↑ Reading ↑

GEONius.com
11-Sep-2024
 E-mail 

The following are mini-reviews of books I read in 2022.
Also see the full index of books I've read.


  [Book cover]

Unartificial Intelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

by Meredith Broussard (Wikipedia) (pub. 2018)

I was leafing through this book and Chapter 5, "Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Tests", caught my eye. I thought, "This looks interesting!" and, after reading a few pages, I discovered it was. I then started back at the beginning of the book and began encountering some rough patches ...

Find the microprocessor chips: ...

Keeping in mind that the book was written in 2017, there's a good chance that you can't find the microprocessor chip(s) — it's probably hidden by the heat sink and fan.

[The computer is connected to the monitor by a] flexible, plasticky ribbon.

Since as far back as I can remember (the late 1970s), monitors for both dumb terminals and graphics terminals, to my knowledge, have always used cables of one sort or another. The author may be misremembering the wide ribbon connectors for IDE hard and optical disk drives.

I'm not going to lie: programming is math. If anyone tries to convince you that it isn't, or that you can really learn programming without doing math, they're probably trying to sell you something.

I'm not trying to sell you anything, but you're welcome to send me money if you're so inclined!

To get beyond introductory programming to intermediate programming requires knowing linear algebra, some geometry, and some calculus.
[E]verything a computer can do comes down to math.

My response:

...

The most egregious error, to my mind, comes in Chapter 6:

The next milestone toward the development of the modern computer happened when English mathematician and philosopher George Boole proposed Boolean algebra in 1854. Based on work by Leibniz, Boolean algebra is a logic-based system in which there are only two numbers, 0 and 1. Calculations are achieved via two operators: AND or OR.

There are three operators — AND, OR, and NOT — and all three operators are required. That the author didn't catch this nor anybody reading the drafts is mind-boggling.

Strictly speaking, you can get by with two operators, but one of them must be NOT. Using De Morgan's Laws, AND can be restated using only OR and NOT; OR can be restated using only AND and NOT. For example:

(A and B) = not ((not A) or (not B))

This is obviously complex and gets worse with more complex expressions. It would be best to let the programmer or whoever use the three-operator logic and, if necessary, let the computer convert it to two-operator logic internally.)

Technical mistakes such as the ones mentioned above and the general tenor of the book are off-putting. As an example of the latter, I'll take a look at Chapter 6.

As I said, Chapter 5 is good. Chapter 6 starts off with the story of a privacy-invading drone being shot out of the sky by a neighbor a bit of a distance away from the drone's home "airport". The following section goes into great detail listing everyone it seems who was within six degrees of Kevin Bacon with Marvin Minsky and who were therefore likely to have been infected by his "devil may care" attitude in the midst of his excitement over the new promises of computers and technology. Somehow — not even an indirect link was drawn — Minsky was responsible for the former CEO of Uber cultivating an atmosphere of lawlessness and sexual harassment in his company.

But, wait! Let's step back a little bit in time and take a look at the "slovenly" Alan Turing who was "unpleasant or unbearable", but whose "awfulness" was overlooked because of his genius. He must have been the cause of all the world's ills. The willingness to "pardon a whole host of antisocial behaviors" is especially rampant in "math, engineering, and computer science". I'm willing to bet that antisocial behaviors can be found in every other field and are just as prevalent. Uber-like behavior is unacceptable in any field. Regarding Turing, the author quotes Jack Copeland:

"[Turing] never seemed to quite fit in anywhere. He was bothered by his own social strangeness ..."

Rather than painting Turing as some kind of giant antisocial monster, perhaps some empathy is in order.

Despite my misgivings above, I was glad I read the book. The kind of sloppy knowledge of the technical side of computers is disappointing, but, when the author talks about her various data science projects, the book really shines.

  [Book cover]

Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

by Carl Zimmer (Wikipedia) (pub. 2021)

Don't ever get depression if you can help it! I have suffered from severe, treatment-resistant, unipolar depression for many years. Aside from all the more serious problems resulting from depression, it can also play havoc with one's reading. I go through periods when I can't muster up the energy or motivation or whatever to read a book and, if I try anyway, I quickly lose interest or am distracted by something else. When I do want to read, sometimes I only want to read non-fiction books. At other times, only fiction.

