Es un best-seller, con eso se dice mucho.
Los aciertos: Se desarrolla en la Barcelona durante la consolidación franquismo, los personajes aman a los libros y los libros mismos son protagonistas, la trama es compleja y de historias anidadas, todo personaje o entorno nuevo es presentado junto con su detallado historial, el cliché de la chica pianista y elegante es destrozado tanto sobre las teclas como sobre la cama, el protagonista tiene la claridad sobre sus inquietudes amorosas que se esperaría a ésa edad.
Los errores: El tono es increíblemente provinciano, no parece una novela escrita en el siglo 21, sino apenas en el albor del siglo 20. Cuando los personajes hablan de algo que les fue relatado a ellos, saturan el relato con detalles que es anti-natural que les fueran revelados. Hay cientos de ejemplos a lo largo de la novela, y fue quizá lo que más me molestó. Por ejemplo, el sacerdote recuerda que en la secundaria un amigo conoció a una chica y habla del encuentro saturándolo de metáforas, que si la luz flotaba alrededor de la chica como un encantamiento de un mago medieval, etc. O el abogado de la imprenta hablando que se había enterado que los libros se habían mandado a reciclar, pero recuerda con sospechosa claridad qué había sido del destino del papel reciclado, qué tipo de misarios se habían impreso, que tipo de gente leía los misarios y qué ropa y comidas hacían tales lectores... suena a demasiado detalle para alguien que había escuchado sobre el reciclaje a la pasada.
En fin, es un best-seller, su principal mérito es atrapar al lector, y es difícil declarar que no me gusto siendo que me atrapó tanto y que lo leí en tan corto tiempo, tratando de saber "qué va a pasar?"
Friday, December 27, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
In pursuit of the unknown. 17 equations that changed the world, Ian Stewart (2012)
(Kindle) I'm often surprised when smart people don't have a basic understanding of what was required to create the civilization around us: planes, buildings, subway, supermarkets, computers, phones. Knowledge of the scientific progress is patchy, but math seems to be way off the radar for most people, so I think books like these are a necessity.
Somewhere in chapter 12 it quotes novelist C.P. Snow, who warns that society is starting to slit into 2 groups, one of them being scientifically illiterate, says that in a party people would be appalled if you haven't heard who Shakespeare is, but it would be perfectly OK (if not charming) not to know what is the Second Law of thermodynamics is about; I agree that scientific ignorance is a peril.
The quote is "The great edifice of physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have"
The book is well written, but intellectually demanding at times, is not an introductory book, it assumes you have some notion of basic algebra and calculus, it assumes you know what's a matrix (not the martial arts Matrix, but the vector arrangements). It does a good job at describing the equation, what does it mean, and the real world implications, it even peppers some chapters with a few historical or biographical notes about the mathematicians. It does try to walk you through the equations at a high level, but is not easy to do on a book, the same way is easier to learn calculus with a teacher on a room than reading on your own. Still, definitely worth the read, if a reader is not to keen on the math portions, they can always skip the hard parts and go straight to the implications.
The chapter on logarithms finally explained to me the musical scale (besides 'The Sound of Music' Do Re Mi song, that is) Sadly, it made me realize how much math I've lost in the 20 years since I graduated.
Chapter 12, is full of shocks and revelations, some minor, like the fact that even in 1900 most scientist still didn't favour the theory that matter is made from atoms, but mainly, the fact that the second law of thermodynamics may only apply to closed systems, "In the kinetic theory of gases, the forces that act between the molecules are short-range (active only when the molecules collide) and repulsive (they bounce). But most of the forces of nature aren't like that. For example gravity acts at enormous distance, and it is attractive" The philosophical implications are colossal! It means that the 'slow dead of the universe' scenario implied by entropy can be the result of mistakenly applying a model to a system where it doesn't apply.
A really great book, it is intellectually exciting, and it gives you a peek into some of the greatest minds ever. As I was reading the last chapter, I took a cab ride in Guadalajara with a driver that was Schumacher re-incarnated, and talking about his 12 year old taxi, I asked how many kilometres it had, he mentioned "I've never been good at math" and then laboriously put together the 7 and the 1 to guess 71,000km (it really was 711,000), but the fact that he could barely read numbers and could guess wrong by an order of magnitude gave me pause to reflect on the education gaps this society still has to close, and probably never will. Let's just hope that the gap is not closed by bringing down everyone to the scientific illiteracy level.
