Late last night, I finished Towing Jehovah by James Morrow.

Like the other books by Morrow I've written about here and here, Towing Jehovah is a satire with religious and philosophical dimensions. In this case, God has died and the protagonist, a fictionalized version of Joseph Hazelwood (captain of the Exxon Valdez) is given the job of towing the body from the equator to its resting place in the Arctic. Along the way, he will encounter radical feminists, a mutiny, WW2 re-enactors and an antediluvian island filled with pagan ruins.

Overall, the best of the three books I've read by him, though I enjoyed all three.

Yesterday I finished The Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, a book on the science of the reading brain.

The idea of the book is a little better than the actual book is. It's still pretty interesting but a little disappointing.

It goes over the history of reading/writing, starting with the earliest representational scripts and leading up to the modern systems, like the Chinese, Japanese scripts and the Greek alphabet. One odd omission is the Arabic alphabet, which isn't mentioned at all.

The middle section of the book deals with what parts of the brain are involved with reading, and how that evolves over time as reader progresses from just learning to decipher text to being an experience reader able to consider subtleties. And the third section uses analysis of dyslexic readers to further illuminate how the brain processes text.

This afternoon I finished The List of Seven by Mark Frost.

The List of Seven takes the historical figure of Arthur Conan Doyle, and then gives him an occult adventure before he became famous for writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. In this adventure, he encounters a few people and events that are obviously meant to be inspirations for things or characters that occur in the Holmes stories, including Holmes himself, his arch-nemesis Moriarty and their encounter at the Reichenbach Falls, and some other famous Victorians, including Bram Stoker and Madame Blavatsky. It starts when Doyle writes a novel based on the works of Blavatsky and featuring a conspiracy of occultists to conquer the world. It turns out that there is an actual conspiracy that finds out about Doyle's novel and decides to hunt him down for writing about it.

A not bad little pulpy pot-boiler.

Rashomon and Restoration

I just finished An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, a historical novel set in Oxford during the English Restoration after Oliver Cromwell had died. It is a popular time in novels, also used in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Morrow's Last Witchfinder, probably due to the turmoil in society at the time as well as the creation of new institutions like the Royal Society.

It is also a bit of a mystery, revolving around the death of a local scholar, possibly at the hands of a young woman. It's told Rashoman-like, in four stories told by different protagonists, most of whom are unreliable narrators for one reason or another. There is the Italian physician visiting Oxford on business, the law student seeking redemption for his fallen family honour, the court cryptographer looking out for conspiracies against the king and the historian who falls in love and resolves the mysteries.

Each of the narrative sheds light on the one before it and solves some mysteries while adding new ones. The author also does an excellent job of creating unique voices for each section - each story has a different feel to it that goes along with what we eventually learn about the character of the narrator.

I just finished Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, his paean to privacy, cryptography and "stickin' it to the Man".

Set after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, Little Brother is basically an excuse for Doctorow to go off on the stupidities of "homeland security" and the ways it can be spoofed by even tech literate teens.

In some ways, it resembles Heinlein's juvenile novels, for both good and ill. The story keeps moving and is interesting, and the writing is good in a straightforward way, but it gets bogged down in his pet interests/issues (privacy vs security) in a way that gets tiresome and, like a lot of Heinlein, there doesn't seem to be much distinguishing the protagonists of his various books, particularly not in the way they are written.
(I wrote about another book by him here.)

The other notable thing about this book for me is that it is the first one I have read in a digital format, in this case on the eReader app on my new Ipod Touch. I can't compare it to a Kindle, since I don't own one of those, but reading on the Touch is actually a pretty decent experience. The interface is easy to use, the screen/fonts are a decent size/appearance and, aside from some html text interpretation issues, it was an overall positive. I also tried the Stanza app, but abandoned, and deleted, it after it crashed for the twentieth time.

I could see transitioning a lot of my reading onto digital forms except for one thing - lack of reading material. 99+% of what I read these days is from the library and I buy very few books. Since there is no way yet to match DRM requirements and library use with digital readers, this limits me to free downloads, like Little Brother, or books that are in the public domain. Since the later includes most "classics", including personal favourites like the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, I will keep it stocked for emergency situations, but most of my reading will remain in the standard book form.

