Year End Roundup for 2019

This New Years marks close to six years of blogging every day.  I write ‘em, a few of you click on ‘em.

The Traffic Stats Were Weird

The total hits on this blog increased again, up more than 10% from 2018.  As before, there is a huge amount of “long tail” in this traffic, with hits spread widely over the thousands of posts from the last 8 years.

But it isn’t clear exactly how many people actually look at this blog.  The stats I get are defaults from wordpress, so I don’t really know much about them.

This year saw a couple of mysterious blips.  I don’t know how much of this is real traffic, and how much of it is artifacts of the data collection.

Early in the year, the daily hits dropped dramatically.  This approximately corresponds to the European data privacy requirements, and the dearth of hits from that region suggest that the blog is either not available to some people (not being compliant in some way I don’t know about) or accesses are not reported (not having permission to collect that data).   I dunno.

But then, around August, traffic picked up.  Really picked up, to 100 hits per day.  During this burst, it tended to be bursty, with a few days of high traffic, as much a 300 hits per day, and then several days of low traffic.  From the imperfect information I can see, the bursts might be from Hong Kong (perhaps scraping the internet to make a copy to be used inside China?)

Then, around November, traffic dropped off again and has stayed low.  This drop approximately coincides with the increasing troubles in HK, so perhaps this reflects a cut off of Internet access there.

I really don’t know.

The Usual Stuff

The blog continued to cover the usual stuff.

Cryptocurrencies, the Future of Work (and Coworking), Dinosaurs, Birds, Robots, the Ice Is Melting, Renewable Energy.

I blog about anything that interests me and is worth the trouble.  I try to have something useful to say, though sometimes it’s mainly a link with “this is cool”

Many of the things I discuss are from current academic papers, which I cite and generally try to read at least the abstract and always point to the original sources.

“Coworking – The Book” and other Writing

My 2018 book “What is Coworking?” continues to sell like hot cakes–if nobody had ever heard of hot cakes.  I think it sold a couple dozen copies.  My plans for a new villa are on hold…. : – )

Writing is hard.  Selling books is even harder.

Speaking of writing, I also contributed an article to a local free paper, which I really like the title to:

1. Robert E. McGrath, Think Heliocentrically, Act Locally, in The Public I: A Paper of the People. 2019. http://publici.ucimc.org/2019/04/think-heliocentrically-act-locally/

I archived a report on the 2013 Alma Mater project.  Versions of this report was rejected by several conferences and journals.  A problem with working outside the box is that the journals of boxology won’t publish your results.

1. Robert E. McGrath, A Digital Rescue for a Graduation Ritual. Urbana, Illinois, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105503

Onward

This blog will continue in the same vein, and daily posts will continue at least for now.

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Band Names

In a continuing homage to Dave Berry, I have identified a bunch of phrases that would make great names for a band.  In general, these phrases are taken from actual, real scientific and technical papers.  So I am not making them up—just repurposing them.

Here is this year’s crop.

gerbil’s casket
Preen Oil
Carolina Preen Oil
Carolina Junco
Dark eyed Junco
Arctic Albedo
Mean Surface Albedo
Arctic Amplification
Amplified Arctic Warming
Surface Air Temperature
Snow Cover Fraction
Buckypaper
Pacific Pumice Raft
Sichuan Mudslides  (also a great name for cocktail)
Soft Exo Suits
The Weddell Gyre
Giant Miocene Parrots
Eocene Whale
Chicxulub ejecta
Perching Drones
Perch And Stare Mission
Due to a lack of sunlight in Scotland
Blogging Birds Of Scotland
Huddle Pod
Cuddle Pod
Giant Hopping Tree Rats
Kangaroo Ancestors
Prehistoric kangaroos
Tiny Pronking Robots
Computational Periscopy

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Books

As always, I have continued the weekly review of one or more books that I read this year. This year I wrote about a total of 73 books, 24 non-fiction, 49 fiction.