Some favorite quotes so far:
"“Actually, though, the null hypothesis is ‘the data are due to chance and the effects of chance are normally distributed’, so there might be two reasons to reject the null hypothesis: the data are not due to chance, or they are not normally distributed. The first supports the significance of the data, but the second does not. It says you might be using the wrong statistical model.”
Somewhere in chapter 12 it quotes novelist C.P. Snow, who warns that society is starting to slit into 2 groups, one of them being scientifically illiterate, says that in a party people would be appalled if you haven't heard who Shakespeare is, but it would be perfectly OK (if not charming) not to know what is the Second Law of thermodynamics is about; I agree that scientific ignorance is a peril.
The quote is "The great edifice of physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have"
The book is well written, but intellectually demanding at times, is not an introductory book, it assumes you have some notion of basic algebra and calculus, it assumes you know what's a matrix (not the martial arts Matrix, but the vector arrangements). It does a good job at describing the equation, what does it mean, and the real world implications, it even peppers some chapters with a few historical or biographical notes about the mathematicians. It does try to walk you through the equations at a high level, but is not easy to do on a book, the same way is easier to learn calculus with a teacher on a room than reading on your own. Still, definitely worth the read, if a reader is not to keen on the math portions, they can always skip the hard parts and go straight to the implications.
The chapter on logarithms finally explained to me the musical scale (besides 'The Sound of Music' Do Re Mi song, that is) Sadly, it made me realize how much math I've lost in the 20 years since I graduated.
Chapter 12, is full of shocks and revelations, some minor, like the fact that even in 1900 most scientist still didn't favour the theory that matter is made from atoms, but mainly, the fact that the second law of thermodynamics may only apply to closed systems, "In the kinetic theory of gases, the forces that act between the molecules are short-range (active only when the molecules collide) and repulsive (they bounce). But most of the forces of nature aren't like that. For example gravity acts at enormous distance, and it is attractive" The philosophical implications are colossal! It means that the 'slow dead of the universe' scenario implied by entropy can be the result of mistakenly applying a model to a system where it doesn't apply.
A really great book, it is intellectually exciting, and it gives you a peek into some of the greatest minds ever. As I was reading the last chapter, I took a cab ride in Guadalajara with a driver that was Schumacher re-incarnated, and talking about his 12 year old taxi, I asked how many kilometres it had, he mentioned "I've never been good at math" and then laboriously put together the 7 and the 1 to guess 71,000km (it really was 711,000), but the fact that he could barely read numbers and could guess wrong by an order of magnitude gave me pause to reflect on the education gaps this society still has to close, and probably never will. Let's just hope that the gap is not closed by bringing down everyone to the scientific illiteracy level.
Some favorite quotes so far:
"“Actually, though, the null hypothesis is ‘the data are due to chance and the effects of chance are normally distributed’, so there might be two reasons to reject the null hypothesis: the data are not due to chance, or they are not normally distributed. The first supports the significance of the data, but the second does not. It says you might be using the wrong statistical model.”
Shantaram. Gregory David Roberts. 2003
(Kindle) The most transcendental book I've read this year, attributable to one single idea. Even without that idea, the book would still be great, surely the best one I have read this year. But once in a while comes a book that has buried inside such a fundamental idea about life & the world, that it seems totally out of place, like finding about the true identity of your parents somewhere in the middle of your monthly bank statement. I had the same feeling when I read Carl Sagan's conception of God buried deep in his novel Contact (that idea didn't make it into the movie, btw).
But let's get to the book first, I'll go back to that idea later. Seemingly semi-auto biographical, it tells the story of an Australian convict making a new life in Mumbai, where he spends time on a slum, and gets involved with the local Mafia. A very, very well rounded book (recommended by Munish), it has super style, well developed characters, an exotic setting, a sustained plot. It did remind me a bit of Álvaro Mutis in terms of romanticizing the criminal world and remote parts of the world, it also reminded me of Alexandria´s Quartet and even Casablanca (the main character shares multiple personality traits with of Rick), it`s saturated with great quotes (which I can't retrieve now because I used bookmark instead of highlight on the kindle), and it handles love in a very elegant way (I love what he did with Karla's character). It is a novel of adventures, and for that perhaps more focused on the male reader, but I may be wrong about that.
One of my typical complaints about a novel, is that everything that happens in the city is connected to the main character; in this case is even more unbelievable because the character is not only involved, but apparently is the cathartic agent, every little problem in the slum has to be taken to the white man to be solved. At some point I thought of this as a bit paternalistic towards the Mumbai habitants, but then I think how at work brilliant engineers come to me all day with very simple, minute problems, so maybe is a dynamic of roles and perspectives. And again, I won't harpoon too much on this criticism given that much of the book is based on the author's own experience, so maybe that's how the things happened.
