DI Drake's third appearance takes us deep into Wales.

Wales, the land of coal mines, what are to the American eyes unpronounceable names and for those of us of a certain age, Tom Jones.  But there is a lot more there than those trivial pieces of knowledge.  And DI Drake leads us into a view of the Welsh that we would otherwise miss.  Combined with his prickly nature, his OCD and his fears that he will be unsuccessful in solving this grisly murder makes for a melange of interesting activities.

 

First there is DI Drake.  Because of his OCD he is becoming more and more estranged from his wife.  He needs his Sudoku puzzles to provide him with calm along with Bruce Springsteen for company when he drives.  But he also finds that contact with some of the seamier sides of life infuriate him but he cannot let that interfere.  His staff are understanding but they too have their quirks and eccentricities.  And finally there are the citizens of Conwy, a village small enough that everyone knows everyone and their business too.  Big wigs in London want to build a nuclear power plant in the area and need to buy up land, smallholders are unsure and there is, as always, those opposed to the plan.  And an Englishman who owns large swathes of land and cottages by the sea and claims his family has lived in Wales for centuries arouses DI Drake’s ire because he cannot even pronounce Welsh Christian names much less understand the language.  And there is another dark and dirty secret bubbling under the surface.

 

It all starts with a fisherman found on the beach, murdered in a particularly gruesome manner.  He had been one of the small landowners being whipsawed over selling or not selling.  As Drake starts his investigation a second murder is reported, this time of a young girl.  Are the two crimes related?  A hard question that must be answered soon because the Police Superintendent wants action soon.  This is starting to affect relationships at the gentry level - not to be bourne!

 

More than just a Welsh equivalent of a police procedural story it tells of relationships, outlooks, raw feelings.  The language situation I found particularly apt.  The same situation occurs here in the agrarian/fishing South where I live that is now being inundated by New Yorkers and New Jerseyites whose harsh vowels, abrupt ways and lack of understanding grate against the Southern psyche.  This is a good story, one that requires close attention but that is easily given as the author winds his way through the Welsh coast and DI Drake solves a complex murder mystery.

Pasha - A Captain Kyyd seafaring adventure

Like all good seafaring heroes such as C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, and Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey, Julian Stockwin’s Thomas Kyyd has risen far in Britain’s naval forces. In Pasha we find Captain Kyyd has been made a Knight of the Bath thus overcoming his humble beginnings, becoming “a man of consequence.”  And to our further delight his closest friend Renzi has assumed the mantle of Earl of Farndon.  

 

We do not lose anything by all this elevation.  Rather Mr. Stockwin sends his heroes to the Dardanelles and Constantinople during the time of Napoleon’s attempts to break out of Europe in which he was trapped by the British navy. Looking East Bonaparte sought influence at the Court of the Ottoman Empire which would provide him with a land bridge allowing him unfettered access to India and beyond.  To this end he has sent Horace Sebastiani, a brilliant general and diplomat.

 

And around this historical happening we find our heroes in their usual roles but this time separated and each’s activities unknown to the other.  Captain Kyyd’s task is to break into the Dardanelles and Renzi’s to appear at the Ottoman Court as a flighty English scholar but to undermine Sebastiani’s influences. Mr. Stockwin has written an excellent adventure, his heroes have their usual human qualities which keep them from becoming insufferable and the reader can continue to admire them for their fortitude and skills.  And best of all Boney is foiled again.

Review of "The Inheritor"

Of the Tom Clancy genre, the plot revolves around an Islamist terrorist who sets up a series of attacks on major US energy infrasturcture.  They are well planned and each comes as a total surprise to the US.  The attacks are certainly within the realm of possibility which makes them that much more frightening.  The terrorist is named Aziz Abdul Muhammad and was hand picked by Osama Bin Laden to succeed him, hence the name “The Inheritor.”

 

Intelligence officer David Cain, Air Force Sergeant Emily Thompson and FBI Agent Dave Johnson work as a team to search out Aziz and his operations expert.  Their search takes them far afield but just as they seem on the verge of solving the problem another attack takes place.  

 

There is certainly a great deal of technical information set out in the story which is very interesting but it does not grab the reader as a Clancy story does.  However unlike Tom Clancy’s approach “The Inheritor” does not end well for America.