Some Favorite Books of the Year

Fiction:

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Angels of Music by Kim Newman

Non-Fiction

Breaking and Entering by Jeremey N. Smith
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
You Look Like A Thing And I Love You by Janelle Shane

All the books reviewed (in no particular order)

Fiction

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear
Grand Union by Zadie Smith
Equoid (2013) by Charles Stross
Toast (2002) by Charles Stross
Speak Easy (2015) by Catherynne M. Valente
Six Gun Snow White (2016) by Catherynne M. Valente
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash
Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré
Anno Dracula 1999 Daikaiju by Kim Newman
The Princess Beard by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw
The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey
Amnesty by Lara Elena
Outside Looking In by T. C. Boyle
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Noir Fatale ed. by Larry Correia and Kacey Ezell
Inland by Téa Obreht
The Origins of Sense by Adam Erlich Sachs
Fall by Neal Stephenson
Gather The Fortunes by Bryan Camp
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente
No Country For Old Gnomes by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss
The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman
The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman
Luna: Moon Rising by Ian McDonald
Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst
Someone Who Will Love You in all Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
Unto Us A Son Is Given by Donna Leon
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Angels of Music by Kim Newman
The Burglar by Thomas Perry
Grim Expectations by K. W. Jeter
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
Macbeth by Jo Nesbø
No Sunscreen for the Dead by Tim Dorsey
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Infernal Devices  by K. W. Jeter
Fiendish Schemes by K. W. Jeter

Non Fiction

Lakota America by Pekka Hämäläinen
The Laundromat by Jake Bernstein
You Look Like A Thing And I Love You by Janelle Shane
They Will Have To Die Now by James Verini
Hollywood’s Eve by Lili Anolik
Proof!  By Amir Alexander
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Four Queens by Nancy Goldstone
The Next Billion Users by Payal Arora
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Places and Names by Elliot Ackerman
Eyes in the Sky by Arthur Holland Michel
American Carnage by Tim Alberta
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
The Ice At The End Of The World by Jon Gertner
Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton
Devices and Desires by Kate Hubbard
Stony The Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid
Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
Breaking and Entering by Jeremey N. Smith
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee” by David Treuer
Brilliant Green by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohllenben
Before and After Alexander by Richard A. Billows

 

Book Review: “How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

How, indeed?

I read Kendi’s “Stamped Form The Beginning” with great interest, and it certainly left us all wondering just how to actually do antiracism. That this new book is ‘eagerly awaited’ is an understatement!

Much of the new book elaborates on his definitions of racism and anti-racism, with extra attention to “intersections”, including gender-racism, class-racism, and so on.  These definitions are important, though the result is overkill.  Once you get the point, it’s all the same.  I get it.

The main point is: “What is a racism?  Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racists ideas that produce and normalizes racial inequalities.” (p. 18)  In particular, ‘racist’ isn’t a quality of a person, and policies or ideas can be racist without intending to be racist. Furthermore, Kendi says that everyone has some racist and anti-racist ideas, and participates in both racist and anti-racist policies.

These ideas were explained in his earlier book.

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OK, so the ‘how to’ part.

First, the goal is to change policy to foster equality.  Notably, his goal is not to persuade or educate people, but to exert power to produce anti-racist results, i.e., racial equality.  To be clear, Kendi’s view is that changing policy will change ideas, not the other way around.

Given this tenet, it was a bit surprising to me that so much of this book is confessional.  Kendi dives deep into his own experience, telling of his own racist ideas and actions, and his moves to anti-racist ideas and actions.  Some of this is difficult reading, but he is demonstrating just how serious he is.

As he says, “growing myself” is a key aspect of his program.

In the end, the book presents a sketch of the manifesto for Kendi’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center.  The short version is something like:

• Identify racial inequality,
• Investigate racist policies causing racial inequality,
• Invent or find antiracist policy.

(I absolutely love the work “invent” here!)

This is good stuff, but it comes at the end of the book, and we are left hanging.  We need manuals for how to do these things, which I hope the ARPC may provide.

