Wrapping Up 2022

It’s the end of the year, time to look back. 

This year marked the ninth year of daily blogging!  That’s crazy, not to mention pointless.  Literally no one asked for it. : – (

But you got it anyway.

Coverage continues about the same.  Dinosaurs and Robots.  Cryptocurrency and Quantum Computing.  Bugs (i.e., software bugs). 

And weekly book reviews.

In other news…

I’ll note that this year I shutdown my never really used twitter account—I was a trend leader in not using twitter!

I also shutdown and cleaned out all of my NFTs and crypto stuff.  These were basically experiments, intended to see how stuff works.  Again, I’m leading the trend, walking away from NFTs and crypto. Be smart. Walk away now.

And, after wanting to do it all my life, I installed solar panels!  Hey, look at me!  I’m a power company!  There is an app, natch, which tells me that I have generated 1.3MWhr of pure, clean, yummy solar electricity since June 21.  A-a-a-h!  Refreshing!

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Best Robot of the Year

I haven’t really been rating robots, but I realized that mostly I blog about robots that capture my childish sense of wonder.  Cool robots.  Weird robots.  Outstanding robots.

So, looking over the posts this year, what is the best robot of 2022 in this blog?

Obviously, the Ingenuity Mars Copter is in a category of its own! 

I mean it’s (a) real and (b) flying on Mars!!!!  Flying! On Mars!  This is what robots are supposed to be!

Down here on Earth, there are lots and lots and lots of robots and robot projects.  I’ll call attention to a few that stand out by not following the herd:

• Ibex – I want a robot I can ride.  With horns!
• Wheelbot – how does this even work?  It’s magical.
• Volodrone – one of the winners in the “that’s not big enough!” department!

But I’m going to tip my hat to the prohibitive favorite: The land of Real Gundam.

As my post indicated:  the purpose of this device is to BE AWESOME.  Why did we build it?  BECAUSE WE COULD.

Now THAT’S what I call a robot!

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Dave Barry Tribute Band Names

As always, I noted ideas for band names, taken from real science and technology articles.

Let me pick a couple of favorites:

Trilobite Eyes
Fluidic innervation

Most of this years list:

Ankylosaur’s Tail-Club
Ankylosaur’s Hair Club
Leidenfrost effect
Structured Thermal Armour
Embayment
Foehn wind 
Fluidic innervation
Sensorize
Ultrafast
Energy exchange
Two single Rydbergs
A jumping reaction wheel unicycle
Non-holonomic
Under-actuated dynamics
Two unstable degrees of freedom
Self-erection
Disturbance rejection
While balancing
Entanglement purification
Doubling architecture
Quantum memories
Entanglement fidelities
Brain slosh reductions (This should be a cocktail)
Contactless Fabrication
Full Acoustic Trapping
Elongated Parts
Speculative Side-channel Attack
A Forward Speculative Interference Attack
Reorder Buffer Contention
Speculation-invariant instructions
Delay-on-miss
Trilobite Eyes
Metalens
Extreme Depth of Field
Boasts Huge

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Books

As always, I read continuously and posted weekly book reviews.  This year I reviewed 22 non-fiction and 55 fiction.

Some Best Books

This year I read most of new fav Mick Herron’s Slough House, as well as recurring favs Stross, Aaronovitch, etc.

Special mention for The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi– because it’s such a pro-nerd fantasy.  There are plenty of stories by nerds and for nerds, but not so many about nerds.  Heroic nerds! 

Non-fiction of note:  Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins. As I wrote, “Hit ‘em again, Elkins!”, I say. “Let me hold your coat while you put the boot in!” 

Special mention for: Math Without Numbers – super great math book, and remarkably easy to understand. I gave this as gift.

All the reviews in loose chronological order.

