Stealing History, Robert Atwood

Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood tells the story of how looters dig up graves and destroy cultural history.

Started: September 15, 2010
Completed: December 10, 2010
Recommendation: Ehhhh
Recommended By:  Picked this up at Vertigo Books as it was closing.

Words I looked up:
deracinate -- Displacement; to move something from its natural environment
sclerotic -- Hardened, not fleshy or soft

Review:


There is no question that bad things are happening at sites of archaeological value all over the world.  This book documents the concept and does a decent job of describing a very serious destruction of an archaeological site by looters.  This book documents this and what is happening in the world is staggering.  Unfortunately, the book is a very difficult read.  Nothing seems to flow well and it took forever to fight through it.  I felt it was worth reading, but it was very hard and I wonder how much extra information I got from the last half of the book.  I think this book is rather repetitive and builds the case strongly about half-way through then never really goes any farther to establish that looting is bad, both museums and collectors are complicit, and that changes in the US are making a dent, but no where near solving the problem.

Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman is a sequal to American Gods.  Anansi is the trickster spider god who was in many ways the hero of the first novel.  This comedic look at ancient gods in the modern day world bereft of many of their powers, but still gods, is something I have looked forward to reading since I bought the book!

Started:  July 3, 2010
Completed: August 12, 2010
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By:  Nobody, although American Gods was recommended by the owner of Vertigo Books (now closed), so I guess this one comes from the same source.

Words I looked up:
gruntle -- to put in a good humor or satisfy
koan -- a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment
lubricious -- marked by wantonness, but the second definition is to have a smooth or slippery character.
lascivious -- lewd or lustful
rubicund -- ruddy (I always thought this word meant fat)

Review:  It is important to note, first, that Neil Gaiman is an artist with words.  His eloquent descriptions and careful use of language makes reading his books almost akin to watching a movie in your own internal hi-def.  The story here is fanciful and the plot, while well developed, is not really all that complicated.  This book is fun to read, it is not a head scratcher.  The use of the magic of the gods is fairly smooth and makes sense within the context of the rest of the book.  I'm not going to put any spoilers in even though I think the joy of reading the book is the reading itself and not the plot line so much.

Patrick: Son of Ireland, Stephen R. Lawhead

Patrick:  Son of Ireland by Stephen R. Lawhead is the story of St. Patrick as historical fiction.  I like the way that Lawhead writes and have enjoyed other books he has written including the Pendragon Cycle and Taliesin.  His attention to historical detail is refreshing and unobtrusive in the novel.  I do feel that some of the things he highlights in this way can be shocking or off-putting, but I use that as an indicator that I should take a few minutes and find out a bit more about the period in question or the practices of the people being discussed.  It turns out these jarring moments have been a couple of good opportunities to learn more about the people or to learn more about the times.

Started:  June 26, 2010
Completed: July 3, 2010
Recommendation: A fun read with a little bit of action, recommended for those who enjoy a little fantasy and are OK with the Catholic Church taking a hit on the chin.
Recommended By:  Nobody, I bought this as Vertigo book store was closing.  A novel I had wanted to read and always knew I could go to Vertigo to get.  Then it closed.  Ugh.
Words I Looked Up:
micturation -- Urinate
dewlap -- A fold of loose skin hanging from the neck of an animal or person (such as the wattle of a chicken)
Review:  OK, so this was about St. Patrick, but it covers the time about which there is little or no data.  His time before the deeds of St. Patrick are written and well known.  In fact, the book ends just before the St. Patrick you know about really does anything.  Some of the Roman life is a little contrived, but it isn't bad and the handling of the Church and its issues was fairly well done in my opinion.  Patrick is not a swashbuckling hero, but he is by turns brave and a baldfaced liar.  The character and his times are approached as complex and that is both refreshing and a bit sobering.  For such a large book, it does feel like it was heavily edited down as some of the transitions didn't feel smooth and his time in Rome was remarkably short.  All in all, however, I enjoyed it as a quick read.

"Nature," August 2009

"Nature" is a magazine of rather venerable scientific importance.  I don't normally put magazines here as I read too many of them and they are generally not of interest to me again in the future (although there have been exceptions).  This issue is focused on packaging Platonic Solids (a special case in packaging irregular shapes), but the article that has captured my attention is "The Diversity of Type Ia Supernovae From Broken Symmetries" by D. Kasen, F.K. Ropke, and S. E. Woosley.

Started:  April, 2010
Completed: April, 2010
Recommendation: For physics geeks interested in high pressure/density non-laminar gaseous flow only.  Oh, and really, really big explosions.
Recommended By: My wife found this one in a used section of the library and picked it up for me.

Words I looked up:
Reynolds Number - ratio of inertial forces  to viscous forces  is how Wikipedia makes the definition.  In short, this number looks at how the fluid behaves relative to the density of that fluid.  I had forgotten what this number was from early chemistry.
critical Karlovitz Number -  this is from the CFD-online wiki.  In short this looks at the degree of combustion in a turbulent situation with the time it takes for the combustion to occur.  The number becomes "critical" when combustion is on the threshold of being eliminated (or started depending on which side of the burning you originate :) ).
Rayleigh-Taylor instability - Interaction between two fluids where the lighter fluid is pushing the heavier fluid.  As far as I can tell, this pretty much only occurs in stars.