The second one is a defect but also a blessing, just like in with Álvaro Mutis novels, every character from the grocery store clerk to the gun-toting counterfeiters, uses every mundane conversation lo launch into speeches of philosophical insight about the nature of love, life, universal values, etc. that would put the Dalai Lama to shame. Is a defect because is not real, I can testify that when I go to cut my hair, the guy just talks about the weather, his boy's soccer team and local politics. If real people speaks like David Robert's characters, then I've been hanging around the wrong crowd. But, it is blessing, because is really enjoyable to read those ideas, those long speeches and conversations.
And it brings me back to that key idea of the book that would make it worthwhile reading even if all the rest was garbage. One afghan mafia lord is talking of his personal philosophy (of course, what else afghan mafia lords speak about?), and the he blurts out this:
“The whole universe is moving toward some ultimate complexity. This has been going on since the universe began, and physicists call it the tendency toward complexity. And… anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil…
“And this final complexity… it can be called God or the Universal Spirit, or the Ultimate Complexity, as you please. For myself, there is no problem in calling it God. The whole universe is moving toward God, in a tendency toward the ultimate complexity that God is…"
When I read this, I thought an idea so fundamental couldn't come from a novel written by an ex-heroin addict, I thought he most have lifted it from some previous philosopher. I'm by far no expert in philosophy, but I've done some research and so far I've not found any previous mention of such idea.
Then a few years ago, 3 ideas clicked together in my head. The first one: Richard Dawkin's explanation of evolution in The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show on Earth, where he points out that evolutionary advantages like giraffe's long neck, or turtles's shell didn't HAVE to happen, it was NOT BOUND to happen, nobody HAD to adapt, the straightforward thing to do when environment changed was not to adapt (which implies an active effort), the straightforward thing was to die and disappear. All of living things characteristics advantages are random accidents that happened to stick... against all odds. Up to then I have known, but not really understood that life is not inevitable, but rather an accident among many. There have been millions of species in this planet, but very few evolved into intelligent, sentient beings, most of them, most of the time, didn't evolve into more complex organisms. Intelligence is possible, but not a given. Increased complexity is possible, but not guaranteed.
The second one came from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, he emphasizes that the progression from nomadic tribe, to village, to kingdom to nation (to united nations?) is seen by many people as a natural progression, but is far from natural. It didn't HAVE to happen. Tribes in Amazon, Australia and Africa lived almost like stone age people all throughout modern history. Modern civilization is a form of organization so much more complex than the first hunters tribes that is totally unrecognizable from those. Once again, a difference in degree of complexity results in a difference in kind. And once again, this increased complexity was possible, but not guaranteed. We all kind of know that, but is hard to really grasp it.
And the third one, was the 2009 trip to Egypt. The stern contrast between the Pharaonic civilization, the modern world, the Islamic culture and the bare, barren dessert make you think a lot about what is good, what is bad, and what are the options. When looking at the evidence of the negative traits of religious fanaticism in the context of the survival challenges, you wonder "what if religious fanaticism was the only force capable of keeping the communities going on and surviving in this environment?,if the alternative is disappearing isn't fanaticism a good thing by comparison?" And you consider that a civilization with many failures, such as the western civilization, with corruption, waste, suffering, abuse and superficiality is better than no civilization at all, is better than no life at all (if you don't agree with that then you are a good candidate for a sci-fi villain with a plot to destroy the world). Thus, a few years ago, looking out the window at the Sahara dessert, I concluded that increased complexity is always desirable (living things vs stones, humans vs mosquitoes, Manhattan vs. cave man's tribe), but is not granted, is precious, not guaranteed. Luxor had to be carved out of stone with sweat and intention, but the empire died, and there is not guarantee that Europe, US, or any country won't collapse and implode, quite the contrary, it takes lots of effort to keep civilization going.
Ah, I should mention a 4th idea. A small one about the universe itself. This one is on Brian Greene's "The hidden universe: parallel universes and the deep laws of cosmos" (2011).
There is no Paris without humans, there is no humans without life, there is no life without solar system, there is no solar system without our galaxy and the universe... and he illustrates how the properties of the universe that made possible matter and the universe itself are so extremely unlikely that either the universe is product of of The Greatest fluke conceivable, or that there are so many universes, that probabilistically one of them simply HAD to have the properties our has. Properties that allow atoms, planets, stars.
