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

Book Review: “The Method” by Isaac Butler

The Method by Isaac Butler

This book was way more interesting than I expected it to be.  A history of theater, of acting, of acting theory?  Not something I know much about, nor especially worry about.

Of course, I realized reading this that I—and everyone—have been immersed in theatrical presentations for my whole life.  Movies, and then TV, and now the Internet is wall to wall storytelling, as well as meta stories of celebrity and cultural markers in movies and TV shows.

Which means that this history underlies a huge chunk of the culture I grew up in, and currently live in.  Even though I knew nothing of this history, I certainly have witnessed its results.

As the subtitle suggests, this is a history of “How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act”, beginning with how Russia learned to act in the nineteenth century.  I make no apologies for knowing nothing about theater in Tsarist Russia, nor for that matter nothing about nineteenth century theater anywhere.

But even I know the name Stanislavski (hey, my fingers even spelled it correctly, first try!), and even I have heard of “Method Acting”, attributed to him.  And now, thanks to Butler, I know a whole lot more about what Stanislavski thought he was up to, how these ideas came to America, and how they rooted, grew, and mutated in America.

No one is surprised at the personality conflicts, feuds, and factions that emerged.  The heart of Butler’s book is navigating the shifting sands of ideas about how to act, which often involved claiming or condemning Stanislavski’s mantle (rightly or wrongly).  Shockingly enough, disputes among theatrical people tend to get, well, theatrical.

Not trained as an actor, I can’t necessarily parse all the details of these disputes.  I gather from Butler than much of this is not necessarily well explained or theoretically coherent.  Acting is an art, art isn’t easy to explain.

My training in psychology certainly flags a lot of these practices as powerful and potentially dangerous.  (For that matter, my training in anthropology helps me understand tribal behavior when I see it.)

This book would all be dry and academic history if it ended in the 1930s.  Nineteenth century Russian theater.  Influence major changes in America, with a new realist school of acting taking hold in New York.  Art theater versus commercial.  American acting versis British acting.  Etc.

But, of course, the story continues.  In Hollywood.  And then TV.

Which meant, among other things that millions rather than thousands of people were exposed to all kinds of acting. 

Along the way, “Method Acting” came to mean something like “serious American acting”.  Butler makes clear that this popular conception had little to do with Stanislavski or even what the actors themselves did or believed.  Popular ideas about how to act were stereotyped and mostly inaccurate—but highly romantic, and often reflected the times.

On the other hand, many of the techniques became ubiquitous—table work, dividing the play into small units of action, asking the questions, “What does your character want? What is in the Way? What will they do to get it?”  Whether you love or hate Stanislavski, or have never heard of him, this is how actors are trained in America.

And, of course, the Stanislavski-influenced generation of actors, directors, and teachers had massive influence on storytelling and American culture.  The last parts of Butler’s book recounts all the Stanislavski’s students’ students who made important movies.

The end of the story isn’t so much the deliberate overthrow of The Method as the blooming of a thousand flowers.  The flood of movies and TV in America made it possible for lots of people to get in the game.  Acting school isn’t necessary or even necessarily useful to becoming an actor or film maker.  And there are schools (and theaters) everywhere, so you don’t need to go to New York to tell stories. 

Honestly, Stanislavski just doesn’t matter any more.  He’s just there, all the time.

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1. Isaac Butler, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, New York, Bloomsbury, 2022.

Sunday Book Reviews