This morning I finished What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought by Keith E. Stanovich.

This is one of the most interesting non-fiction books I've read in a while. The basic thesis is that the concept of intelligence as commonly used is over-generalized, including both the level of skill at thinking and the ability to think rationally, and that great benefits could follow from properly bifurcating them into intelligence and rationality. The result of this over-generalization is that people are surprised when people who do well on IQ tests (which measure the former only) make stupid, irrational decisions.

Along the way, he presents a lot of research from cognitive psychology and gives a revised high level model of how the thinking mind works, and how this model can lead to bad decisions.

The writing is fairly dense, with a lot of psychological terms used freely. It is far from most of the popular science books that are out there today and it is clear that it is mainly an academically focused book. But if you are willing to do the work, it is well worth it.

Highly recommended.

I just finished Unsigned by Julie Kaewert, one of her series of Booklover mysteries.

I wrote about one of the other books in this series here and I don't know if I have anything new to add. They are enjoyable books, even if the overall shape of the plot is very similar from book to book - protagonist discovers some kind of historical secret related to books/publishing, gets chased around while his friends keep secrets from him to protect him. Eventually he muddles through and finds out all the truth.

I just finished Treasure Box by Orson Scott Card.

Treasure Box is either an urban fantasy or a ghost/horror story, whichever you prefer. It involves a man who lives his whole life as a loner after his sister dies, until he gets involved with a woman and her mysterious family who, as you probably expect, don't turn out to be what they seem.

Card is inventive enough that some of the initial twists took me by surprise, and like most of his books, the writing draws you in and makes you want to keep reading. The outcome is fairly predictable after the initial surprises, but it satisfying enough.

Overall, fairly standard Card quality and recommended for a quick read.

I just finished The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon. Or, to be honest, I finished as much of it as I could before it had to go back to the library. I only got through 500 or so of the 600+ pages.

Interesting, but pretty dry. It's more of a list of events and people rather than tying together the events into some ideas that led to the decline, but the story of how Britain fell into a some what reluctant empire that spanned the globe is inherently interesting.

The most annoying part of the book is it's focus on the negative parts of the empire. Although there are plenty of them, and they shouldn't be glossed over, reading this book without already knowing somethings about the British would give one the impression it was all incompetence and genocide, which maybe it is from the current post-colonial point of view.

Also, the book sparked some thoughts on the relation between racism and nationalism. There is a lot of reported rhetoric about the British spouting lines about the superiority of their race or "whites", but it feels like their idea of race was pretty limited and what they really meant was the superiority of the British in particular, since they didn't include many groups that would be lumped into the Caucasian race by modern audiences in their idea of "white". In other words, it was really a disguised and extended form of extreme nationalism, rather than what is modernly referred to as racism.

I just finished The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, winner of the 2008 Booker Prize.

The White Tiger is an epistolary novel, told in a long letter from the protagonist to the premier of China. The protagonist is a poor Indian who becomes a driver for some coal magnates from his home town, only to eventually murder one of them as an act of rebellion, and start his own company. The part about his company is really just denouement - the book mainly focuses on his struggles as a child and life as a driver.

It portrays Indian society as designed to exploit the poor, keeping them in their place through familiar and cultural pressures while treating them as garbage. One of the bosses he works for is slightly more sympathetic, but the protagonist eventually sees him as simply weak and, after an internal struggle, decides to kill him and steal a bribe intended for local politicians.

The book is a polemic - condemning most of Indian society, from the way the poor treat each other to the way they are used by the rich, with some sideswipes at westerners and others along the way. It is compellingly written, and the internal growth and struggles of the protagonist are well presented.

A few days ago I finished David Baldacci's The Simple Truth, the latest in the legal thrillers I've been reading.

This book is heavy on the thriller, light on the legal. It involves the US Supreme Court, but only as a background for other events. It mainly focuses on a military prisoner who was wrongfully convicted, his escape and related investigations. It's a compelling page turner, but ultimately a pretty empty read.

Yesterday I finished The Liar by Stephen Fry.

The Liar was Fry's first book, and he later went on to write books like Hippopotamus.

The Liar is about a British public school student who is unusually talented at, and dedicated to, fabricating stories, backgrounds, etc. The first two thirds of the book are set mainly at school, and give us a background. The last third has him getting involved in some international intrigue.

It is an OK book, but I enjoyed Hippopotamus more. In this book, Fry jumps around a lot from time to time and it is often hard to initially figure out when he is writing about at first.