I was struggling because of my depression through Ms. Broussard's book above, Unartificial Intelligence. My efforts dragged on up until the middle of March, when my interest in reading suddenly kicked into high gear. I finished up Ms. Broussard's book and dove into Carl Zimmer's book. I woke up every morning looking forward to reading further into whatever book I was reading. Both fiction and non-fiction, including T. W. Speight's 10 listed novels! (The depression was still manifest in all its other aspects, but I could now read books at least.) This run continued until the middle of June, when it began to subside. I was in the middle of reading Petri Launiainen's excellent A Brief History of Everything Wireless, below, which I ended up reading concurrently and fitfully with a few other books over the rest of the year. Oh, well, it was nice while it lasted!

...

Also see Zimmer's science blog, Matter.

  [Book cover]

A History of Pi (π)

by Petr Beckmann (1924-1993) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1970)

...

  [Book cover]

The Child of the Cavern

by Jules Verne (1828-1905) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1877, original French, Les Indes Noires)

Other titles: The Black Indies and The Underground City.

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Underground City; Or, The Black Indies

Standard Ebooks: The Child of the Cavern

  [Book cover]

Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations

by Mary Beard (Wikipedia) (pub. 2013)

...

  [Book cover]

Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters

by James M. Tabor (pub. 2007)

...

  [Book cover]

All Along the River

by Mary E. Braddon (1835-1915) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1893)

...

Project Gutenberg eBook: All Along the River

  [Book cover]

Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas

by Marc Levinson (pub. 2020)

...

  [Book cover]

The Face in the Glass: The Gothic Tales of Mary Elizabeth Braddon

by Greg Buzwell, ed. (pub. 2014)

...

  [Book cover]

The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History

by David Beerling (Wikipedia) (pub. 2007)

April 26, 2023. This is one of the most valuable books I've ever read. As you can tell by the date, I'll probably never get around to writing a "proper" review — I usually save those for the books I don't like! However, I do recommend the book every so often in comments on blogs, so I saved a recent one just for this case and my apology in advance for the inartful way it is written:

For those interested in the complexities of climate change and global warming (and thus solutions), I highly recommend David Beerling's The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History, published in 2007 but still relevant. Despite the title, this book and the author's extended scientific team took/take a multi-disciplinary approach to studying the earth's history with respect to climate change (both warming and cooling) as well as the other planetary boundaries besides carbon dioxide (Wikipedia — carbon dioxide is not the only thing we have to worry about, not even in just the global warming realm). Using everything from paleontology to botany to geology to biology to microbiology to oceanography to chemistry to physics to astronomy and beyond, many fields are brought to bear in figuring out the history of the earth. It is a sobering but very interesting read for the layperson.

To be clear, the point of the comments I post referencing this book is to emphasize how complex even the known mechanisms of climate change are. Throw in the known and unknown complexities of the intertwining/interaction of the planetary boundaries and we're hosed. Which is not to say that we should just throw up our hands, but is to say that we can't keep kicking the can down the road with some vague faith in human ingenuity: the complexities pretty much guarantee that human ingenuity will be of little help when a critical and unknown point of no return is reached.

  [Book cover]

Ormond; Or, The Secret Witness

by Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1799)

...

Project Gutenberg eBook: Ormond; Or, The Secret Witness, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3

  [Book cover]

The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1911)

...

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns (although I actually read the differently titled American edition, Denry the Audacious)

  [Book cover]

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

by Charles P. Pierce (Wikipedia) (pub. 2009)

...

  [Book cover]

Shoal Water

by Dornford Yates (1885-1960) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1940)

...

FadedPage eBook: Shoal Water

  [Book cover]

The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega - The Numbers that Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe

by John D. Barrow (1952-2020) (Wikipedia) (pub. 2002)

...

  [Book cover]

Sea Fog

by Joseph S. Fletcher (1863-1935) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1925)

...

FadedPage eBook: Sea Fog

  [Book cover]

The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon

by Robert Whitaker (Wikipedia) (pub. 2004)

...