First flight and how it happened

Most folks are pretty well aware of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the fact that they catapulted the world into flight.  Ohio license plates proclaim “The Birthplace of Aviation” and North Carolina plates proudly declaim “First in Flight.”  Everyone is familiar with the picture of Orville in flight with Wilbur cheering him on.  But who knows that Glenn Curtiss was nipping at their heels and perhaps even flew before they did?  How about Chanute and Otto Lilienthal?  And a number of others who contributed greatly to both the realities of flight and the misplaced theories that hampered progress.

 

The book “Birdmen, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies” reveals the massive effort by many people in Europe and the United States to solve the problem of putting men into the sky and making such an effort worthwhile.  Balloons and dirigibles are visited and examined, gliders tested, power plants built and, most importantly, patents sought and issued that affected the search to make men equal to birds.  Today aircraft are built whose wingspans are longer than the first flight by Orville Wright and yet the basic physics remain the same.

 

Here is a book that gathers together the many threads leading to flight and the men who used them to weave a fabric that today envelops the world in a skein of transworld air routes making the world smaller and more accessible with an ease that can only be called remarkable.

A review of the book Godel, Escher and Bach

Godel, Escher, Bach; An eternal gold braid

Vintage books, 1979

 

A 1999 edition is available on Amazon.

I recently read “spacebookthenovel” by Robert Allan Richardson in which he referred glancingly to this astounding book that I had read many years ago.  I could not resist it, I searched my library and there is was among my mathematics books.  It is not an easy read by any means and as I looked at it I saw that one of our Labs had found it an equally tough item to chew on.  She had managed to make inroads on the lower left corner but thankfully left the rest intact.

First let’s look at the three individuals.  Opening with J.S. Bach, Hofstadter examines this brilliant musician’s famous Musical Offering to King Frederick the Great.  It is what we would now call a fugue and it’s theme is The Royal Theme.  It is an extraordinary musical piece being a six part fugue.  To give you an idea of how extraordinary this is you could compare it to playing sixty simultaneous blindfold games of chess and winning them all.  In presenting his copy of the piece to King Frederick the following was inscribed on the first page: Regis Iusfu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Refolula.   “At the King’s command, the song and the remainder resolved with canonic art”.  Ricercar are the initials of the statement but also an old Italian word meaning “to seek” (in modern Italian “cercare.”) In these musical types a single theme is played against itself.  A very simple example would be to sing what we call rounds such as “row, row, row your boat, or Frere Jacques.  The voices are sung by voices coming in at every fourth beat but they can also be sung inverting the melody, reversing it, echoing it, going up or down an octave, or even changing the time.  The central point is that the ricercar is RECURSIVE producing what Hofstadter calls “strange loops”.

The four CD set “The Glenn Gould edition of The Well Tempered Clavichord” with 48 fugues and preludes demonstrate this type of music very well. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His playing was distinguished by remarkable technical proficiency and capacity to articulate the polyphonic texture of Bach's music. You might be interested in exploring this musical piece.

Next is M.C. Escher.  If you have ever seen any of his work you will remember they feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. Take  his pencil drawing of two hands, each drawing the other.  Another is his “waterfall” which pictures a canal of water starting under a waterfall that turns a waterwheel, proceeds through four 90 degree turns and ends producing the waterfall from whence we started.  Again a RECURSIVE resulting in that strange loop.

If you are interested in pursuing Escher’s art I recommend “The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher” available on Amazon for, interestingly $95 or $.065.  I can never figure out Amazon’s pricing but there are other editions of Escher and you will enjoy looking at his truly fascinating view of the world.

And now to Kurt Godel, the key figure in this wonderful book.  In our first two artists we could see a conflict between the finite and the infinite resulting in paradox.  In the 20th Century a mathematical equivalent was discovered , with enormous repercussions.  A Strange Loop was found by this brilliant mathematician.  In its simplest form it can be likened to the liar’s paradox proposed by the Cretan Epimenides to this effect: All Cretans are liars.  Cogitate on this simple statement for a moment.  An even simpler statement would be “I am Lying” or “this statement is false.”  It is self-referential and a Strange Loop indeed!  In Godel’s mathematical world his strange loop statement, which I will not produce here because it is in German and even translated to English you will think it still in German,  means  he proved for any computable axiomatic system that is powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers set theory with the axiom of choice, that: If the system is consistent, it cannot be complete and the consistency of the axioms cannot be proven within the system. That is  Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false, which contradicts the idea that in a consistent system, provable statements are always true. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement. In fact, there is an infinity of true statements it cannot prove. Whew!