Review:
This article makes the case that use of white dwarf explosions (caused by accretion of mass from a nearby binary) do not necessarily provide the accurate "candle" of distance for which they have historically been used.  In short, the prevailing assumption has been that the explosion has been spherical in nature starting from the center of the star.  Recent research that fails to take into account a lot of variables (such as the spin-rate of the star--there is an effort to handle these variables, although it is clearly inadequate) has demonstrated a 2% error in distance calculations using these stars.  From the description in the article it seems to me that the 2% error serves as a bottom, although the authors clearly state that their calculations can only account for up to a 2% error.

I want to put more thought into this article and read it a few more times, but I think I have something to contribute to this research.  I'd love to play with the simulation they have developed.  The simulation suggests that the consumption of fuel makes the star a huge dipole and I'm guessing that combined with irregularities caused by the accretion disk, this dipole would distort the characteristics of the explosion even more.  My thinking is that there would be huge pools of hydrogen around the equator of the star undergoing spontaneous combustion (and flow into the mantle) as the star starts to consume its own Ni creating a back pressure that gives the star a slight dumbbell shape for Ni and I think that would effect the dipole by creating two exit points for ejecta at the poles with the equator accepting the ejecta and further accelerating the speed of the combustion of the accretion material and probably causing some kind of flow back into the deep interior of the star inhibiting Ni consumption and causing even more dispersed explosion events then contemplated in the article.

Booknotes, Brian Lamb

Booknotes:  America's Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas by Brian Lamb is a series of short interviews with a huge number of authors.

Started: sometime in 2008

Completed: 2/1/2011

Recommendation: It is rather dated, so a book that was intended to be "current" is not.

Recommended by:  Found in a library book sale and was intrigued.

Review:

This book does not really lend itself to a review, so I'm just noting books that I'd like to read as a result of having read this book:

The Man in the Mirror:  The Life of Benedict Arnold, Clare Brandt

Edison:  Inventing the Century, Neil Baldwin

Lincoln, David Herbert Donald

A Bright Shining Lie:  John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Neil Sheehan

All of One Peace, Colman McCarthy

Failure is Impossible:  Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, Lynn Sherr

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (recommended by Bill Clinton)

The Supreme Court: How it Was and How It Is, William Rehnquist

Jarrettsville, Cornelia Nixon

Jerrettsville, is a novelization of a true story involving a murder not far from Washington DC on the 4th anniversary of the Civil War.

Started: February 3, 2010

Completed: February 7, 2010

Recommendation:  Very well written, most of interest to those who find the period interesting.

Recommended By:  My wife picked it up at the library as a book she thought I might like.

Words I looked up:

  aureole - a ring shaped zone around an igneous intrusion (I looked this word up, because I thought it referred to a portion of the breast, but it has a more general meaning indicating a "ring shaped" surrounding.  The way it was used in the book seemed odd to me when I read it.  The definition given is the 4th, but the closest to the meaning in which it was used.  The first definition is "halo").

Review:

This is a very interesting story about a young woman in a difficult position in the ante-bellum North.  The book opens with a murder and the rest of the book gives the background.  It is irritating to not really know who was killed for quite some time (about half way through it becomes clear).  It is told from the point-of-view of several different characters over time and was largely based on family paperwork, letters, and newspaper accounts of the actual events.  The author has clearly made some stuff up to carry the story and fill in details, but it seems to run rather along the lines of the newspaper stories reprinted at the back of the book.

I enjoyed this book, but my taste runs to the eclectic and this is far from a happy story.

Nothing Like it in the World, Stephen E. Ambrose

Nothing Like it In the World, by Stephen E. Ambrose is a look at the creation of the transcontinental railroad.  I read Ambrose's book on Lews and Clark and found it both readable and informative, so I've been looking forward to this one.

Started: January 2, 2010

Completed: June 26, 2010

Recommendation: Not recommended

Recommended by:  Nobody, I found this book on the community book shelf at the New Deal Cafe.

Review:  This book is very interesting.  Of particular interest to me was the history behind the phrase "Hell on Wheels" which now makes much more sense to me.  It was also interesting to hear about the nature and resolution of the labor disputes.  Frankly, the transcontinental railroad never impressed me and, after reading this book, I'm impressed.  While the material is interesting, reading it is boring.  The writing is good and I enjoy the author, but the material is boring to me.  I'm not a railroad guy.  I'm not even a big business guy.  From a railroad perspective, I think there is not enough information about the tolerances of the curves and the reasons for the grades...why a particular grade was considered maximum or what changes in locomotive technology were caused or influenced the railroad.  From a business perspective, this was a huge swindle in many ways, but it wasn't really analyzed.  The end of the book has one of the railroad companies in a sort of receivership, but I think the author just assumes that everyone knows what happened to the company or that it doesn't really matter to the reader.  In any case, here's the deal:  the material is interesting and the presentation is good, but the book is not compelling.  You have to work through this book and I think that even if you have a special interest, the book is not going to address your area of interest sufficiently to let that carry you along.  You will still have to work.  That is why I don't recommend it.