And we are back to complexity, complexity is desirable and precious, but what's the enemy of complexity? chaos? nothingness? since school I thought there was a better villain: entropy. The entropy of a system always increases, complexity always decreases, that's just nature (or that's just God if you prefer that nomenclature). But just as I finished Shantaram, I started "In pursuit of the unknown. 17 equations that changed the world" I learned that entropy is a model that can't be applied to the universe because it doesn't consider attractive and long distance forces, such as gravity. So my long held conviction that entropy was the worst villain has now crumbled. The opposite of complexity is not easy to define, simplicity? triviality?
In any case, when I read this complexity theory in the novel I almost jumped around the room with my arms in the air (why are we allowed to do that for Worldcup or Superbowl matches, but not for books?). the afghan mafia lord is probably wrong about something: the world is not moving towards complexity, quite the contrary, in closed systems, entropy ensures complexity will decrease. But I fully agree with the second part of the statement "anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil"
some favourite quotes:
“My culture had taught me all the wrong things well.”
“Good doctors have at least three things in common: they know how to observe, they know how to listen, and they’re very tired.”
“He was one of thousands of health professionals working in the city, with careers as distinguished in what they denied themselves as in what they achieved every working day. And what they achieved was no less than the survival of the city.”
“Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”
“Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain.”
“She’s a very special kind of chick. She needs to get all the hating done, like, before she can kind of cruise into the loving part”
“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey”
“The universe has a nature, for and of itself, something like human nature, if you like, and its nature is to combine, and to build, and to become more complex. It always does this. If the circumstances are right, bits of matter will always come together to make more complex arrangements.”
Note: false; entropy is inevitable, complexity is just an statistical accident
“And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to, is what I choose to call God. If you don’t like that word, God, call it the Ultimate Complexity. Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving toward it.’”
Note: Very ineresting, god is work in progress Edit
‘In essence, you are right. Anything that enhances, promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good,’ he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision, that I was sure he’d spoken the phrases many times. ‘Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil.”
“Avoid chaos, in building houses and dividing land and so forth, by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of length. We call it a metre and, after many attempts, we decide upon a way to establish the length of that basic unit. In the same way, we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.”
“The girls danced into a million dreams.”
“Thoughts drift like ocean weeds and vanish in the distant, grey somnolency, unperceived and indeterminable.”
“We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them”
“Pure and precise language of his own—something more than slogans and less than proverbs”
“I knew that my life, there and then, was no more than a handful of sand squeezed into my clenched fist”
“This movement from the simple to the complex is built into the web and weave of the universe, and it’s called the tendency toward complexity. We’re the products of this complexification, and so are the birds, and the bees, and the trees, and the stars, and even the galaxies of stars. And if we were to get wiped out in a cosmic explosion, like an asteroid impact or something, some other expression of our level of complexity would emerge, because that’s what the universe does. And this is likely to be going on all over the universe.”
“The final or ultimate complexity—the place where all this complexity is going—is what, or who, we might call God. And anything that promotes, enhances, or accelerates this movement toward God is good. Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents it is evil.”
“Lord Frederick Roberts, because, you see, the man who killed my people in hundreds was so kind to his own soldiers that they called him Uncle Bobs. And they said that if he was in charge, everything would be well—Bobs your uncle”
“He was a rebel without a cause, in a world that doesn’t have enough rebels for the real causes”
“She’d confused honour with virtue. Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honour is concerned with how we do it”
“You can fight a war in an honourable way—the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason—and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all”
“Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we’d done unclenched the clawed palm of what we’d become”
Idriss,
But let's get to the book first, I'll go back to that idea later. Seemingly semi-auto biographical, it tells the story of an Australian convict making a new life in Mumbai, where he spends time on a slum, and gets involved with the local Mafia. A very, very well rounded book (recommended by Munish), it has super style, well developed characters, an exotic setting, a sustained plot. It did remind me a bit of Álvaro Mutis in terms of romanticizing the criminal world and remote parts of the world, it also reminded me of Alexandria´s Quartet and even Casablanca (the main character shares multiple personality traits with of Rick), it`s saturated with great quotes (which I can't retrieve now because I used bookmark instead of highlight on the kindle), and it handles love in a very elegant way (I love what he did with Karla's character). It is a novel of adventures, and for that perhaps more focused on the male reader, but I may be wrong about that.
One of my typical complaints about a novel, is that everything that happens in the city is connected to the main character; in this case is even more unbelievable because the character is not only involved, but apparently is the cathartic agent, every little problem in the slum has to be taken to the white man to be solved. At some point I thought of this as a bit paternalistic towards the Mumbai habitants, but then I think how at work brilliant engineers come to me all day with very simple, minute problems, so maybe is a dynamic of roles and perspectives. And again, I won't harpoon too much on this criticism given that much of the book is based on the author's own experience, so maybe that's how the things happened.
