It is also presented as if it were written late in the life of Dr. Watson, and the author, Horowitz, uses the opportunity to have Watson reflect on a number of facets relating to his relationship to Holmes. For example, he laments that he never really gave much thought to Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Holmes and Watson. This gives some nice insight into how Dr. Watson viewed the world he shared with Holmes.

I’m one of those who discovered and devoured the Sherlock Holmes stories as a kid. Not only did these stories introduce me to a different way of looking at the world — deductive reasoning — but they took me to a different time which, looking back, was both more sinister but more naive than our own, at the same time. These stories and the basic idea behind them form so much of what we see in our media today, from the obvious Elementary and Sherlock to shows such as Monk and House, shows I generally tend to enjoy. I also was what seemed to be the only person who got into the Sherlock Holmes “role playing game” as a kid, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, a game that had an excellent foundation, but which I simply couldn’t get others to play. I was therefore pretty excited to find this new addition to the Sherlock Holmes mythos.

The House of Silk is a very well written tale that is grand in scope. The mystery that Holmes and Watson are drawn into is very intricate and twisted. The various characters are handled well. The way Holmes is handled is particularly gratifying. At one point, in which the situation is rather dire and Watson receives some assistance from a third party, I felt a little disappointed that Holmes would need to be bailed out, but it turns out the Holmes had his own solution. Overall, it was a very gratifying read and a great addition to the Holmes adventures.

There were two minor quibbles I had. First, the conceit of the novel, that this was a particularly sensitive case that couldn’t be published at the time of the original cases, felt like it closed more doors than it opened. That is, it didn’t seem to leave much room for any further adventures. Of course, there is a lot of “unaccounted time” in the life of Holmes that could be filled in, but exactly how any other story would be added is a little uncertain. Possibly there is no plan to do so, but given the success of this novel and other media versions of Sherlock, I would be surprised if the estate does not take advantage and push on this.

The other quibble is that Holmes, while the central character and the most critical character for advancing the plot, is also, in some odd ways, not that present. He is of course there, all the time, giving his insight, but he feels a bit detached, a bit distant. Maybe it is part of the idea that Watson is telling this story many years after it happened, and of course his personality dominates. Whatever the reason, Holmes almost feels a bit more like a plot device than a real character. Maybe that’s the way all of Doyle’s stories were too.

However, these are minor quibbles and the story itself is a very fitting successor of the Holmes mythos. A fast and satisfying read, I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever enjoyed the original stories. This novel certainly makes me want to finally break out that annotated set of stories I’ve had on the bookshelf for more than a few years and rediscover this great character.

The Sun and the Moon

However, The Sun and the Moon is one of those pleasant surprises, one of those hidden gems that delight. It does drag on a bit, with seemingly longer than necessary descriptions of life in New York in the early 1800s. However, as I went along, I began to appreciate them more and more as pictures of a distant time that gave me a better feeling for the New York and United States that Goodman is exploring.

The context of the book is one in which a newspaper, in an attempt to build circulation, publishes a hoax about, of all things, the discovery of life on the moon. One of the most astonishing things about this story is that in the 1800s, such a notion was not so odd that people were all that skeptical. In fact, even educated people believed that bat-men lived on the moon. The hoax, clothed in the language of the science of the day, provided a convincing enough picture that people fell for it, hook, line and sinker. In retrospect, the hoax may be considered one of the first pieces of science fiction.

A very interesting side story is that of Edgar Allen Poe, an up and coming poet who was also very interested in both science fiction and hoaxes more generally and who begrudged Richard Locke, the author of the so-called “moon hoax,” for the notoriety he gained that Poe could not. The narrative weaves between Locke, Poe, and the new penny newspaper that, as a consequence of the moon hoax, became the most read paper in the world. PT Barnum also plays a role, perpetuating hoaxes of his own (including a 160-year-old former slave who was purported to be George Washington’s nurse-maid).

In the background of all of this is the life of the average New Yorkers who live in this very vibrant era. And it is that backdrop that proves the most interesting of all of this story. How New Yorkers responded to these sensational “news” stories and the men who told these stories is fascinating. If one can get by the some times flowery descriptions, one is in for a very interesting look into how our fellow countrymen viewed themselves and the world almost 200 years ago.