Q1

Fiction

Anthem by Noah Hawley
Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross
Escape From Yokai Landby Charles Stross
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide
Persephone Station by Stina Leicht
Mermaid Confidential by Tim Dorsey
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber
Creative Types by Tom Bissell
White on White by Ayşegül Savaş
Harrow by Joy Williams
Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe by A. Lee Martinez
The Kaiju Preservation Societyby John Scalzi

Non-Fiction

Treasured by Christina Riggs
Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier
The Modern Detective by Tyler Maroney
The 1619 Project ed. by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

Q2

Fiction

Glitterati by Oliver K. Langmead
Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore
Bad Actors by Mick Herron
Slough House by Mick Herron
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Book of the Night by Holly Black
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks
The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz
Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Out There by Kate Folk
Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore
The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
The Left-handed Twin by Thomas Perry

Non Fiction

How to Take Over the World by Ryan North
The Method by Isaac Butler
Origin by Jennifer Raff
Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins
Seven Games by Oliver Roeder
Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
Ways and Means by Roger Lowenstein
What the Ermine Saw by Eden Collinsworth
The Pope at War by David I. Kertzer

Q3

Fiction

Total by Rebecca Miller
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah
NSFW by Isabel Kaplan
The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs
The Longcut by Emily Hall
An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Absolute by Daniel Duebel
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Spook Street by Mick Herron
Real Tigers by Mick Herron
Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Non-Fiction

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black
Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernández
A Quantum Life by Hakeem Oluseyi
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Q4

Fiction

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin
The Oracle of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente      
Astro-Nuts by Logan J. Hunder
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White
Joe Country by Mick Herron
London Rules by Mick Herron
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man by Emily S. Edwards
Secret Music at Tordesillas by Marjorie Sandor

Non fiction

Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff
Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen
Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf

Q122 Roundup

This quarter marked a milestone:  I have posted every day for 3K days in a row!

That’s more than eight years, now. I guess we’re going for a decade?

Readership-unknown

That’s nice, but..

Is anyone reading the posts?  I don’t know.  The stats are running far fewer hits than last year, but I don’t know what that means.  Is this an artifact of the reporting system?  Is this an artifact of something I don’t see, such as WordPress publicizing?  Perhaps WordPress has improved its robot filtering, killing a lot of bogus traffic.   Is this a side effect of larger factors, such as the fragmentation of the internet?  (E.g., I get no hits from China, and now from Russia.)

Or are people just not looking at my stuff?

Not that it matters.  I’m blogging for my own benefit.  If other people like it, that’s pure bonus for me.

Recurring Features

Some Dave Barry Tribute Band Names

A few ideas for band names, from real science and technology articles.

“Leidenfrost effect“
“Structured Thermal Armour”
“Embayment”
“Foehn wind”  (which is “A warm, dry, downslope wind”)—so
“Downslope wind”

Books Reviewed This Quarter

6 non-fiction, 19 fiction this quarter

Special mention for: Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman and The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Non-Fiction

Treasured by Christina Riggs
Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier
The Modern Detective by Tyler Maroney
The 1619 Project ed. by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein
Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman
Otherlands by Thomas Halliday

Fiction

Anthem by Noah Hawley
Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross
Escape From Yokai Land by Charles Stross
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide
Persephone Station by Stina Leicht
Mermaid Confidential by Tim Dorsey
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber
Creative Types by Tom Bissell
White on White by Ayşegül Savaş
Harrow by Joy Williams
Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe by A. Lee Martinez
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Book Review: “The 1619 Project” ed. by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein

The 1619 Project ed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein

When I was a lad, we always could tell which was the good stuff because that was the stuff they said we weren’t allowed to read.  (Sneaky teachers would tell us we absolutely were not supposed to read a section, thereby assuring that we all would do extra reading that week, because we couldn’t not read the banned part. : – ) )

The 1619 Project has the distinction of inspiring condemnation, denial, and bans all across the US.  You aren’t supposed to read it.

What does that tell you?  You definitely have to read it, no?

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The first ship full of African captives unloaded 1619 – before the Pilgrims landed in 1620.  So, this book starts the story of America in 1619, not in 1620.  (My Native American friends wouldprobably start this shameful story a whole lot earlier than that.)