I just finished Infoquake by David Louis Edelman, the first book in a new science fiction trilogy.

Infoquake is set in a future where a combination of nanotechnology and advanced programming referred to as bio/logic has transformed society. Society has also developed into a combination of tyranny/libertarian fantasy where a council seemingly rules everything but most day to day living is done without a global governing body.

It's an ambitious work, creating a full world that is very different from most, and a lot of the back story is still left untold, other than in a timeline included with the book. The beginning of the book also features an extensive section developing the main character, Natch, before the real plot continues. It's fairly well written, and the combinations of ideas are intruiging and new enough that I will definitely read the 2nd book in the trilogy when it comes out.

Last night we saw the David Thom and Del Williams bands at an RBA show.

I've seen David Thom a number of times before, and his band gets better every time I see them. They used to be just a good local band, but have changed into a very good, professional level, bluegrass band. The band has a very tight, high energy sound with lots of originals as well as traditional bluegrass songs. And it doesn't hurt that they've added a few Bay Area veterans, Paul Shelasky and Butch Waller, to the band.

The headlines, the Del Williams band, are a newer band, and you can tell. Their show was excellent, but less tight. The band itself is killer with excellent singers and pickers in all positions, except bass. The bass player seemed to struggle throughout the evening. They stuck to mostly traditional bluegrass and put on a great show.

I just finished The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow.

I've only read two books by Morrow (I wrote about the other one here), but I liked both of them and will keep seeking out other books by him. Most books today are easily categorizable and seem familiar when read, even if they are new and the author has come up with an unusual plot, but Morrow's books aren't and don't. He is a self-declared secular humanist, and his books reflect that with themes of reason vs. faith, and other philosophical issues. This makes him rare from two standpoints - having an explicit philosophy that informs his writing, and having an uncommon one as well.

The Last Witchfinder is a good example. In some ways, it is a straighforward historical novel set around the time of the Enlightenment in both Europe and North America. The protagonist's quest is to see the practice of "pricking", i.e. witchfinding, ended and this quest takes them from England to British North America and back and involves Newton and Ben Franklin. But in a weird twist, the story is narrated by another book, Newton's Principia Mathematica, which provides background information, as well as waging a war with the Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches". It starts slow, but definitely picks up steam.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

Yesterday, I attended the SF Burning Man Decompression/Heat The Street Faire.

I've never attended Burning Man, and I'd never heard of this event even though it was the 9th annual one, but a friend was in town and is a fan of a local psychedelic surf rock band, The Mermen, who happened to be playing there.

It turned out to be a good show, and a neat little street fair, worth the wait in a two+ block line. The street fair seems to duplicate a little slice of Burning Man on 5 or 6 blocks of San Francisco's Dogpatch neighbourhood. Entrance was half price for anyone in "Black Rock Couture" so there were plenty of people dressed up, mainly in leather, fake fur and fishnet stockings. They had a couple of stages set up, even though most seemed to be more for DJ's with dancers rather than actual bands, and there were plenty of things to watch in the crowd as well.

You can see a bunch of pictures others took here. These pictures all look to be from earlier in the day when it was less crowded.

I saw the new Coen Brother's movie, Burn After Reading, on Sunday.

Similar to my thoughts on No Country For Old Men, I can't find anything in this movie to recommend it. The all star cast (John Malkovich, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton) give either dull or over the top and un-convincing performances, with the exception of Clooney as the over-sexed bodyguard. The story is a by now standard confused melange of misunderstandings and people treating each other like crap. I think it is intended as a comedy, but there are only a few funny scenes.

If you're looking to be mostly bored, and a little depressed, check out Burn After Reading. Otherwise, skip it and watch The Big Lebowski or Miller's Crossing again.

I just finished The Miocene Arrow by Sean Mcmullen, the second book in his low tech, far future trilogy.

Set in a complex, and fairly original, world, this trilogy explores ways limited technology can be used to mimic higher technology. For example, in the first book, wind engines and a computer built out of human components feature heavily. In the second book, it is simple gasoline engines and heavier than air aircraft.