At that time, the “plurality of worlds doctrine” — that life on other planets was not only possible, but was almost a certainty given God’s vastness — was a common belief (though one stubbornly resisted by the Catholic Church). Charismatic theologians promulgated this belief as an obvious consequence of the greatness of God. The people at the time were thus naturally predisposed to believe in life on other worlds. This tendency to believe in the plurality of worlds was a direct consequence of the strong Christian faith of the country. Goodman quotes De Tocqueville, who remarked at the time that the United States was “where the Christian religion has kept the greatest real power over men’s souls.” It is amazing the degree to which such beliefs have completely changed since then while the basic makeup of the country has remained relatively similar.

One side note regarding Poe was interesting. Poe had a custom to attach literary rivals and others with whom he disagreed. In one such exchange, Poe remarked of a rival: Clark is “noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing.” I’ve got to find a way to use that sometime.

Overall, while not of much importance for 21st century citizens, this book offers a tale of human nature and human endeavor that is truly fascinating. From the extraordinary efforts the protagonists go to in building a new type of newspaper to the very different way that people viewed the world, the window this book provides into a different time is worth a few moments of our own.

In American Creation, Joseph J. Ellis puts the founding of America in the context of the people who were responsible. Ellis is a master story teller, a first class historian with an ear for telling history. Rather than a chronology of the founding, he gives us a series of episodes that highlight not only the grand achievements of the era, but also the failures, often the result of the very failings of these men that do, in the end, make them human.

Ellis chooses 6 episodes that not only illustrate the role the founders had in the formation of the US, but also the role that happenstance played. He describes the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the winter at Valley Forge as a decisive turning point in how Washington fought the Revolutionary War, the arguments by Madison for a strong federal government in the Constitution, the efforts by Washington and his cabinet to find a solution to the country’s relationship with the Native Americans, the formation of the Democratic party by Madison and Jefferson, and Jefferson’s exercise of the same near-monarchial power he so vehemently despised when he executed the Louisiana Purchase.

These stories describe how the passions of these men often led them to live political lives full of hypocrisy, arguing on one side of an issue that they had been the most vocal opponents of. However, these men knew their place in history and worked to massage how future generations might judge their place in history.

The story of Washington trying to reach peace with the Indians was particularly interesting as I had not been aware of this history. In the end, Washington did make a treaty with the Creek Nation of the south, but simple demographics rendered it meaningless as white settlers kept pushing west. For the same reason the British could never win the Revolutionary War (once Washington stopped directly engaging them), so the US government could never stop the displacement of the Native Americans from the American frontier.

However, probably the most fascinating part, to me, was about the writing and subsequent adoption of the Constitution. Madison was the most vocal and ardent advocate of a strong central government, a government he proposed should have veto power over the states. He lost that battle. Because of the inability of the different sides to come to agreement on the questions of executive authority and the relationship between federal and state power, these were left rather vague. Ellis argues that what the founders thus created was not a document that had the answers to all of their, and subsequent Americans’, questions, but a framework for arguing and deciding these questions. The vagueness let the government expand and contract as needed, as history dictated. They created a living document — a living government — that could adapt with time. To me, incidentally, this is the exact opposite that those that read the Constitution literally and try to understand the intentions of the founders, try to do. There was no single intention of the founders; rather, they created a system that was inherently unclear on many important and central questions precisely because they didn’t have a clear answer.

In addition to the early country’s relationship with the Native Americans, Ellis describes the complex relationship the founders, and the country as a whole, had with slavery. These two issues he points out as the two biggest failings of the founders — their inability to address them. Ellis argues that maybe there was no solution, that the two problems were inherently insoluble. In any case, both are two stains that the founders knew posterity would judge them for, and rightly so.

In the end, this was one of the most interesting books I’ve read on the founding of the US. Ellis provides insight into what these men really achieved, what was remarkable about those achievements, even the creation of political parties that we so often, today, rail against. I learned a great deal about how our country was founded, who the men involved were, and how different our country might have been if a few winds had blown in just slightly different directions. This is a book I highly recommend to all who care about the foundations of our republic.

Machine Man is no different. When an engineer, Charles Neumann, loses his leg in an accident at work, the way he responds is very different than how most of us might in his situation. Being an engineer, he begins to improve on the prosthetics he is issued at the hospital. However, once he realizes that the new leg he has built is better — faster, stronger, and smarter — than the leg he used to have, he embarks on a journey of self-improvement the likes of which the world has never seen.

