The Book Page -- January 9, 2024

Locator: 46500BOOKS.

From AEI, recently: AEI's favorite books of 2023.

David Shaywitz—Adjunct Fellow

We’re living through a remarkably exciting and dynamic time in both biomedical and digital innovation. Over the last year or so, I’ve had the opportunity to review and discuss a number of books that examine and try to make sense of the opportunities and challenges we’re collectively navigating. Recommended recent reads include:

• The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee (History of cell biology) review
• From One Cell by Ben Stanger (History of developmental biology) discussion
• The Good Virus by Tom Ireland (Wild history of phage therapy) review
• Programmable Planet by Ted Anton (History of synthetic biology) review
• The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman (Will AI save or destroy us?) review
• The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian (Aligning technology with human values) review
• Genius Makers by Cade Metz (History of deep learning/AI) review
• For Blood and Money by Nathan Vardi (Dramatic story of the development of two recent oncology drugs) discussion
• In the Blood by Charles Barber (Unexpected discovery and challenging development of a blood coagulant) review
• You Bet Your Life by Paul Offit (The challenges of new medical treatments) review

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Shakespeare -- The Merchant Of Venice

Quick! Name the "merchant" of Venice. LOL.

99% of folks will get that wrong.

From "Indigenous Continent" -- Maroon Communities And Horses -- February 3, 2023

Notes for this book are posted here.

MAROONS

Even with all my reading over the past fifty years about  "Indians" and Native Americans and indigenous populations, I never came across this, until now, "maroon communities."

Wiki entry here. 

Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and Islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos.

Maroon, which can have a more general sense of being abandoned without resources, entered English around the 1590s, from the French adjective marron, meaning 'feral' or 'fugitive'. (Despite the same spelling, the meaning of 'reddish brown' for maroon did not appear until the late 1700s, perhaps influenced by the idea of maroon peoples.)

The American Spanish word cimarrón is also often given as the source of the English word maroon, used to describe the runaway slave communities in Florida, in the Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina, on colonial islands of the Caribbean, and in other parts of the New World.

Linguist Lyle Campbell says the Spanish word cimarrón means 'wild, unruly' or 'runaway slave'.

In the early 1570s, Sir Francis Drake's raids on the Spanish in Panama were aided by "Symerons," a likely misspelling of cimarrón.

The linguist Leo Spitzer, writing in the journal Language, says, "If there is a connection between English maroon, French marron, and Spanish cimarrón, Spain (or Spanish America) probably gave the word directly to England (or English America)."

It is interesting to note that during "the 1590s" there was an explosion of new words, thousands of them first put into "public" use in the late 1500s by Sir Henry Neville (factotum: William Shakespeare).

HORSES

 

Italian Cooking -- February 3, 2023

 

Monday Morning Reading -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 6, 2017

First of all, another big "thank you" for a reader sending me that link to the Foreign Affairs article on Donald Trump and Jacksonian populist nationalism. That article helps immensely when reading the post-election issues of The New Yorker.  I mention the Foreign Affairs article, again, here. Just reading that article and taking notes on it has made in infinitely easier to get through The New Yorker. Once one is able to actually read TNY one finds, again, that it really, really has some good writing. Their politics and their world myths may be completely wrong, but it is so much easier to read when one realizes the writers have no clue and why they have no clue.

Back to TNY later.

But first some notes on Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers, Leslie Bennetts, c. 2016. I generally have no interest in the biographies of current celebrities but Joan Rivers has always fascinated me. The facts in the introduction in this book are quite extraordinary:

• age 55: after a lifetime of earning millions, she was in debt $37 million
• her husband had squandered her wealth on bad investments
• she had a gun on her lap and was contemplating suicide
• she stopped when she asked herself who would take care of her Yorkie
• no one was hiring her any more; she was washed up
• she decided to press on 

Let's see, from wiki:

• born 1933
• 55 years old: 1988

What happened to Joan in the 1980s and the comeback? From wiki:

• 1983: Carnegie Hall
• 1984: UK's TV show An Audience With Joan Rivers
• 1986: longtime friendship ended with Johnny Carson
• 1987: her nighttime show -- behind-the-scenes disaster
• 1987, May 15: Rivers and husband fired by Fox
• 1987, August 14: Rivers' husband commits suicide
• 1987: Nancy Reagan helps Rivers
• 1988: $37 million in debit 
• 1989: The Joan Rivers Show -- five years; 
• 1990: Daytime Emmy for that show
• 1994: hosts E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for the Golden Globe Awards
• 1995: hosts the show itself
• 1994: nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Play and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (a play she co-wrote and starred in)
• 1997: hosts own radio show in NYC
• 2003: 3-year, $8 million contract to cover award shows' red carpet events for the TV Guide Channel

A word I would not have known had I not read British history: droit du seigneur, p. 83.  Rivers tells how she broke into the big time.