Turning now to the book it is centered around Strange Loops, those recursive auto references; that generate twisted hierarchies, which, according to the author, can explain much about Intelligence, Consciousness, DNA, symbols and meaning. It  spans Zen and Zeno, Bach and Cage, Escher and Magritte, Gödel and Turing, Cantor and Russell. The auto-references allow him to jump up and down, and move in stimulating vortexes, culminating as a ricercar in 6 voices in a digression about free will, life and death at various levels

Also, each "serous" chapter is prefaced by an amusing dialogue between Achilles and a Tortoise (from Zeno's "paradoxes') and other droll characters. 

All in all a fascinating book. It is a golden braid intertwining looks at logic, philosophy, consciousness, music, art, biology, computers, and countless other topics through the prism of concepts of uncertainty, incompleteness, and self reference. 

If you decide to buy this book, and you should, get the 1999 edition.  Hofstadter’s forward does a much better job of preparing you for what follows than did his original.  And remember, you don’t have to read it all in one pass.  Do as my Lab did: chew on small portions and enjoy.

SPACEBOOKTHENOVEL

Review of “SPACEBOOKTHENOVEL”

Robert Allan Richardson

Originally an Ebook but now in print on Amazon

$14.95

 

Pagescape Press 2013

 

A thought provoking book but the question is what thoughts are provoked.  The problem with dealing with the PhD Professoriate is that each thinks he/she is the repository of all that is great and good in the world and this book is a regurgitation of the author’s concept of that collection.

 

Benjamin Bidwell, a consumate talker as a child, loses his voice early in life to his consternation.  He was fifteen and had been entered into a speech contest, at which he was odds on favorite to win given his penchant for oratory.  But alas and lackaday just as he starts into providing those golden thoughts he becomes mum.  As Benjamin puts it “So ended my prodigies of speech.”

 

He was not content within his silence and as he worked hard and well at various farms all those words kept piling up inside him. Straining to be free.  And then, mirabile dictu, he found a way to release himself from this enforced silence: he saw and answered an ad for an auctioneer school.  Indeed he regained his power of speech and we are henceforth treated to his every thought, profound to whimsical.  Except for Professor Richardson’s use of punctuation the phrase “stream of consciousness” becomes one of those provoked thoughts we spoke of at the outset.  In any case Bidwell decides he will learn everything necessary to provide him the wherewithal to judge all that is right and wrong with the world. 

 

On this journey of exploration Benjamin provides us both an outside view of life and an inside view.  The outside consists of his starting to work as a farmhand milking cows while he attends University as a free spirit simply auditing those classes in which he was interested.  No need to pay, after all he is going to do the world a good turn by learning all this.  He does an auction for a friend and this leads eventually to his starting his own business and turn leads to buying a farm, and eventually into a bookbinding business. There is a side trip into singing operatic duets. The book ends with pages of apparent witticisms and common phrases turned about. 

 

The inside view, during these discourses examine our present day technology and Bidwell’s extreme dislike for it as it apparently takes us outside of ourselves.  I grant that all technology throws shadows but Richardson dwells in those shadows and predicts disaster.  As a pacifist he seeks to prove his courage and his manhood.  I hold no brief against that. I have nonesuch as friends but I am aware of much good they do when they choose to support their country. But methinks the Professor doth protesteth too much.

 

Why is it the intellectuals conceit that the only life is the life on a farm, being a horny-handed son of the soil.  As Reginald Heber( English clergyman, traveler, man of letters and hymn-writer) would have it "...every prospect pleases and only man is vile”. The present population of the United States is approximately 300 million I believe.  Can you imagine if all 300,000,000 of us lived and worked on a farm?

 

 I would call Professor Richardson a neo-Luddite except for the irony of his writing this novel originally in cyberspace.  And perhaps his magnum opus suffered in translating from modern technology to use of the Gutenberg approach.

A review of Stephen Puleston's "Brass in Pocket

Brass in Pocket

A Detective Drake novel by UK author Stephen Puleston

This is a good, solid detective novel and is the first in a series of Detective Inspector Drake adventures.  Set in rural north Wales the American reader faces two interesting situations. First is the fact that we do not recognize some of the idiom and, while meanings can be gained from context, it helps to know in advance, for example,  that “biro” is the UK slang for “ballpoint” as it allows reading without speed bumps.  Secondly neither are we cognizant of the rivalry between various regions of the UK.  The word “Scouser” is used with some frequency and after some research, I found that the word pertains to those from the Liverpool area and they are considered by the Welsh to be less than honorable shall we say.  However, in this day and age of the Internet I think my two comments are more cavils than complaints.  We read books available to us from around the world and they open our minds, as good books should, to newer and certainly more different things.