Of course, Charles is simply taking being an engineer to a completely new level, reengineering his own body. However, at some point, his bosses take notice and see other uses for what Charles is doing. What happens when Charles’ inventions are viewed not only as improvements on prosthetics but also as products to be sold, including to the military? And where does Charles’ self-improvement end? These are the basis of a plot that does more than just take us on a wild roller coaster ride, but also tries to shed light on the question of what it means to be human.

In an age in which one form of self-improvement — doping — is ubiquitous in professional sports, one can ask what happens when trying to improve on human biology is taken to the extreme. Barry offers us one glimpse of what might be. It’s a vision both thrilling and a bit disconcerting.

Society is constantly having to relearn this lesson, especially as technological advances give us more and more power in new and different realms. Harnessing the power of the atom has given us both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Medical advances have allowed us to extend life, even create life such as so-called test tube babies. Genetically modified food offers great hope to help feed the world but also the dangers of Franken-food. And the internet has revolutionized how we communicate, both for good and bad.

One of the next big frontiers of science is neuroscience, the science of the human brain. By understanding how the brain works, we are understanding more about how we function, why we behave the way we do, and what differentiates each of us. We are now at the point that we can, using a brain scan, know if we are looking at the brain of a psychopath or a normal person. If you think about it, this is tremendous power. This is probably as close as we will ever come to Minority Report, being able to tell if someone is likely a criminal before they ever do anything.

Think about it. If a psychopaths brain is truly different from the rest, a brain scan will identify who is a psychopath before they do anything to harm anyone. We would know if they have the potential for becoming a psychopath. And we might even be able to do that scan when they are a child.

Given that we could, in principle, do such a scan and identify potential psychopaths long before they become psychopathic, what should we do with that power? Should we scan everyone’s brains, and closely watch those that are likely to become psychopaths? This seems a huge infringement on personal liberty, but if it prevented the type of massacre that occurred in Norway, might it be worth it?

On the flip side, if psychopaths and other sociopaths truly have a different brain structure, how much of their actions are they really responsible for? If it is all brain chemistry controlled by genetics, should we all be thankful we have normal brains? Should we try to identify these people so we can find some way to treat them so they can lead normal lives?

And, finally, consider the fact that there is a very fine line between psychopathy and genius. Studies suggest many of the top CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits. If we somehow controlled the behavior of presumed psychopaths, would we be impacting other areas of society, including business and politics?

I have lots of questions and no answers. I think these types of questions will soon confront us. And technology is advancing at a pace that is much faster than at least our political and legal systems can keep up with. We will be faced with a future where people who barely understand the implications of the science, much less the science itself, are placed in a position of trying to address these questions. I think the sooner society as a whole dwells on them, the better able we will be able to deal with them.

Many of these stories have a fantasy or supernatural bent to them, but some of them are simply of ordinary people in quite unordinary situations. Some of them are simply odd, and others are quite dark. One, for example, is the story of a serial killer, from the point of view of the killer himself. Others are stories of revenge or simply stories of life. While some made bigger impressions on me than others, none of them disappointed.

I won’t go into any detail about any of the stories, as I’d prefer to let anyone who might be so inclined to discover this great collection for themselves. I will say that, while I tend to enjoy fantasy, it was the other stories that resonated more strongly for me. And the darker ones were, indeed, a bit disturbing. All, however, are highly recommended.

However, a recent NY Times piece points out that all of us are depending more and more on government assistance to get by and, ironically, it is in precisely those places where opposition to government aid is greatest where dependence on that aid has grown the most. In particular, the article describes research by a professor at Dartmouth College, Dean Lacy, who has found:

Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates.

That is, the places that give more than they get tend to be Democrat, and those that get more than they give tend to be Republican. This isn’t new, it has been discussed before. It always struck me as strange. Those that rail most against taxes and big government are those that receive the most benefit. Whether this is from farm subsidies, food stamps, or whatever, the fact that the objections to government helping people come most from those getting that help strikes me as odd.

The article doesn’t give much insight into why this is the case. It does allude to the fact that maybe some of those receiving benefits are somehow ashamed of that and would rather that it not be so easy to get government assistance. That is, they’d almost rather be forced to take a harder road where they are more self-reliant. That the government helps them is almost a failing on their part, which by extension is a failing of the government.