The second one is a defect but also a blessing, just like in with Álvaro Mutis novels, every character from the grocery store clerk to the gun-toting counterfeiters, uses every mundane conversation lo launch into speeches of philosophical insight about the nature of love, life, universal values, etc. that would put the Dalai Lama to shame. Is a defect because is not real, I can testify that when I go to cut my hair, the guy just talks about the weather, his boy's soccer team and local politics. If real people speaks like David Robert's characters, then I've been hanging around the wrong crowd. But, it is blessing, because is really enjoyable to read those ideas, those long speeches and conversations.
And it brings me back to that key idea of the book that would make it worthwhile reading even if all the rest was garbage. One afghan mafia lord is talking of his personal philosophy (of course, what else afghan mafia lords speak about?), and the he blurts out this:
“The whole universe is moving toward some ultimate complexity. This has been going on since the universe began, and physicists call it the tendency toward complexity. And… anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil…
“And this final complexity… it can be called God or the Universal Spirit, or the Ultimate Complexity, as you please. For myself, there is no problem in calling it God. The whole universe is moving toward God, in a tendency toward the ultimate complexity that God is…"
When I read this, I thought an idea so fundamental couldn't come from a novel written by an ex-heroin addict, I thought he most have lifted it from some previous philosopher. I'm by far no expert in philosophy, but I've done some research and so far I've not found any previous mention of such idea.
This idea resonates with me enormously because this is an idea I buy into, actually an idea I've developed myself independently... I know, you're saying 'yeah, right' and rolling your eyes (btw, does anyone read my blog, I wonder), but the way I came to this idea is so straightforward that it amazes me it wasn't a common idea before.
I've long ago given up on the idea of a God with anthropomorphic appearance, I don't think he would look like any of the representations in any church. I've given up on dressing up God with anthropomorphic feelings of compassion, hate, love, disappointment, revenge, etc. If there is a God, I think describing his actions as result of love, forgiveness or anger is so rudimentary as to describe Napoleon's invasion of Russia in terms of the bee's instinct to sting or the moth's reflex to seek light. Feelings are so much more complex than instincts and reflexes that they deserve a different name and are in a whole new category; the only difference is complexity, but in complexity, a difference in degree results in dramatic differences in kind.
The second one came from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, he emphasizes that the progression from nomadic tribe, to village, to kingdom to nation (to united nations?) is seen by many people as a natural progression, but is far from natural. It didn't HAVE to happen. Tribes in Amazon, Australia and Africa lived almost like stone age people all throughout modern history. Modern civilization is a form of organization so much more complex than the first hunters tribes that is totally unrecognizable from those. Once again, a difference in degree of complexity results in a difference in kind. And once again, this increased complexity was possible, but not guaranteed. We all kind of know that, but is hard to really grasp it.
And the third one, was the 2009 trip to Egypt. The stern contrast between the Pharaonic civilization, the modern world, the Islamic culture and the bare, barren dessert make you think a lot about what is good, what is bad, and what are the options. When looking at the evidence of the negative traits of religious fanaticism in the context of the survival challenges, you wonder "what if religious fanaticism was the only force capable of keeping the communities going on and surviving in this environment?,if the alternative is disappearing isn't fanaticism a good thing by comparison?" And you consider that a civilization with many failures, such as the western civilization, with corruption, waste, suffering, abuse and superficiality is better than no civilization at all, is better than no life at all (if you don't agree with that then you are a good candidate for a sci-fi villain with a plot to destroy the world). Thus, a few years ago, looking out the window at the Sahara dessert, I concluded that increased complexity is always desirable (living things vs stones, humans vs mosquitoes, Manhattan vs. cave man's tribe), but is not granted, is precious, not guaranteed. Luxor had to be carved out of stone with sweat and intention, but the empire died, and there is not guarantee that Europe, US, or any country won't collapse and implode, quite the contrary, it takes lots of effort to keep civilization going.
Ah, I should mention a 4th idea. A small one about the universe itself. This one is on Brian Greene's "The hidden universe: parallel universes and the deep laws of cosmos" (2011).
There is no Paris without humans, there is no humans without life, there is no life without solar system, there is no solar system without our galaxy and the universe... and he illustrates how the properties of the universe that made possible matter and the universe itself are so extremely unlikely that either the universe is product of of The Greatest fluke conceivable, or that there are so many universes, that probabilistically one of them simply HAD to have the properties our has. Properties that allow atoms, planets, stars.