(And then there is that whole Texas thing.  And the genocidal wars. And the overseas colonies. And so on.)

From an academic point of view, I’m having trouble seeing why anyone would be so upset. This is all solid history, real stuff.  None of it is new or invented here.  Anyone who has actually learned American history already knows all this.  All the stuff in this book is true, even though most of us wish it wasn’t. 

But, of course, it’s not the history that’s the problem.  As the subtitle says, this is “A New Origin Story”, or at least an alternative origin story.  As Hannah-Jones makes clear, the origin stories we tell our selves “illuminate how a society wants to see itself”. (p. 452)  And it’s the desire that’s the big problem.  We hate this version of American history. We want it to not be true, and we wish it would go away.

The other reason why this book is so controversial is that there already was an origin story, one starting in 1620; a story about freedom, progress, virtue, and unity. The 1619 story is a story of violence, hatred, bondage, separation, and evil.  (And, by the way, there are other stories to tell about this same history, e.g., a story of displacement, resistance, and conquest.)

The story in this volume is pretty aggressively revisionist.  In this version, most of the heroes of the conventional (“1620”) myth are, at best, complicit in deeply wicked crimes.  In some sections, the book seems to tell us that the only true heroes in this story are Black freedom fighters.  Everyone else, especially including the US government, is guilty of deliberately or negligently supporting evil.  We are told that, whatever we like to tell ourselves, “throughout our history, the most ardent, courageous, and consistent freedom fighters within this country have been Black Americans.” (p. 453)

This version of the story is pretty unpleasant, especially for anyone who is invested in the conventional myths. But it also hard to swallow for all of us who don’t happen to be heroic freedom fighters of any description.  Which is pretty much everyone.  So, ouch!

Is this then, a culture war, winner take all?  Must it be?  Clearly, many people think so.  And cultural warriors always choose the story that they like better, one that makes them shine, one that morally justifies their own life.  As we have seen, this loyalty may require distortion or suppression of actual history. These days it seems noone cares about facts anymore, anyway.

To be fair, this and similar hard lines are not the only views presented in the book.  For instance, Kendi does give us a more dualist approach familiar from his own work.  Neither origin story is the only story.  The real history of America, he says, is dual, both virtuous and wicked advancing side by side. 

“The long sweep of American has been defined by two forward motions: one force widening the embrace of Black Americans and another maintaining or widening their exclusion.  The dual between these two forces represents the duel at the heart of America’s racial history.”

(Kendi, in [1], p. 439)

I’d push Kendi’s approach even farther.  History is many stories, and individual people and events have meaning in more than one story at a time.  We’re never going to see a pure 100% hero, and probably not a pure 100% villain, either.  Policies are never perfect, motives are never perfect, decisions are never perfect.  People are never perfect.  History can’t possibly be perfect.

I also have a lot of sympathy for anyone who doesn’t want the past to dictate the future. Mythological stories, 1620 or 1619 (or 1491 / 1492), are fiction.  If we are nothing more than these competing myths, and our only way forward is culture war to the death, then the future is bleak.  I think most of us would like to build a world where this culture war is truly irrelevant. 

From this point of view, aggressive myth making of any kind is not necessarily going to lead to a better world.

All that said, 1619 is yet another useful compilation of the history of racial relations in America. Everyone needs to know this stuff.  And if there is some serious debunking of cherished myths, well, deal with it.  And, by the way, see also Kendi, Gates, , Treuer, Saunt, Cozzens, Burrough et al, and many other read sources of history.

Look.  If you don’t understand that the story of the US is the story of race, racism, and the fight against racism, then you don’t understand anything at all about America.  Race isn’t the only story, but it’s always, always right there in front.  

That’s simply the truth. I wish it weren’t, but it is.

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1. Caitlin Roper Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein, ed. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. One World: New York, 2021.

Sunday Book Reviews