I guess I don’t quite understand fully. Maybe it is related to the so-called American dream which provides us with the comforting notion that if we just work hard enough, we will have that nice suburban house with the white picket fence and the 2.3 children in an idyllic neighborhood. The reality, in my opinion, is not so clean. There is no way our system can support all of us attaining that ideal; as I’ve written about before, it seems to me that a large number of us have to fail in achieving that dream in order for our system to function. We need people at the bottom of the ladder to perform those jobs that the majority of us don’t want to do.

So, is it a failure to attain that dream, a failure of being self-sufficient and thus needing government help the reason for this contradiction in people taking government resources but at the same time wanting to cut them? Do they feel guilty for having to take them? Do they resent having to, in some sense, rely upon those that are willing to pay more taxes to support them? Do they resent that they even have the option, that government isn’t forcing them to struggle heroically in face of adversity, in the fashion that so much of American mythology is based?

I guess, in the end, I don’t have an explanation and I really don’t understand this dichotomy. If we do end up electing politicians who do cut the safety net, it is those very people who want it cut that will be hurt the most. Ironically, it is those that support having the safety net that can best deal with it being cut. Not much of politics seems rational to me, and this particular issue epitomizes, for me, the irrationality of politics in America.

This year, our gifts for our siblings and parents were a family effort. Inspired by a coat rack that Lisa’s grandfather had made, we made hat racks (the hooks aren’t maybe as strong as on the original model). I borrowed a router from a friend and got the wood from another friend who had some scrap pieces just the right size lying around. This was the first time I’d used a router. I did it free-hand, which made it just a little more difficult to keep everything level and straight, but I think in the end they turned out well.  I used a different routing bit and/or different routing depths for each of the pieces.

We then had our daughter write out everyone’s names in her unique 3-year-old script and I then wood-burned everyone’s names into the wood. For each family, we gave each family member a different hook, with their name burned above their hook.  For the grandparents, we put each grandparent’s name and then the names of all of their grandchildren (fortunately, our parents didn’t have as many kids as our grandparents, as we would have needed literally 6 foot long hat racks).  Lisa finished them by varnishing them. We got the hooks at the local hardware store, going for a rustic look. The final products were not the most sophisticated things in the world, but I think they turned out nice. When we were at my parents’ house for Christmas, I hung up their rack, which fit perfectly behind their door.  Now all of the grandkids have a place to hang their stuff when they visit amuma and txitxi!

For all of the cousins and friends, we made more marker holders. A year or so ago, inspired by an image I’d seen on some blog, I made a marker holder that Lisa then painted to look like a ladybug. This year, we made 6 more, a camel, a snail, a bee, a spider, a turtle, and a bug. Lisa did a great job taking almost abstract lines cut into the wood with a Dremel tool and making them marvelous little creatures. The spider, in particular, I really liked, with all of it’s eyes doing all different things (this spider only has 6 eyes; while more than 97% of spiders have 8 eyes, there are a few that have 6). Our daughter uses her ladybug all the time, as it makes it super-convenient for her to have her markers out in a way where she can easily grab the color she wants. I hope the other kids get as much use out of theirs.

For Lisa, I made a trivet. This was a bit trickier than the hat racks, as I made a relatively complex shape that incorporates our names.  I used a sort of square font that I’ve played with since I was in grade school, using it in the past for various doodles and such. This seemed a perfect project to use it as I wanted a shape that was pretty solid and interconnected so that it would support a pot or pan. The lines between the letters were Dremeled out while the lines defining the interior of each letter were first Dremeled and then wood burned.  The outside was routed. In the end, while it jumps out at me, I’m not sure the letters are very clear to someone who didn’t actually make the thing. I guess my initial piece of wood was not very flat as it doesn’t sit completely flat on the table. And the wood varnish I used maybe isn’t the best for very hot things (some pots have stuck to the varnish). Some things to think about next time.

The last project was for our daughter. A couple of years back, while visiting Lisa’s parents, Lisa’s dad showed me how to use his lathe. Just playing around, I’d made a few little figures representing Lisa, me, and our daughter. This year, we expanded her little wooden family, with figures of grandparents, all of the cousins, and even a snow man and Santa Claus!  There is still more family to do — we are debating whether to continue the expansion to her aunts and uncles — but I think at the very least I have to do a little wooden frog at some point. Lisa did a wonderful job painting these, giving them character and making the resemblance to their real-life counterpart very close. On the back of each one is that person’s name, so our daughter also has a way of learning how to spell everyone’s name.