And we are back to complexity, complexity is desirable and precious, but what's the enemy of complexity? chaos? nothingness? since school I thought there was a better villain: entropy. The entropy of a system always increases, complexity always decreases, that's just nature (or that's just God if you prefer that nomenclature). But just as I finished Shantaram, I started "In pursuit of the unknown. 17 equations that changed the world" I learned that entropy is a model that can't be applied to the universe because it doesn't consider attractive and long distance forces, such as gravity. So my long held conviction that entropy was the worst villain has now crumbled. The opposite of complexity is not easy to define, simplicity? triviality?
In any case, when I read this complexity theory in the novel I almost jumped around the room with my arms in the air (why are we allowed to do that for Worldcup or Superbowl matches, but not for books?). the afghan mafia lord is probably wrong about something: the world is not moving towards complexity, quite the contrary, in closed systems, entropy ensures complexity will decrease. But I fully agree with the second part of the statement "anything that kicks this along and helps it is good, and anything that hinders it is evil"
some favourite quotes:
“My culture had taught me all the wrong things well.”
“Good doctors have at least three things in common: they know how to observe, they know how to listen, and they’re very tired.”
“He was one of thousands of health professionals working in the city, with careers as distinguished in what they denied themselves as in what they achieved every working day. And what they achieved was no less than the survival of the city.”
“Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”
“Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain.”
“She’s a very special kind of chick. She needs to get all the hating done, like, before she can kind of cruise into the loving part”
“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey”
“The universe has a nature, for and of itself, something like human nature, if you like, and its nature is to combine, and to build, and to become more complex. It always does this. If the circumstances are right, bits of matter will always come together to make more complex arrangements.”
Note: false; entropy is inevitable, complexity is just an statistical accident
“And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to, is what I choose to call God. If you don’t like that word, God, call it the Ultimate Complexity. Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving toward it.’”
Note: Very ineresting, god is work in progress Edit
‘In essence, you are right. Anything that enhances, promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good,’ he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision, that I was sure he’d spoken the phrases many times. ‘Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil.”
“Avoid chaos, in building houses and dividing land and so forth, by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of length. We call it a metre and, after many attempts, we decide upon a way to establish the length of that basic unit. In the same way, we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.”
“The girls danced into a million dreams.”
“Thoughts drift like ocean weeds and vanish in the distant, grey somnolency, unperceived and indeterminable.”
“We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them”
“Pure and precise language of his own—something more than slogans and less than proverbs”
“I knew that my life, there and then, was no more than a handful of sand squeezed into my clenched fist”
“This movement from the simple to the complex is built into the web and weave of the universe, and it’s called the tendency toward complexity. We’re the products of this complexification, and so are the birds, and the bees, and the trees, and the stars, and even the galaxies of stars. And if we were to get wiped out in a cosmic explosion, like an asteroid impact or something, some other expression of our level of complexity would emerge, because that’s what the universe does. And this is likely to be going on all over the universe.”
“The final or ultimate complexity—the place where all this complexity is going—is what, or who, we might call God. And anything that promotes, enhances, or accelerates this movement toward God is good. Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents it is evil.”
“Lord Frederick Roberts, because, you see, the man who killed my people in hundreds was so kind to his own soldiers that they called him Uncle Bobs. And they said that if he was in charge, everything would be well—Bobs your uncle”
“He was a rebel without a cause, in a world that doesn’t have enough rebels for the real causes”
“She’d confused honour with virtue. Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honour is concerned with how we do it”
“You can fight a war in an honourable way—the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason—and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all”
“Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we’d done unclenched the clawed palm of what we’d become”
Idriss,
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Love dishonor marry die cherish perish. David Rakoff
(Kindle). I'll blame This American life on this one. In 2013 I spent so many commute hours listening to episodes of This american Life, that when contributor David Rakoff died, and they read a fragment of his novel to be published posthumously, I decided to get it.
It sounded good, canadian born, Manhattan jewish gay writer creates a modern novel completely in verse. How could it be bad? It turns out, it could be very bad. The worst thing is that the fragment they read in This American Life was superb, sadly, was the only good fragment on the book. Earlier in the year, Rakoff also read a short fiction in verse, the hypothetical epistolary exchange between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss. In that case, the verse format was natural and it worked brilliantly.
But this book is only about the form, it falls flat, not to mention that in his obsession to use the most obscure words of the english language, it alienates readers. I consider myself the owner of a decent vocabulary in English, and I had to use the dictionary function 5 times per verse! (Tanks god for e-books, it would have taken years to read by putting the book down and picking up the dictionary).