Continuing my foray into legal thrillers, I just finished Reversible Errors by Scott Turow.

Reversible Errors tells the story of the last appeal of a death row convict, split evenly between the lawyer leading the appeal and the prosecutors arguing for the execution to proceed. In the first part of the book it flashes back and forth between the time of the initial crime and prosecution and the period leading up to the execution.

Following on reading Gresham and Martini, Turow is a revelation, and an order of magnitude better than either of the others. The characters in this book are subtle, complex and fully developed people, in stark contrast to the other authors hollow, two dimensional attempts at characters. Not only are they as believable as a real person you might meet, but there actions are as well. This gives the plot a flavour of truth lacking in the other books.

Like Gresham's The Runaway Jury, Reversible Errors is built around a single issue - in this case, the death penalty. But while Gresham gives, at best, a straw man argument on the other side, caricatured villians and uses the entire book to bash tobacco companies, Turow has a complex story to tell that leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling about the death penalty even though the participants on both sides are well meaning, sincere advocates. The book doesn't make one explicit argument about the death penalty, instead leaving it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Overall, an excellent book and highly recommended.

The previous two posts in this series on legal thrillers are here and here.

Last night we did something different and went and saw some heavy metal tribute bands at the Little Fox theater.

The first band was Power Age, and AC/DC tribute band. They were specifically a tribute to the Bon Scott era AC/DC and did a good job. Their lead guitar player was dressed up in shorts and a suit jacket like Angus Young and had a wireless guitar setup that allowed him to run around the crowd. They started off a little ragged (with a missing bass player for the first few songs) but eventually got into the groove and delivered a good set of vintage AC/DC. The singer had Bon Scott's singing down very well.

The second band was Speak of the Devil, a tribute to Ozzy/Black Sabbath. Turns out this is actually Power Age with a different guitarist! The singer came out in full Ozzy girl and did Ozzy schtick for the whole set. They also started off ragged (with a missing guitarist this time, ably subbed in for by the guitarist from the next band). The Ozzy schtick came off more distracting than amusing and the singers imitation of Ozzy's singing was well off for the first few songs. When they segued from Ozzy solo material to Black Sabbath material, they got better and stayed in that groove for the rest of the set. Another strange note - their strongest performance on a Ozzy solo song was on the mostly goofy "Bark at the Moon".

The third band was Damage. Inc, a Metallica tribute. The original headliners were supposed to be an Iron Maiden tribute, but their singer was too sick to perform so this band got called in at the last minute and did a great job. They opened strong with "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and did "Creeping Death", "Fade to Black", "Master of Puppets" and "Enter Sandman" before unexpectedly switching gears to do Guns and Roses songs. My advice would be to stick to the Metallica. The material is a lot stronger, and their performances were spot on. The GnR material didn't work very well.

Yesterday I finished Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick.

The fact that the name is an obvious play on the Christian "Stations of the Cross" gives you a hint about the books contents.

Set in some unspecified future, the novel involves the efforts of a bureaucrat to track down a native who may have stolen forbidden technology on a planet that is about to go through a periodic cataclysmic shift that will drown half the planet. The native has become a leader with mystic pretensions and most of the book consists of a long distance duel between the native and the bureaucrat where the native tries to lead the bureaucrat into various traps and the bureaucrat just tries to find the native.

Along the way are various pseudo mystical experiences and side stories.

Overall, it was an interesting read but with some problems. The background and world that the story takes place in is never made clear. Swanwick choses to follow a style that just throws the reader into the deep end of a different world and expect them to learn to swim without explicit instruction. That can work well, see Stephenson's Anathem for example, but in this case the description is too scanty and the result is a lack of clarity and, at times, a difficulty in following exactly what is happening or why.

I just finished Wizardry and Wild Romance by Michael Moorcock.

Wizardry and Wild Romance is a study of epic fantasy Moorcock wrote back in the 70s and then revised in the 80s. As such, it obviously missed the Harry Potter phenomenon and the resurgence of Tolkien that followed the Lord of the Rings movies, but I think that he wouldn't have liked either of them. From this book, he is fairly dismissive of Tolkien (referring to it as "epic Pooh") and my guess is that he also wouldn't like Rowling's writing. His main criteria seems to be the lyricism of the writing. He brings up a number of other points, but they are all illustrated by samples of writing that are either praised or dismissed based on the writing alone. This is not surprising since he was a leader of the British "New Wave" SF movement, a movement towards more "literary" writing in genre fiction.