Chapters eight, nine, and ten, hickory, dickory, dock: the story of the Joan Rivers-Johnny Carson feud.

Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock,
The clock struck one ...

From The Book of Numbers, John H. Conway and Richard K. Guy, c. 1996, page 2:

One such system is:

wan, twan, tethera, methera, pimp,
sethera, lethera, overa, dovera, dick,
wanadick, twanadick, tetheradick, metheradick, pimpdick,
setheradick, letheradkic, hoveradick, doveradick, bumfit,
wanabumfit, ...

Such rustic sequences appear in many countries. They are usually highly corrupted versions of the standard number systems of ancient languages.

Hickory, dickory, doc,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one;
The mouse ran down.
Hickory, dickory, dock.

Probably "hickory," "dickory," and "dock" are the words for "eight," "nine," and "ten" in one of these systems (compare "hovera, dovera, dick"), while "eeny, meeny, miny, mo" mean "one, two, three, four" in another.

More can be found at wiki, elsewhere.

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The New Yorker

Updates

February 7, 2017: I've mentioned many, many times that after years of off and on subscriptions to The New Yorker, I finally had to cancel the magazine last year -- it had turned into a mouthpiece for Hillary. I thought things might change after the election, but it seems the editor has doubled down. Now the Trump cartoons are on the front cover. Perhaps I was over-reacting?

A reader sent me a link to this CNN interview. I was not imagining things -- it's being reported even on CNN -- The New Yorker seems to be "hysterical" over the Trump presidency. I rarely visit the Rush Limbaugh site, and and only went there to see the CNN video -- it's a long piece, but the New Yorker reference is very, very early on: 

Original Post

 

I can't find it now, but in one of the articles I read today, the writer suggested (and probably quite accurately) that the moment Donald Trump decided to run for president was while listening to Seth Meyers at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The writer noted that even President Obama's "words" at that dinner were beneath the dignity of the "dignity president himself." 

January 23, 2017:

• "The Financial Page: Big Ticket Transit" by James Surowiecki, p. 21
• NYC's recently opened Second Avenue subway
• three stations and two miles of track: $1.7 billion
• James sounds like a Trumper in his essay
• "Personal History: My Father's Cellar, A Lifetime of Drinking" by John Seabrook, p. 22
• seven pages
• personal history of a most tragic history
• "The Critics, On Television: Tragedy Plus Time, How jokes won the election, p. 66
• four pages plus a full page graphic
• I always find it amazing how folks who claim to "know" Trump so well don't get the joke (or the jokes) 

January 30, 2017:

• "American Chronicles: Autumn of the Atom, How arguments about nuclear weapons shaped the climate-change debate" by Jill Lepore, p. 22
• 6 pages 
• I am not sure it's worth reading

February 6, 2017:

• "The Financial Page: The Corruption Conundrum" by James Surowiecki, p. 21
• eyes wide shut
• "A Reporter At Large, The Avengers of Mosul, The desperate fight, block by block, to destroy, ISIS" by Luke Mogelson, p. 35
• 26 pages with pictures
• certain to be part of a future book
• really, really good

Saturday Morning WSJ Links

Wow, great book reviews.

A woman of some importance, Constance, Franny Moyle, the story of Oscar Wilde's wife (and two sons).

You are what you read, M. Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein.

Before Plymouth Rock, and after, The Barbarous Years, Bernard Bailyn.

From Sicily to Dachau, The Liberator, Alex  Kershaw.

Where the myths began, The Patriarch, David Nasaw, about the Kennedys, specifically Joseph.

Lego and me, A Million Little Bricks, Sarah Herman.

 And that's just a sampling. A whole lot more.