They are both interesting books, but the number of new characters and locations with weird names swamps the reader at the start. With persistence, it mostly becomes clear but Mcmullen's prose is sometimes too vague to follow well.

Best post I've read yet on how we got in to this financial meltdown comes from Megan McArdle.

She takes a higher level viewpoint - not getting into the nitty gritty of who lent what to whom and why, but instead thinking about what lead all sides to fundamentally misjudge risks. People made fun of him at the time, but Donald Rumsfeld was right, it's the unknown unknowns that you really have to look out for.

Sadly, we probably won't see any fixes based on this kind of thinking coming out of our panicked politicians. Instead, they will probably find ways to make it worse.

This weekend, I spent a lot of time at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.

On Saturday, I was there for most of the day and I saw Dry Branch Fire Squad (with a special appearance by Warren Hellman on old time banjo), Waco Brothers, Richard Thompson, Desert Rose Band, Laurie Lewis and Del McCoury.

The best thing on Saturday was a tie between hearing Richard Thompson's amazing solo guitar playing and hearing a few songs from Laurie Lewis + friends - including Alison Brown, Chad Manning and Dudley Connell.

On Sunday, I was only there for a few hours and saw Bill Kirchen and Riders In The Sky.

The highlight was definitely Riders in the Sky, with Ranger Doug's great swinging rhythm guitar playing, but Bill Kirchen was a pleasant surprise. I'd never heard of him before but he is a famous guitar player, originally with Commander Cody but going on to a good career on his own playing a mix of country, rockabilly, texas swing, boogie-woogie, etc. Very fun show.

Hardly Strictly is a great event in a lot of ways, from being free, to including some of the great bluegrass/country/whatever acts, and having a great setting but it also has a lot of serious flaws.

First, the crowd has become ridiculously large. By mid-afternoon, it is almost impossible to move around and the crowd has transformed from a genial, music appreciating festival crowd to a mix of local yokels that are there to get stoned/drunk, chat with their friends and appreciate "the scene" and whole families that have brought the parents, kids, aunts, uncles, pets, etc to have a picnic in the park where the music is, with the accompanying talking, pets running around, kids playing, etc.

The second is the sound mix. I assume most of the sound people are from the rock/country scene because they can't figure out how to properly mix a bluegrass band for their lives. They always mix the bass way, way too high and don't know what to do with the other instruments. I saw a few minutes of Heidi Clare's set and the sound guy seemed to think that the bass and guitar were the most important (i.e. loudest) instruments in the mix, and that Heidi's fiddle was strictly background, since he had it mixed the quitest and it could barely be heard.

The third are the festival rules/setup. The website says that people aren't allowed to setup till 10am, but everyone knows that is a lie and shows up early in the morning if they want to preserve their space. And they are allowed to save space by using large tarps. The result is that the first 50 feet before the stage is a quiltwork of tarps, half of them un-occupied until later in the day. Early on Saturday, a friend and I were near the front of the main stage looking for a friend, and decided we wanted to stop and listen to the band for a minute. We sat down on an open tarp and a minute later we were told by the people sitting in front of the tarp that the people using that tarp would be back in a minute to eat lunch but that if we wanted to stay they had a "free, spare" tarp just behind that wasn't being used. So that tarp sat there right in front of the main stage, empty for 90% of the time.
barely be heard.

Yesterday I finished Escape From Amsterdam by Barrie Sherwood.

Surprisingly, the book doesn't take place in Europe. Instead, it's set in Japan and the titular "Amsterdam" is a theme park. The protagonists sister is a performer there, and is also being kept there by a senior Yakuza. At the same time, he needs to get her out to help him get some money to pay back some gambling debts before his legs (or other parts) get broken.

The portrayal of Japanese youth culture from someone who lived there for many years - even though not an insider himself. The characters are well drawn, if not exactly sympathetic, and the plot avoids most of the obvious cliches.

I just finished The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes

The Forgotten Man of the title comes from this passage from an essay by William Sumner :

The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

During the 1930's, "The Forgotten Man" was a commonly used phrase in political speeches, but it was transformed from referring to the victim of welfare schemes to the recipient. Amity Shlaes' book tries to reverse some of that by re-examining the Great Depression from the point of view of those who were affected by Roosevelt's New Deal schemes.