All strong detectives should have an idiosyncracy if not an eccentricity and Detective Inspector Drake has a good one.  He suffers from an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder requiring him to frequently adjust everything on his desk to their assigned meticulous positions. There are other indications but the reader will find them as the story progresses and discover how they put forward or inhibit the detecting being done. Drake also solves Sudoku puzzles to help himself feel more in control.

Brass in Pocket is the title of a song by The Pretenders that came out in 1979.  The novel opens with the killing of two policemen and one of the clues was a note left at the scene containing the lyrics of the song under which was scrawled the number 4.  There are further murders and each is accompanied by a note containing the lyrics of a song from 1979. More and more pressure is brought to bear on DI Drake both from his superiors and journalists to solve the crimes before the murder can strike again and, as the story progresses, he even comes to fear for his job.  Several other crimes are revealed and solved as the investigation moves forward and the suspense builds well.  The denouement is has a nice hook and you are left wondering why you didn’t see it earlier, given what you now know.  Shades of Hercule Poirot. Good stuff for a detective story.

I have not read any of Mr. Puleston’s previous works but I look forward to doing so and certainly the second outing of DI Drake with his adventures in rural north Wales as he twiddles his biro and scowls over the machinations of Scousers.

The Phantom Patrol by L. Ron Hubbard

 

To pirate part of a quote “let’s return to the thrilling days of yesteryear...”.  And the series of books that bring L. Ron Hubbard back from the golden age of pulp fiction certainly do that.  Pulp fiction in the days when I was growing up was our escape from the humdrum, provided us with heroes who were both dashing and moral, and best of all, the books were cheap.  

 

But the writing was not.  And L. Ron Hubbard was one of the best.  He wrote in almost every genre of adventure there was, from westerns to mysteries to scifi & fantasy and military.  Threw in the occasional novel as well. Because his tastes were very eclectic combined with an inquiring mind, he roamed the world seeking and finding characters and situations he wove into these thrilling tales.

 

The Phantom Patrol is an excellent example of the pulp genre and his researches, in this case centered around the US Coast Guard. A Cutter commanded by CPO Jimmy Trescott is tracking an infamous drug runner named Georges Coquelin (interesting to note that drug runners were as prevalent then as now, and with the removal of Prohibition, were of a major concern to the Coast Guard) only to receive an SOS from an aircraft that had crashed but was still afloat.  Giving up on the drug runner’s trail, Jimmy rushes to the rescue only to have Coquelin arrive at the same time.  Results include a damsel in distress, a wealthy man in need, armed combat and eventually a bad case of mistaken identity.  

 

Join me in enjoying this thriller from yesteryear as L. Ron Hubbard builds the tension to an exciting climax.  Remember what is was like to curl up with a rousing good tale.

 

 

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Review of “Choke Point” by Ridley Pearson

This was my introduction to the Ridley Pearson books, the second in his series of “Risk Agent” novels.  The copy I received was a bound, uncorrected advance proof.  

 

The Risk Agents are John Knox and Grace Chu, each equipped with the skills necessary to be successful in carrying out international intrigue although I am not quite sure what they all are.  Certainly masters of arcane martial arts and lockpicking as amply demonstrated. There were several combat scene errors that I am sure the author will smooth out in the final writing but to illustrate: Grace Chu is chasing a bad guy, he glances over his shoulder and the next sentence has Miss Chu kicking him in the chest. Awkward to say the least.

 

But these are minor cavils and I am sure will disappear in the in the first printing.  Overall I think it is a good thriller, suspense is built well, resolution smooth and contains interesting sidelights of the various locales as one would expect of an author of this calibre.  I intend to get the first book in the series “The Risk Agent” which I am sure will clear up some blank spots I ran across in this book.