A bookman's guide to E-book readers: the reviewer got a lot of it right, but blew it when he suggested the Kindle Paperwhite for "your teenage son, to keep him reading." Getting the Kindle in lieu of an iPad or iPad mini would be a fail. Of course, he would prefer an Android, but this article was talking tablets only. I also question the Nook recommendation for "your sibling, the occasional reader." I wouldn't buy a tablet that was only an e-book for an occasional reader. Again, it would be the iPad mini. But the essay is light reading; introduces folks to the tablets as book readers.

There's an interesting essay on whether to sell assets now before taxes increase next year. Of course, this only applies to the top 2% of Americans. Hardly worth reading, but a quick scan puts a different light on the subject.  It won't be mentioned in the article, but I don't know how many times I've been told not to base buying/selling decisions based on tax consequences. We're seeing how the upper 2% of Americans follow this advice this year.

Finally, an article on life-insurance policies that are draining away due to low interest rates, and some options.  I haven't read the article, but 10 - 1 I will wager: one option was not discussed.

Biggest chuckle of the day, the graph accompanying the story, why Microsoft beats Apple. Wow, I've been hearing that mantra for ten years. Even the writer is skeptical, starting with "Microsoft COULD be the better value." Wow, that's a strong endorsement, considering the headline. Is this just another blog?

Might be an interesting read: fuel rationing is hard to gauge; analysis of actions taken after Sandy.

No links but Petraeus and Twinkies pretty much get equal play in today's Journal.

Peggy Noonan again. Always good. But fell a rung or two after her article just before the election.  I haven't read this article yet but a quick scan suggests it's a "dog bites man" story. Stating the obvious.If she doesn't mention the internet / social networking, she reveals a blind spot.

The Twinkie, a Suicide. I no longer care but it was one of the most-read posts on the blog this week.

And a whole lot more, but that should get you started.

Weekend Links to the WSJ -- Does Anyone Have Phil Jackson's Phone Number?

Updates

November 12, 2012: the great Laker freakout! Phil Jackson is first choice; second choice is Phil Jackson changing his mind; third choice is moving the LA Lakers to Montana. [Update: the Lakes signed D'Antonio. We'll see how long that lasts.]

Original Post

If there is anything in this post about the Bakken I would be surprised. For the Bakken, scroll down or sideways. Later, you can also scroll up.

Does anyone have Phil Jackson's phone number? The LA Lakers have fired MIke Brown as head coach, now looking for a replacement. Mike A'Antoni and Phil are at the top of the list. Someone's list.

Now, twisted fibers, not sticky plaques. Perhaps best medical story of the hour: an outcast among peers gains traction on Alzheimer's cure. Claude Wischik: it's not beta amyloid after all, it's tau. The theory: the tau protein forms twisted fibers known as tangles inside the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients. Beta amyloid with associated sticky plaques was considered the cause of AD.

Power authority takes heat for its response to Sandy (also posted earlier).  The dots are starting to connect. The power authority is government owned. The "company" requested 700 additional workers to get power restored; so far the task has required in excess of 10,000. Twenty years to prepare.

I did not read past the first few paragraphs of Peggy Noonan's mea culpa, and will not link it. It's easy to find, I'm sure, if interested.

Five "personal choices" from Sinclair McKay:

• Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges (1983)
• The Code Book, Simon Singh (1999)
• Codebreakers, F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp (1993)
• The 39 Steps, John Buchan (1915)
• From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming (1957)

From my own 30 years and a day in the USAF, this from The Codebreakers brings back back sweet memories:

More than this, the voices of the individual codebreakers are distinct—witty, deadly serious and sometimes disarmingly light. "How one longed for the 3 a.m. canteen break," wrote naval officer Edward Thomas, "when, with luck, a few moments' calm might be enjoyed in the company of some totally unknown, but totally charming, girl from some mysterious corner of the Park. How one longed to meet her again! But seldom did."

Many wonderful military men and women crossed my geographical path but once. How I long to see many of them again.

As for the books: all five look simply sumptuous.

Foaming at the mouth about craft beer -- kinda fun. I actually recognize a few of those craft beers. Best new word: kraftbierkulturkampf.

And then this, in light of Camille Paglia's recent Glittering Images: when the posters draw the crowds.