We’ve been sort of waiting until the last minute to get these done. The hat racks were literally finished just days before the last shipping day. But, it is nice to make something, rather than buy some piece of plastic. Maybe we aren’t doing our part to support the economy (though the wood and other supplies do add up). But, I also think our economy needs a new basis besides just buying things.

Not sure what we will do next year. I slowly keep expanding our shop, which gives me more flexibility in what to try to make. But my skills are still pretty novice and time is a factor. However, we’ve also turned to wood crafts for the party favors for our daughter’s upcoming birthday. More on that later.

A truly random behavior is often characterized by Brownian motion, named after the guy who discovered it, a guy named Brown, of course.  It was Einstein who understood it and it has become a mainstay of our understanding of how random processes occur, such as the motion of atoms in solids and molecules in liquids.

If humans acted in a Brownian way, we could predict certain aspects of human behavior, such as the average time to move from one place to another, but not much more. It turns out that humans and our associated activities are not so Brownian — not so random — and we are more predictable than that. Our behavior follows “bursts”, in which our patterns are punctuated by long periods of relatively quiet activity followed by bursts of focused activity.  These bursts are indicators of non-random behavior.

As an example, we don’t check our email at random intervals throughout the day. There are times in which we don’t check or answer email for a while, then sudden bursts where we fire off a number of emails in very fast succession.  The same is pretty much true of everything we do, whether we are aware of it or not. This makes us much more predictable than we would think.

In fact, Barabási says that if you give him details of your activity for about 2 months or so, he can predict with better than 80% accuracy what you will do in your day.

Barabási spends a lot of time discussing the implications of this fact, from identifying terrorists (from abnormal behavior) or the fact that advertisers know better than us what we will be doing, and target us very effectively.

Interspersed with his discussion of randomness is a tale from Hungarian history, the story of György Dózsa, a nobel who first was given command of a Crusade against the Ottomans which became a peasant revolt against the nobility of Hungary. I won’t spoil the end, but it is gruesome. Barabási weaves this story throughout his narrative as an attempt to show both how predictable and unpredictable history is. I’m not sure it works nor adds to the basic point of his book, but it is an interesting historical anecdote. I did learn something about a little known aspect of European history. If this guy had been successful in his revolt, Europe might have turned out very different.

In the end, this book gives some very interesting insight into human behavior and points to the danger that companies and governments will know us better than we know ourselves. I already am wary of advertisers as they know our mental propensities better than us, knowing how to appeal to those parts of us that we barely are aware of. With the insight from work such as Barabási’s, they will also know our behavior, our activities and be able to predict what we are going to do. This kind of research offers fascinating new insight into what it means to be human, but also opens the door to more control of our lives.

Company is the third book I’ve read by Max Barry (Jennifer Government and Syrup being the other two). Company follows right on the heels of the others, exploring the relationship between the corporate world and everyday life.  In Company, Barry focuses on the employees, the worker-bees in any corporation, and their role in the company’s successes and failures.  In particular, he examines how the different aspects of the company — marketing, IT, procurement, etc — work together — or don’t — for the betterment of the company.  But, he also explores how corporate culture demands personal sacrifice from the employees in order to maximize corporate success.

Barry explores corporate culture by taking it to absurd extremes — or, at least, I hope he does.  I can’t imagine working in an environment that he describes.  At the same time, while reading Company, I couldn’t help but think that “that’s a lot like where I work.” For example, regarding the different organizations in the company and their relationships to one another, I’ve often thought that there must be someone where I work who’s sole job is to make up new forms, just so I have new ones to fill out.  Not because it leads to more productivity, or makes it easier to do my job, but just because.  Just because someone has a job to make forms.

By lampooning corporate culture, Barry exposes some of the trends that are really disturbing once you think about them.  I won’t go into details because I think it would spoil the plot, but suffice it to say that by painting corporate life in an absurd extreme, Barry offers insight into just how corporate culture is affecting us, both as individuals and as a society.

I really enjoyed the novel and highly recommend it, both for its entertainment value and its perspective on our market-driven society. I’d really like to hear what people who are in large, multinational corporations think about this book.  Barry himself used to work at HP. Any HPeons out there willing to give their thoughts?