I was hoping for more history of the form, and relations between various authors. Instead, this is mainly a critique, and a flawed one, since he does not provide compelling evidence why he considers some authors better than others, just snippets of their work.

Today we went to see the movie version of Watchmen. I liked it but my companion, who hadn't read the graphic novel, didn't.

It is remarkably faithful to the story, even though there is one major change to the ending done for fairly obvious reasons. It also captures the look of the comic very well, as well as the spirit. There are a few problems - in particular, the musical choices are either weak or obvious uses of classic rock, the non-super powered Watchmen seem to have near superhuman strength, speed and resilience that is lacking in the book and the cramming of almost all of the material into the movie give it a somewhat frantic, hard to grasp feel.

But the movies biggest problem is something well beyond the filmmakers control - the fading of the threat of nuclear war in the popular consciousness. Back when the book was written, and set, the fact that nuclear war was a possibility, and the possible resulting horrors was a part of popular culture and strongly felt in the psyche of most intelligent people. Today, that feeling is not only not present, but it is almost totally forgotten as part of popular culture. This makes the central issue of the film, the threat of nuclear war and what some characters do about it, feel strange and unfamiliar to the watcher and undermine the emotional center of the story, making the extreme actions taken seem more grotesque than they appeared at the time.

Continuing my recent run of legal thrillers, I finished The Runaway Jury by John Grisham yesterday.

Basically an excuse for listing all the reasons one should hate tobacco companies, The Runaway Jury is a legal thriller without action and with very little law of any interest. The plot is about a couple who find a way to manipulate the jury of a major tobacco case. They contact both the plaintiff and the defense to try to sell the verdict. Large sections of the book are reports of what the various witnesses had to say about the "evil" tobacco companies. The characters are as wooden and generic as can be and the twist ending, where the couple turn out to be very anti-tobacco and come up with a way to deliver the verdict for the plaintiff and make a small fortune for themselves at the same time, is both obvious and unbelievable. Even a legal laymen like myself could see the legal mistakes and oversights of the characters.

Overall, a very weak book.

I spent the day as a judge at the San Jose FIRST Tech Challenge at the Computer History Museum. I've been a judge before the FIRST Lego League events, but this was my first time at an FTC event and I really enjoyed it.

The challenge is aimed at older kids, has a more difficult problem to solve and allows for a more advanced robot, though they still have to build it from a limited set of materials. Some of the robots were really interesting and it was great to see how they performed in head to head competition after judging them.

The site where it was held, the Computer History Museum is also interesting. It is a big, obviously expensive building, previously home to Silicon Graphics and it's ratio of empty space to exhibits seems too high. There feels like there is a lot of empty space to look at and walk through without a lot to see, although there are some interesting relics in one side room.

There was one world class thing - the museum is currently the home to one of two working copies of the Babbage Difference Engine #2. I was able to attend a short demo where it was actually run and it was amazing to see it do its thing.

Last night I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.

The title character, Edgar Sawtelle, is a non-deaf mute with a special rapport for dogs, handed down from his father and grandfather before him. The book involves his family history, his youth and some tragic events that unfold after an uncle returns home. Mixed in with this is a lot about dog rearing/training and breeding as Edgar's family is involved in a long term project to raise dogs that are better companions. The actual goal is never fully explained though, one of many things that is not fully developed.

SPOILER ALERT

It is almost a cliche that in any novel involving a young person, that their parent(s) have to die in order to get the story moving, so when Edgar's father died, I wasn't surprised. But I quickly realized that it was something a little different - it was actually a re-telling/reflection of Hamlet, even down to many characters names. For example, his mother is Trudy (Gertrude) and his uncle is Claude (Claudius). There is even a Polonius and a Laertes equivalent, and a dog named Forte (Fortinbras) that shows up occasionally. The ending of this book isn't quite as apocalyptic as Hamlet, since the mother and Laertes characters survive, but everyone else perishes and one character is blinded.

But other than the plot similarities, nothing is really done with the Hamlet comparison. The main character does not share Hamlet's tragic flaw of indecision, for example, and there is no Ophelia character or other romantic interest. Similarly, there are a lot of pieces of the novel that just don't add up to much. There's a prophetic old woman, and a singular appearance by her daughter, but her prophecies don't illuminate anything. There are many mentions of a hippie commune that Edgar wants to visit but he never makes it there and his interest is never explained or explored. He goes on a long trek in the wilderness after accidentally causing the death of the local vet (i.e. Polonius) but nothing comes of that either.