I still have an appetite for a good modern book in verse, so I'll be in the lookout. BTw, I thought this was not a very popular book, yet I found that Munish was reading it as well, you have to love a party guy who reads!
It sounded good, canadian born, Manhattan jewish gay writer creates a modern novel completely in verse. How could it be bad? It turns out, it could be very bad. The worst thing is that the fragment they read in This American Life was superb, sadly, was the only good fragment on the book. Earlier in the year, Rakoff also read a short fiction in verse, the hypothetical epistolary exchange between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss. In that case, the verse format was natural and it worked brilliantly.
But this book is only about the form, it falls flat, not to mention that in his obsession to use the most obscure words of the english language, it alienates readers. I consider myself the owner of a decent vocabulary in English, and I had to use the dictionary function 5 times per verse! (Tanks god for e-books, it would have taken years to read by putting the book down and picking up the dictionary).
I still have an appetite for a good modern book in verse, so I'll be in the lookout. BTw, I thought this was not a very popular book, yet I found that Munish was reading it as well, you have to love a party guy who reads!
Spurious. lars Iyer. 2011
Seinfeld famously was supposed to be a show about nothing. The premise of this book is much more ambitious, it strips away any action, any anecdotes, barely any locations and is down to two characters, one of whom we only know by the criticisms of the second one. It is truly about nothing.
Is a book that few people would enjoy, so I'd be selective in who to recommend it to, sadly, perhaps the friend of mine who would most have enjoyed it is someone who is not here anymore (sadly doesn't cut it, in English or Spanish, words fall short when speaking of loosing someone). But anyway, coming back to the book, two philosophy scholars, talk... no wait only one of them talks... no, he doesn't talk, he attacks, relentlessly the other one, sometimes himself, and sometimes the world itself, but mainly attacks the other one with such deadpan resignation that is hard to even call it sarcasm or cynism. And we know of this because the book is told from the perspective of the recipient of all this diatribe. They are, of course, best friends.
Oh, there is some minimal plot in the book: one of them has a problem with humidity on the walls of his apartment. A weird, short, and original book. My favourite passages pasted below
"My idiocy is theological, W. tells me. It is vast, omnipresent; not simply a lack (of intelligence, say), though neither is it entirely tangible or real. We picture it as a vast, dense cloud, and then as a storm, flashing with lightning. It can be quite magnificent, he says. It can shock and awe, W. says. I am that I am, says W., that’s all it says"
"One writes neither for the true proletarian, occupied elsewhere, and very well occupied, nor for the true bourgeois starved of goods, and who have not the ears. One writes for the disadjusted, neither proletarian nor bourgeois; that is to say, for one’s friends, and less for the friends one has than for the innumerable unknown people who have the same life as us, who roughly and crudely understand the same things, are able to accept or must refuse the same, and who are in the same state of powerlessness and official silence."
"My idiocy is theological, W. tells me. It is vast, omnipresent; not simply a lack (of intelligence, say), though neither is it entirely tangible or real. We picture it as a vast, dense cloud, and then as a storm, flashing with lightning. It can be quite magnificent, he says. It can shock and awe, W. says. I am that I am, says W., that’s all it says"
"One writes neither for the true proletarian, occupied elsewhere, and very well occupied, nor for the true bourgeois starved of goods, and who have not the ears. One writes for the disadjusted, neither proletarian nor bourgeois; that is to say, for one’s friends, and less for the friends one has than for the innumerable unknown people who have the same life as us, who roughly and crudely understand the same things, are able to accept or must refuse the same, and who are in the same state of powerlessness and official silence."
The Orphan's master's son. Adam Johnson. 2012
Kindle. Another Pulitzer price winner. There are a few famous books about North Korea around these days, including the auto-biography of someone who actually made it out (escape form Camp 14), but I still decided to go with the fiction one.
What makes it a very entertaining read, if not a great one, is the refreshing perspective of a regime immersed, but still lucid nobody. I would say is an interesting allegory of many religious people, which could be described simultaneously as brainwashed and lucid. The other interesting perspective is the narrative from the loudspeakers, the official propaganda, quite a nifty literary trick, probably that's what got him the Pulitzer.