It's a well written book, and I learned a few things about the Great Depression that I didn't know before. For example, I had read about how the gold standard didn't help, and may have hurt the economy at the start of the crisis but I didn't know that the Hoover administration was practicing what is known as "sterilization", where the effects of the gold inflows that would have naturally helped inflate the economy out of it's deflationary problems were artificially limited because Hoover's team incorrectly thought the problems were actually inflationary.

The one obvious weakness is the large cast of characters, from Roosevelt's brain trust to the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. The chapters are organized by time, so they necessarily skip around from person to person which leads to easy confusion about who is being discussed.

Overall, very interesting, particularly in light of the current financial meltdown. Whether this crisis ends up being handled better, or lingers and drags down the rest of the economy like happened in the Great Depression will be interesting to see.

Yesterday I finished Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Set in the same universe as the more famous Vorkosigan Saga but not including the same characters, Falling Free is more welding focused than most novels. In this case, it's welding in a microgravity, vacuum environment, but welding nonetheless.

The story involves the interaction between a welding instructor and the genetically enhanced property of a big corporation. Not surprisingly, the relationship between the corporation and the people it owns doesn't turn out well.

An OK read but nothing too special.

Last night we saw The Dave Holland Sextet at Yoshis Oakland.

I've seen Holland's various bands a few times, and they always put on a great, high end, modern jazz show. The pieces they play are almost avant-garde in their complexity, but is such a great musician, and has such great musicians playing for him, that it comes across very accessible.

One other thing that is very noticeable is the way Holland helps develop new musicians, and lets them really stretch out rather than just featuring himself. All the musicians in this band got a lot of room to show what they could do and gave wonderful solos.

Last night I finished The (Mis)behavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson.

Though it was published in 2006, this book provides an interesting background to the current financial mess. The main thrust of the book is that the assumptions underlying much of modern finance are invalid, and have been known to be invalid for many years.

In particular, Mandelbrot argues that the distribution of prices in the market follows more closely a fractal/power law rather than the standard assumed Gaussian/Normal distribution, and that there is a dependence between current prices and past prices, though not in a way that is useful for so-called "chartists" who try to predict today's price based on previous data.

The first point doesn't seem to be very controversial anymore. Many studies have shown that markets do not match the Gaussian/Normal distribution very well, particularly in the "fatness" of the tails - the markets show much higher proportion of large price shifts than would be expected under Gaussian conditions - even though most finance courses still teach the CAPM/Black-Sholes types models that are based on this assumption. The second point is more controversial, and the book does not fully present that argument in enough detail for me to judge it, nor does there seem to be sufficient agreement in other studies.

I was hoping this book was more of a middle ground between detailed (and usually near incomprehensible to non-specialist) academic papers and pop-science type descriptions, but the authors chose to go the pop-science route and drop almost all mathematical detail from the book.

Last night I finished The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow.

Part action adventure, part science fiction, part philosophical exploration, this is not an easy book to categorize.

The protagonist is a failed philosophy Ph.d who gets dragged into tutoring a girl with amnesia about ethics, or at least that is how things appear. The twists come fast and furious in this book which mixes elements from, and satirizes at the same time, Pygmalion, the Island of Dr. Moreau and Atlas Shrugged.

Good enough that I will be looking for other books by the same author, it does peter out a little half way through - the setup/buildup is more fun then the payoff and denouement.

I just finished The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland.

As I read more of his books, it seems like I am enjoying Douglas Coupland more and more. I've read Generation X, Microserfs, Jpod and this book.

In my post about Jpod, I complained about the post-modern extras being annoying and distracting from the main virtues of the book. The Gum Thief lacks most of those distractions, possibly because there are a lot of self-referential things going on in the epistolary entries already. There is a coda to the book that is just too self referential and undermines the rest of the book a little, but mainly there are fewer gimmicks and that lets the characters and the story shine through.

The plot involves a middle aged drunk, his ex-wife, and some of the people he knows from the Staples he works at, particularly one young Goth who he forms a connection with. It also features a novel within the novel that is hilarious.

Highly recommended, particulary for people who have liked his other novels.