In the end, it's a well told story and an enjoyable read, but it doesn't seem to add up to much beyond an enjoyable read.

This afternoon, we went and say the Tipsy Gypsy Trio, a gypsy jazz trio, at the Velo Rouge Cafe in San Francisco.

It was nice to get out to hear some live music, and the band was good. They are actually a four piece (violin, 2 guitars and bass) and had a singer sit in on a few songs. Everyone did an excellent job, playing some swing and gypsy jazz standards.

I actually know the violinist, Benito Cortez. He and I played together in a western swing class taught by Jack Tuttle and did one show, billed as the Silicon Valley Doughboys. Since then, he has gone on to be a professional musician, gigging in the SF bay area with a lot of local jazz groups.

Yesterday, I finished Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini.

Going through jury duty last week inspired me to check out a few legal thrillers. The first of these is Compelling Evidence, the first legal thriller by Steve Martini, and introducing his character, defense attorney Paul Madriani.

It's an OK thriller but nothing too special. The plot is pretty standard mystery stuff, with some legal procedural background added.

Last night, we saw Mike Marshall at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley.

The show had Mike playing with two bands - his Choro band Choro Famoso and his new band on new acoustic music hotshots, Big Trio.

The highlights of the night all belonged to the Choro music. Joining Choro Famoso on stage was Brazilian Choro hot shot Bandolim player Danilo Brito, an amazing player whose energy and enthusiasm seemed infectious.

The one complaint about the show I have is the sound mixing. I've never been a huge fan of the sound at the Freight but last night was particularly bad. In particular, the tamborine player in Choro Famoso was mixed much, much to loud. Admittedly, he was probably the best tamborine player I've seen, but the mix almost totally obscured the sound of the guitar player, and even overwhelmed the sound of Mike Marshall's mandolin playing at times.

I spent the last 4 days on jury duty. Before I was a citizen, I could blow off jury duty since I wasn't eligible to serve. Since I've become a citizen, I've only received one other jury duty notice, and I didn't have to go down and actually report.

This time, I did have to report. After all the prospective jurors gathered, we were split into seperate groups and sent off to court rooms. I was part of a group of 76 that was told we were prospective jurors for a criminal case involving a burglary of a house under construction. 12 people were selected to be the first set of jurors, and then the questioning started.

During the initial questioning, a few jurors were released "with cause", mainly for not having good enough English skills. This took most of the first afternoon. The second morning, we continued with the questioning and had a number of people released with "hardship" excuses. Then we moved onto the "peremptory" challenges, where the DA and defense can release jurors for any reason. By the end of the process, all but four of the original 12 jurors had been released, and the waiting prospective jurors were reduced by more than half. I was the last person selected for the actual jury.

As all the jurors figured out from the pre-trial questions, the trial mainly centered around the testimony of one witness, who claimed to see two people inside the house he was working on. His testimony turned out to be very detailed and convincing. One of the other witnesses was an accomplice who had already pled guilty to being one of the two perpetrators, and his testimony was much less compelling as he seemed to contradict himself a number of times. The rest of the witnesses were police officers whose testimony was used to establish various people's identities and various timelines of events. Ultimately, we came back with a verdict of "guilty" based on the evidence we saw.

Overall, it was a very interesting experience. The jury questioning was interesting for the first 15-20 people questioned. After that, it just felt repetitive and tiring for everyone involved. The trial itself, and the legal rules that were part of it, was very engaging. It was nice to see how the system works and I now have a better understanding of the various roles people play in a trial, and a better feel for some of the strengths and weaknesses of the American legal system.

This morning I finished The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives by James Blaylock, a collection of stories and two novels.

I've been a big fan of Blaylock since I read The Last Coin, which is still my favourite modern fantasy novel. Most of his books are in the modern fantasy vein, but the stories in The Adventures are actually very early steampunk.

The first of the two novels included Homunculus, has always been very hard to find and been out of print for many years, which is a shame since it's the best of the stories. I had read the second novel, Lord Kelvin's Machine, before and hadn't liked it very much. It's not a direct sequel, but it does help to be familiar with the main characters before reading it. In addition to the scientist St. Ives, there is his butler Hasbro, the toymaker Keeble, their friend Jack Owlesby and their nemesis Ignacio Narbondo.

Overall, these are some of the best steampunk books I've read. Blaylock has a very active imagination and a deft turn with descriptions and semi-surreal action. He's also not afraid of having serious consequences to his characters of their actions.