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: “Ways and Means” by Roger Lowenstein

Ways and Means by Roger Lowenstein

Government finance is not generally a riveting topic, however important it may be.  And the details of fiscal policy 150 years ago aren’t even relevant today.  So good luck with a history of “the Financing of the Civil War”.

But I’m happy to say that Lowenstein’s book is actually readable and interesting.  Well done!

(It also features one of my favorite tid bits of US government trivia–the wonderfully names “ways and means” committee.)

Like most well educated Americans, I have a working knowledge of the US Civil War.  (Sadly, this understanding has become surprisingly current in the last fifty years of US politics.)

However, the financial engineering, especially by the Lincoln administration, was far beyond the grit and romance of combat and politics.  As Lowenstein makes clear, it was also transformative and revolutionary.

At the start of the war, the US was a large economy with a tiny government.  The rebellion and ensuing war was far larger than anyone would have imagined, and, as they might say, it was pretty darned expensive.  All those thrilling and horrifying battles and speeches had to be paid for somehow.  And that ‘somehow’ had to be invented.

Looking back from today, we see many financial and government practices that have become standard procedure in the ensuing decades.  We also see the birth of a more centralized government, and, indeed, the very concept of the US as a nation, a single polity, rather than a loose confederation of states.

The Lincoln administration invested in infrastructure, education, technology, as well as a massive armed force.  Many of these initiatives were sharp breaks from the past, and, indeed, they were considered unconstitutional by many.  These initiatives were possible largely because the conservative southerners were, by their own action, not participating in the US government. For this brief window the interests of the south were not represented, leaving the field open to Lincoln’s whiggish ideology.

In contrast, the Confederacy codified and amplified earlier decentralized and low tax practices.  Where the US innovated radically, the CSA hued to conservative principles, or at least sought to.  In the end, the CSA central government did resort to many of the same tactics as the US, or tried to.

Lowenstein documents the results.  The USA raised huge amounts of money, even in the face of battlefield losses, corruption, and political divisions.  The CSA suffered drastic shortages and runaway inflation almost from the start.  The effects were devastating.

From our perspective more than 150 years later, we see a lot of interesting lessons.

One theme throughout the book is that it was not easy to convert the overwhelming economic power of the north to government funds.  The USA (and the CSA) was fiscally minute at the start of the war.  The respective governments had to invent and boot up an array of macroeconomic mechanisms that are now common. Broad taxation including income tax.  Government borrowing including mass bond sales to the public and foreign banks. Fiat currency. The works.

The combatants had to boot all this up as fast in the middle of a chaotic and destructive war, which is not a great environment for instilling confidence in investors.  Or for getting support from the general public for painful taxation and other “ways and means”.

At every step economic policies were pushed, pulled, resisted, and enforced in a soup of political ideology, ambition, corruption, and ignorance (both justified and inexcusable).  They were also inextricably tied to other political winds, including class, race, immigration, and above all regional geography.  The details are slightly different, but we see the same thing today.

There are also a lot of lessons for what not to do.  At the top of the list is the CSA’s deep aversion to federal taxation.  Relying on states to fund the country and run the economy really didn’t work.  And the CSA’s national efforts, hamstrung by a lack of tax revenue, did not work, and could never have worked. 

There were also “own goals”, especially the southern belief that holding back cotton—their only actual asset—would somehow pressure European powers to intervene.  Considering that the US was working hard to blockade this same trade in order to cripple the CSAs economy, you have to wonder what they were thinking.

And, of course, as the war ground on it became primarily a defense of slavery.  Despite the propaganda of southern apologists, southern independence was an independence in order to maintain slavery.  Slavery could never win the war, and generally was a hindrance.  And, of course, the US was easily able to strip the south of its slaves—the enslaved people self liberated as US troops approached.  And as soon as they were allowed, took up arms for their own liberation.

So all these things (white supremacy, states rights, no taxes) didn’t work the first time, why would anyone think they will work this time? 

Sadly, we have also seen the resurrection of Jim Crow, nullification, and attempted coup d’etat by radical racists—by constitutional maneuver and by armed force. The zombies are very, very dangerous.  Just read about the Civil War.

Just what do we have to do to kill these zombie ideas?

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1. Roger Lowenstein, Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, New York, Penguin Press, 2022.

Sunday Book Reviews