with the phrase “The U.S. lost, or did it?” Thinking it was about how the U.S. appeared to have lost, I expected something completely different. Rather it was about an alternative reality where some people could divine the other (our) reality.

EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY

America’s Doctor Tells You Why The Health Experts Are Wrong (1999)

Dean Edell, M.D.

Hardcover

HarperCollins, New York

2001.11.10 – 2001.11.18

“Dr. Dean” is in a position to read virtually every medical study out there. Usually, he hears of important research months before the media (mis-)reports it.
34:

The basics of seventeenth-century science baffle most people in the twentieth century.

37 - 38: Mass sociogenic illness. Example: In 1995, a California gym class got sick for no apparent reason.
49: Some people can’t taste the bitter chemical PROP. This has been related to food preferences in adults. Caffeine tastes more bitter and milk and cheese are more intense.
50: Pica, Latin for “magpie”, is the compulsive eating of nonnutrative substances:

Geophagia = eating dirt
Pagophagia = eating ice cubes
Coniophagia = eating dust
Stachtophagia = eating cigarette ash

Often, such a person needs iron supplements.
54: “The French Paradox”: 9/10 of French eat a highly varied diet.
55: Sylvester Grahm (ca. 1794), inventor of the Grahm cracker, preached against excess.
56: James Caleb Jackson invented granola.
64 - 65: How food labels can be misleading. Fat math example:

Luncheon meat is 95% fat free
30 grams × 5% = 1.5 g fat
All fat has 9 calories per gram
1.5 g × 9 cal/g = 13.5 cal from fat
Contents say 27 calories, 13.5 cal / 27 cal = 50% calories from fat

89: 70% of total body weight may be genetically determined.
101: How much weight can you lose?

1 gram of any fat or oil has 9 calories.
1 gram of protein or carbohydrate has 4 calories.
1 lb of fat = 3,500 cal
If you eat 500 fewer calories per day, you lose 1 lb per week

161: The spontaneous remission rate for cancer is 12 / 6000 = 0.2%
165: In the 1880s, D. D. Palmer started magnetic healing and eventually chiropractor practice.
173: Homeopathy was invented by Samuel Hahnemann in the 18^th Century.
174: At age 11, Emily Rosario debunked therapeutic touch in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
243: From a medical standpoint, bathing is overrated. Toilets, however, have done much for human health.
244: Prepackaged salads are usually washed with chlorine.
248: Ignaz Semmelweiss wanted medical students to wash their hands. He was demoted and died in a medical institution.
258: Cold vs. Flu:

Symptoms Cold Flu

Fever N Y

Sore Throat Y Y

Muscle Ache Y Y (legs+back)

Headache Mild-N Y

Malaise Mild-N Y

Cough Y-hacking Y-sputum

Runny Nose Y Y

Sneezing Y N

290 - 291: Japanese doctors lie to patients with terminal illnesses. In 1995, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld this practice.
315: Psychologists don’t prescribe medication. Psychiatrists are often criticized for overemphasizing psychotherapeutic drugs.

TRAVEL ADVISORY (2000)

David Lida

Paperback

Perennial, New York

2001.11.24 – 2001.11.29

Collection of short stories about Mexico. I read this and the next one in preparation for a vacation in Mexico.
These were all really depressing. Too many focused on the very rich minority.
71: “Las torres gemelas” = World Trade Center

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK: TRAVEL (2001)

Joshua Piven, David Borgenicht, and David Concannon

Illustrated by Brenda Brown

Paperback

Chronicle Books, San Francisco

2001.12.8 – 2001.12.9

I didn’t learn much, but some things were important.
You should count the number of rows between you and the exit on an airplane because you will not be able to seen in a crash.
When locked inside a car trunk, look for the release cable under the upholstery.
Purifying water: 2 drops of bleach per quart (let sit 1 hour) or boil for 1 minute per 1000 ft above sea level.

CHANCELLORSVILLE (1996)

Stephen W. Sears

Paperback

Houghton Mifflin, Boston

2001.12.21 – 2001.12.27

Read on the beaches of Cozumel. This was chosen for a book discussion group.
Many of the battles here can be seen in the book (and movie) Gods and Generals.
The overall theme is that when armies of equal strength meet, the outcome is determined by intelligence and surprise. For example, knowing that the Rebels had decoded their signals, the U.S. sent disinformation. Also, using strict secrecy, Hooker’s turning movement was not discovered by Lee for 5 days.
The Revolt of the Generals: General Burnside’s disastrous campaign caused concern, which led to Hooker’s appointment.
Hooker used more rations per man to allow for longer marching before the need for resupply. The soldiers learned early not to carry anything extra.
I personally think that Hooker had a very good plan (although some think this book paints too favorable a picture of him), but he really should have told his plan to somebody. Then again, whenever an officer was captured, he managed to give the enemy every important piece of information he knew, so we can see Hooker’s reluctance.
234: A local (Charles C. Wellford) knew a secluded route for Lee to use to sneak up on the Union’s side.
237: The last spontaneous U.S. cheer.
247: Despite warnings, Howard did not think the U.S. forces were in danger.
351: Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (the future Supreme Court justice) was helped off the field with his third wound of the war.
366: Casualties for the first 5 hours: 17,585.
389: Casualties of three battles for 3 May, 1863: 21,357.
510: Stephen Crane wrote a sequel to THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (1895), called The Veteran.

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1 Copy of Gene for	for ethnic group	Protects against
Sickle Cell	Blacks	Malaria
Tay-Sachs	Ashkenazi Jews	Tuberculosis
Cystic Fibrosis	Northern Europeans	Bacterial Diarrheas

Symptoms	Cold	Flu
Fever	N	Y
Sore Throat	Y	Y
Muscle Ache	Y	Y (legs+back)
Headache	Mild-N	Y
Malaise	Mild-N	Y
Cough	Y-hacking	Y-sputum
Runny Nose	Y	Y
Sneezing	Y	N