The book as great themes, such as the two rowing girls in the ocean, and indadvertedly picking the signal from the space station. Alas, it has big flaws, that are inherent to the construction of the novel. First, like all novels that try to capture a place or time alien to the reader, the character is forced from one place to the other, in order to show us the kidnappings in japanese soil, the prison camps, the spying boats, the absurd interaction with the outside world (the trip to Texas), but again, that's the nature of these kind of books, you need the character to stitch together all these vignettes and keep us interested. the second flaw of course if the fact that the North Korean leader is quite real and quite alive. Making a fiction where good triumphs and the evil one is fooled completely doesn't sound quite realistic when the same guy is still in the news, still a Dictator in full control, it feels like wishful thinking. But again, an original book, an original perspective, and quite entertaining, I was up late several nights. Finished November 2013. Favourite quotes below:
"To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero."
What makes it a very entertaining read, if not a great one, is the refreshing perspective of a regime immersed, but still lucid nobody. I would say is an interesting allegory of many religious people, which could be described simultaneously as brainwashed and lucid. The other interesting perspective is the narrative from the loudspeakers, the official propaganda, quite a nifty literary trick, probably that's what got him the Pulitzer.
The book as great themes, such as the two rowing girls in the ocean, and indadvertedly picking the signal from the space station. Alas, it has big flaws, that are inherent to the construction of the novel. First, like all novels that try to capture a place or time alien to the reader, the character is forced from one place to the other, in order to show us the kidnappings in japanese soil, the prison camps, the spying boats, the absurd interaction with the outside world (the trip to Texas), but again, that's the nature of these kind of books, you need the character to stitch together all these vignettes and keep us interested. the second flaw of course if the fact that the North Korean leader is quite real and quite alive. Making a fiction where good triumphs and the evil one is fooled completely doesn't sound quite realistic when the same guy is still in the news, still a Dictator in full control, it feels like wishful thinking. But again, an original book, an original perspective, and quite entertaining, I was up late several nights. Finished November 2013. Favourite quotes below:
"To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero."
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. Tom Reiss
Audiobook. I grew up with the Three Musketeers, is strange that in all these years I never tried to learn more about Alexandre Dumas, I knew his son was also a famous writer, but I didn't know his grandma was a black caribbean slave, I didn't know his father was a legendary black fighter on the French revolutionary army and later the Napoleonic Egyptian invasion.
The book touches in several fascinating topics, the enigmas of current french bureaucracy, racism and acceptance in France, the incredible contradiction of Napoleon's legacy (indeed it was the best of times, it was the worst of times), Paris pre-revolution, the reign of terror, the utterly adventurous and incredibly history of Thomas-Alexandre's Dumas, and no less fascinating way in influenced his son's novels. any true fan would love to know that some of the most beloved passages of Three Musketeers and Count of Montecristo were taking from his father's own adventures and later misfortunes.
Thomas-Alexandre was at some point sold as a slave along with his mother, by his own father who was the white plantation owner, but later re-purchased and recognized as a legitimate son, taken to France and spoiled rotten with a life of luxury, a Dandy in Louis XVI's france. He was incredibly tall, described as imposingly athletic and handsome even by his enemies, and a natural with the sabre.
I won't spoil the book by telling about his act of personal heroism that got him the General rank, or what happened between him and Napoleon later (you have to read the book!), but is amazing to see how progressive was revolutionary France when related to race (the author compares it constantly with how backward was the US then), and how, among the multitude of progressive ideas that Napoleon brought forward (meritocracy!), the one where he had to go back was slavery, given that his backers in his ascent to power were plantation owners.
A Pulitzer prize, and a great read. Finished it Dec 2013,
The book touches in several fascinating topics, the enigmas of current french bureaucracy, racism and acceptance in France, the incredible contradiction of Napoleon's legacy (indeed it was the best of times, it was the worst of times), Paris pre-revolution, the reign of terror, the utterly adventurous and incredibly history of Thomas-Alexandre's Dumas, and no less fascinating way in influenced his son's novels. any true fan would love to know that some of the most beloved passages of Three Musketeers and Count of Montecristo were taking from his father's own adventures and later misfortunes.
Thomas-Alexandre was at some point sold as a slave along with his mother, by his own father who was the white plantation owner, but later re-purchased and recognized as a legitimate son, taken to France and spoiled rotten with a life of luxury, a Dandy in Louis XVI's france. He was incredibly tall, described as imposingly athletic and handsome even by his enemies, and a natural with the sabre.
I won't spoil the book by telling about his act of personal heroism that got him the General rank, or what happened between him and Napoleon later (you have to read the book!), but is amazing to see how progressive was revolutionary France when related to race (the author compares it constantly with how backward was the US then), and how, among the multitude of progressive ideas that Napoleon brought forward (meritocracy!), the one where he had to go back was slavery, given that his backers in his ascent to power were plantation owners.
A Pulitzer prize, and a great read. Finished it Dec 2013,
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