I’d say he lays the groundwork, but this is hardly the final word.

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There is a lot to think about in this book.

I have to say that his “fix the policy” approach, applying power to implement new policies, is “naïve”.  I mean, if it were simple to change policy, we’d already have fixed it, right? For that matter, if I had the power to change policy, I’d already have changed it.  But I don’t and it isn’t.

However, I happen to hold similarly “naïve” views about racism and other things, such as poverty, health care, homelessness, and everything else  The solution is to, well solve it.  Poor people are poor because they lack resources, so the solution is resources.  And so on.

I can’t help but like Kendi’s naïve approach.

Now, there are aspects of Kendi’s academic approach that do bother me.  In his effort to create a clear definition of racism, he makes quite a few general statements which are logically questionable.

He makes a strong case ahat there is no such thing as  “non-racist” ideas and policies.  In his view, every idea and policy is either “racist” or “anti-racist”, because every idea and policy has outcomes that are either racially equal or not.

OK, I get that point, and I understand that claims of “post racial” or “non-racist” policy are usually a defense of the status quo, which produces racist results.

However, this flat, absolute claim that “…there is no such thing as a non-racist idea, only racist ideas and antiracist ideas.” (p. 20) is just flat absurd when taken to extremes.

For one thing, many ideas are not inherently racist or anti-racist, but have their effects in context.  For example, a preference for publicly funded schools is, in itself, neither racist nor anti-racist.  Everything depends on how the resources are distributed and applied within the schools, not the source of the resources.

And, of course, there are an infinite number of “ideas” in the world—and even an infinite number of ideas about people—but many of them have no discernable relation to racism.  The concept that “2 + 2 = 4” is an idea.  I can’t say it’s either racist or anti-racist.  It seems ‘non racist’ to me.

More importantly, even an idea or policy that definitely has significant effects on equality might have many other effects as well, and might even have both racist and antiracist effects.  Again, the idea of universal public education and policies that implement it have a broad range of effects.  It can both promote equality and inquality, and have different effects in different places and for different people.

So I can’t really swallow the notion that every idea, and every policy is either racist or anti-racist.  I can’t even swallow the notion that the effects of an idea can be said to be either more or less racial equality.  For most ideas, the link to outcomes is hard to demonstrate, and generally not either/or.

I know this is quibbling, but Kendi is being academic here, so it is right to rigorously dispute the logic of his definitions.

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Now, this does not mean that I disagree or oppose his platform.

On the contrary.  What it means is that when we want to “identify, investigate, and invent”, we are going to have to parse out these difficult issues.

Making schools “anti-racist” is going to be harder than just fiddling with allocations of money, because we need better teaching and better learning, where “better” needs to be defined and implemented (if not “invented”).  And the outcomes will be messy, so the definition of success—of anti-racist outcomes—will need to be done carefully.

In short, he’s got the right idea, though it’s not going to be trivial to do.

But who expected it to be easy or simple?

If it isn’t hard, it doesn’t count.

And this is important, and it counts.

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The full list of “how to be an anti-racist” (from pp. 231-2)

“Admit racial inequality is a problem of bad policy, not bad people.
“Identify racial inequality in all its intersections and manifestation.
“Investigate and uncover the racist policies causing racial inequality.
“Invent or find antiracist policy that can eliminate racial inequality.
“Figure out who or what group has the power to institute antiracist policy.
“Disseminate and educate about the uncovered racist policy and antiracist policy correctives.
“Work with sympathetic antiracist policymakers to institute the antiracist policy.
“Deploy antiracist power to compel or drive from power the unsympathetic racist policymakers in order to institute the antiracist policy.
“Monitor closely to ensure the antiracist policy reduces and eliminates racial inequality.
“When policies fail, do not blame the people. Start over and seek out new and more effective antiracist treatments until they work.
“Monitor closely to prevent new racist policies from being instituted.” (pp. 231-2)

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1. Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist, New York, One World, 2019.

 

Sunday Book Reviews