A review of the book "The Jane Austen Book Club"

 

Over 200 years ago a young woman by the name of Jane Austen wrote six novels over a period of fifteen years.  They are romantic and center around the manners and mores of the landed gentry of the time.  She was never acknowledged as a writer during her time but the novels have since earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature.  Over the years the books have been both praised and reviled (Mark Twain wrote “It would be a good library without those books even if there were no books in the library.”) but the praise far outruns the venom.  There are clubs throughout the world devoted to the examination and explanation of Miss Austen’s six novels.  And “The Jane Austen Book Club” is a fictional account of such a club.

 

In Central California five women and one man get together once a month for six months to discuss the novels, one each month.  Over that time marriages are tested, affairs begin and fade, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens.  Karen Joy Fowler channels Jane Austen brilliantly as she writes of the present day gentry with their faults, foibles and joys.

 

The first meeting, in March is hosted by Jocelyn. She has never married, raises, for show and stud, a breed of dog called Ridgebacks, noted as a matriarchal breed and Jocelyn is definitely the Alpha female. With her in charge, as the author puts it, an advanced civilization will come about.  The book under discussion is Emma.

 

In April the group is hosted by Allegra, the daughter of Sylvia a third member of the club. Allegra has broken up with her long time girlfriend for having revealed Allegra’s three deepest secrets.  The book examined is Sense and Sensibility.

 

May finds the group at Prudie’s.  Prudie teaches French at the local high school. Although she has never been to France she annoys by constantly using French phrases. As one of her friends says; “If only she would stop speaking French–or go to France where it wouldn’t be so noticeable.” Prudie suffers from a growing libido that tends to color the rest of her conversation. Mansfield Park is their subject

 

In June they convene at Grigg’s, the lone male of the group.  He had never read any of the Austen novels and had been invited to join the group by Jocelyn much to the wonderment of the women.  For whom had Jocelyn destined him? Instead of having each of the six novels separate he had bought the big compendium of Austen’s work, a single book viewed as heresy by the others.  He had an additional fault: he liked science-fiction and read it widely, proposing that they should read “Lavinia” by Ursula K. LeGuinn.  Northanger Abbey is this month’s subject.

 

July is for Bernadette, the oldest of the group.  She is inclined to hold forth while no one seems to listen.  Bernadette never says anything once if it can be said three times.  Pride and Prejudice is her book.

 

August finds the group back at Sylvia’s house.  Her husband, Daniel, had left her but at this point is starting to show up frequently.  This concerns the ladies because they had concluded that Jocelyn had meant Grigg for Sylvia.  Other characters are starting to enter the story as various arcs are nearing completion.  The book is Persuasion.

 

Filled with humor and incisive insight The Jane Austen Book Club will be enjoyed whether or not you are a Jane Austen fan. After all as Anthony Lane, a film critic for The New Yorker magazine, wrote in 1999 “Nudity, sexual abuse, lesbianism, a dash of incest–will we never tire of Jane Austen?”

A new book for the technological age

Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger. Hyperion Press

Do you have a cell phone that has more capability than you can ever use and all the buttons to go with it? And has an incomprehensible 150 page manual to accompany it. Been in a traffic jam on an Interstate highway only to arrive at a point where suddenly there is no jam nor a reason for it to have occurred in the first place? Ever longed to give your TV a good swat to make it work as we used to do in the days of black and white?

Jeffrey Kluger makes the modern world comprehensible, analyzing social and technological systems to reveal that ‘things that seem complicated can be preposterously simple; things that seem simple can be dizzyingly complex.’ As he teaches us about new discoveries in the study of complexity he makes use of the famous bell curve (although he does not call it that) where the X axis is complexity and the Y axis the movement from chaos and instability (a room full of gas) to robust and stable (a lump of carbon.)

In explaining the complexity of simple objects the author uses, among many others, the example of the simple wood pencil. These two paragraphs sum up the main thought of the book most accurately. The author recounts the harvesting of the wood, the mining of the bauxite for the aluminum sleeve, the carbon from the coal mine and the lab making the eraser - and behind each of these processes lies the making and using of the tools that allow those actions. He continues to delve even deeper into actions and accomplishments just as necessary to support the whole process; clothing, delivery systems accounting systems, etc. Mr. Kluger finishes his paragraph: “A vast industrial machine rises up, switches on, and at its far end , spits out ... a pencil, arguably oneof the most complicated objects in the world.”

I enjoyed this book immensely but it is not read quickly. As Jeffrey Kluger explains a concept you find yourself applying the thought to other situations you face in the day-to-day world and then nodding knowingly.