On Christmas 1894, the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt needed a poster for her new play, which was set to open a week later in Paris. With almost everyone gone for the holidays, the job fell to an unknown Czech illustrator who happened to be working a shift at a lithography shop.

The poster by 34-year-old Alphonse Mucha—showing Bernhardt in a garland and golden robes—appeared throughout Paris on New Year's Day, turned Mucha into an overnight art-world star and helped to spark the Art Nouveau movement.

Not to be confused with Munch and "The Scream."

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A reminder:

• Oscar Wilde: The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Nicholasl Frankel, c. 2011
• The Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, c. 1987
• Alter also edited the The Five Books of Moses, a real treasure. 

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A Note for the Granddaughters

I think I've talked about this before. I forget. I'm in my whaling phase of reading: Scammon, Melville, Russell, et al. I don't recall having read Moby Dick before, but I am reading it now (free download on the iPad). Our old granddaughter, now 9 years old, read an abridged version when she was seven or eight. I can hardly wait to find time to read the real book (or at least parts of it) with her. It is incredible, the knowledge one learns of sailing in general, and, of whaling, in particular, of course. In high school I would have found the book boring, no doubt. Growing up on the plains, I doubt I would have connected with the story. With a robust reading program behind me and having visited New Bedford, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, the book is now incredibly interesting and a real pleasure to read. With the technology of the iPad it is incredibly easy to search words and phrases on the net which adds much to the book.

Reminiscing on Reading -- This Is Not Meant For Those Looking To Read About the Bakken

I started an aggressive reading program in 2001, and started a blog to track that program. I believe I have "turned" that blog off, as a first step ....

I remember, as a kid growing up in North Dakota, we had the best library in the world, the James Memorial Library. I can remember to this day, as if it was yesterday, running into the children's section, so excited to be able to pick out my own book. I have no idea how my mother found time to take us to the library. She had at least four children then; I can't remember if #5 had come along yet. But the family had very little money. I don't know if we had a second car. I assume we did; how else would we have gotten to the library? It was just a bit too far to walk. But it was a great experience. I remember peeking around the corner from the children's section, dreaming about the day I would be allowed to go into the "adult" section of the library. From just around the corner I could see what are now called "stacks." I was amazed to see that there were so many books that one had to walk up steps to get to another level of books. Wow, it was daunting, but exciting. I remember the library but I don't remember, at all, the winters or how cold they were. Well, if I think hard, I can remember them. But I don't have to think hard about remembering James Memorial Library.

I can remember, also, as a kid growing up in North Dakota, four books or magazine articles that captured my attention:

In eighth grade it was two articles in National Geograhic, one on "honey ants" and the other on lasers. I remember taking them on vacation and reading them in the lower bunk bed in a very small room in my cousin's house. The same house that had a canary that my aunt let out to fly, to get exercise.

Somewhere between eighth grade and my sophomore year in high school it was a book on Stonehenge.

And in eighth grade, it was Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Oh, I guess there was another book. It was a biography of Albert Schweitzer.

Of all those, I would love to find a copy of the book I read on Stonehenge. I've looked for it at bookstores in Boston, discount bookstores in San Antonio, and at Powell's in Portland, Oregon, but have never run across it.

I was reminded of that book from a link on the Drudge Report today: "Pits Add to Stonehenge Mystery."

Today, on my desk is my traveling library for the moment:

• Prairie Peddlers: The Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota, William C Sherman, Paul L. Whitney, and John Guerrero
• Plains Folk: North Dakota's Ethnic History, North Dakota Centennial Heritage Series
• In Trace of TR: A Montana Hunter's Journey, Dan Aadland
• Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris
• Prairy Erth: A Deep Map, Wililam Least Heat-Moon (no misspellings)
• The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, Jeffrey Ostler
• The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, David Abulafia

I finished The Lakotas and the Black Hills a few days ago but will go back and re-read portions of it.

Least Heat-Moon's Prairie Erth has turned out to be the most surprising of all of them; Least Heat-Moon was not always a favorite of mine, but this one is very, very good. Surprising, considering the subject matter.

I am happy to say that I bought all of these books at Books on Broadway in Williston. I have bought two copies each of Plains Folk and Prairie Peddlers. My first copies are back home in San Antonio.