[Book cover]

A Secret of the Sea

In the Dead of Night

Under Lock and Key

The Mysteries of Heron Dyke

The Loudwater Tragedy

[Book cover]

The Grey Monk

A Minion of the Moon: A Romance of the King's Highway

Burgo's Romance

The Heart of a Mystery

A Barren Title

by T. W. Speight (1830-1915) (Victorian Fiction Database)

I've grouped Thomas W. Speight's novels together to save having to repeat the biographical information over and over. I didn't read them all in one batch; instead, I read A Secret of the Sea first and then irregularly interleaved the remaining novels among the books by other authors that follow.

Speight was a prolific writer and these mystery stories (the ones available at Project Gutenberg) are somewhat formulaic. Most of the stories revolve around crimes relating to inheritance — usually some worthy soul in various circumstances deprived or not even knowing of their inheritance — but Speight mixed them up enough with different plot twists that I found the books exciting!

Word of the book: discuss. Speight had a very broad vocabulary and I encountered a good assortment of new words. But I was especially interested in his use of old words with new (actually old!) meanings. My favorite was discuss, which meant to consume a food or beverage with gusto! The word was also used in its usual sense of talking something over. In Under Lock and Key:

But there was one little task that [Captain Ducie] had set himself to do before going out for the evening, and he proceeded to consider it over while discussing his cup of strong green tea and his strip of dry toast.

For some biographical information about Thomas Wilkinson Speight, see:

Project Gutenberg eBooks (with publication date):

  [Book cover]

Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston

by Rev. David M. Powers (pub. 2015)

...

  [Book cover]

A Brief History of Timekeeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks

by Chad Orzel (Wikipedia) (pub. 2022)

...

  [Book cover]

A Brief History of Everything Wireless: How Invisible Waves Have Changed the World

by Petri Launiainen (pub. 2018)

...

Also see the book's website: A Brief History of Everything Wireless.

  [Book cover]

Dangerous Earth: What We Wish We Knew About Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Climate Change, Earthquakes, and More

by Ellen Prager (pub. 2020)

...

  [Book cover]

Mlle. Fouchette: A Novel of French Life

by Charles Theodore Murray (1843-1924) (pub. 1902)

...

A good biography of Charles T. Murray can be found at pages 187-192 of The Descendants of Jonathan Murray of East Guilford, Connecticut (PDF), compiled and edited by William Breed Murray (born in 1874). Regarding this book, the biography has this to say:

When the show had opened in London our literary nomad started for Paris. He went straight to the heart of the Latin quarter and established himself in a small flat en garcon. From this point of view he wrote syndicate letters on Parisian life, mastered the language and gathered material afterward to appear in Mlle. Fouchette, Lippencott's. He joined the student mobs in the Zola-Dreyfus riots, danced at the Bal Burllien and took his beer with the grisettes in front of the cafes of Boulevard St Michel. Keeping away from places where English is spoken, doing his own marketing, shopping, and housekeeping, he rapidly absorbed real every-day humble French life with the language of the country. His estimate of French character as set forth in his novel Mlle. Fouchette is formed from personal contact, not from library information.

Also see Wikipedia's Dreyfus affair article. A long read, but interesting, and it will help you understand the chaotic picture of Paris painted in Murray's book.

Project Gutenberg eBook: Mlle. Fouchette: A Novel of French Life

  [Book cover]

The Tenants of Malory

by Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1867)

...

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3

  [Book cover]

They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency

by Malcolm Nance (Wikipedia) (pub. 2022)

...

  [Book cover]

The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1720)

...

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

  [Book cover]

The Great English Short-Story Writers, Volume 1

edited by William James Dawson (1854-1928) and Coningsby Dawson (1883-1959) (pub. 1910)

William Dawson was Coningsby's father. The book begins with a long introduction, "The Evolution of the Short-Story", written by one or the other (or both?). The introduction looks interesting, but I haven't read it and probably won't! The short stories are ordered by the authors' birth years and range from a story by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) to a story by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). The random stories I've read so far seem to have elements of the supernatural and/or mystery in them, but I'm not sure if those are a theme for the selection of the stories. (Maybe I should read the introduction?!)

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Great English Short-Story Writers, Volume 1

  [Book cover]

The Third Policeman

by Flann O'Brien (1911-1966) (Wikipedia) (pub. 1967, written 1939-1940)

...

  [Book cover]

The Fifth Risk

by Michael Lewis (Wikipedia) (pub. 2018)

...


Alex Measday  /  E-mail