The White Pass and Yukon Route Railway

     Graham Wilson The White Pass and Yukon Route Railway (1998) Compilation of photos and excerpts from contemporary texts (diaries, news reports, etc) and some bridging narrative. A nicely done book. The target audience is clearly the casually interested tourist, but the fan will find a lot of interesting and useful information. The emphasis is on the people and the hardships of the work. There are some technical errors, but they don’t seriously detract from the effect. Information for the modeller is sparse but valuable. A very few photos show rolling stock and structural details. On the other hand, several of the views of stations and line sections give the modeller insight into the impression they might wish to create. A nicely done book. **½

The Math Gene (Devlin)

     Keith Devlin The Math Gene. (2000) An attempt to explain how humans are capable of mathematics. After reviewing brain functions and brain evolution, Devlin spends some time on language and the evolution of language. Finally, he hypothesises that gossip is the source of mathematical thinking. Why? Because gossip is about relationships and relationships between relationships, ie, about patterns. By exaptation, the human brain becomes capable of abstracting these patterns and investigating them (telling stories about them.) Devlin’s theory is plausible, and may be correct.
      I do quarrel with him about the idea that syntax is an either-or property of language. Protolanguage has a rudimentary syntax. Two word sentences have patterns like object-action, or property-object, or their inverses. This is true both of human infants’ protolanguage and of the protolanguage of apes who have been trained to use symbols or signing. It seems to me that a creature that can produce true language syntax for some utterances will be able to reason about its environment more complexly. It’s not necessary for all utterances to be syntactically complete. They aren’t when children make the transition to syntax: it’s not a one-day-to-the-next phenomenon. And, as I believe Bickerton and others have pointed out, pidgin utterances are often syntactically incomplete. It is the creation of a syntactically complete language by the children of pidgin speakers, based on their parents’ pidgins, that so impressed Bickerton, after all.
     An interesting book. *** (2001)

The Feeling of What Happens (Damasio)

    Antonio Damasio The Feeling of what Happens. (1999) Damasio attempts to account for the neurology of consciousness. He points out there are two questions about consciousness: a) what is it like? and b) How does the brain create it? He addresses the second one.
     Essentially, what he says is as follows. At the most primitive level, the body receives input from the environment, and responds. The responses consist of both changes within the organism and actions by it. At the next level, the nervous system creates images or maps of both the sensory input and the body state. It uses the first to direct its actions (fight or flight), and the second to potentiate the action. This means that certain changed body states are linked to certain objects.
     The next stage is to link the changes in body state together with the object: this is emotion. In future, the organism will exhibit the emotion when encountering the object again. Now it becomes possible to create what Damasio calls second order maps: an image of the body state is maintained, and updated as new information in the form of emotions, new objects, and new actions is produced. The continually updated image of the body and its state he calls the proto-self. The associated feeling he calls core-consciousness.
     When the nervous system creates an image of itself processing the information in the proto-self and in core-consciousness, we have full consciousness. This would be a third-order map. In humans, the existence of language, memory, and so on results in two more levels of consciousness: the auto-biographical self, and extended consciousness (which may be the same: Damasio is fuzzy about this.)
     So, in essence, consciousness consists of the brain creating images of itself processing information that it has received both from the body and from its own internal processing. Simplified, creatures with sufficiently complex brains have emotions, those with more complexity have awareness of emotion or feeling, and those with the most complex have awareness of their awareness, or consciousness. Insofar as emotion is an image of the body’s states, feelings an image of the emotions, and consciousness an image of the feelings, consciousness is also an image, ie, an illusion. This is Dennett’s point, but Damasio rightly emphasise that the images really exist, in the form of patterned firing of neural assemblies.
    Damasio’s account persuades me. I’ve read Descartes Error, in which he argues that reason alone is insufficient to enable choice and therefore insufficient to produce action. Emotion is the driving force. That book was elegantly and clearly written. This one is turgid, repetitive, and overly technical. It is academic, in other words. Still, it is a useful book, because it is a neurologists’ attempt to link the processes of mind to brain functions. As an attempt or first approximation, it succeeds. Damasio is careful to distinguish between hypothesis and fact, between observations and explanations. He offers his account as his theory, tries (usually successfully) to show where he agrees and where he differs with other researchers, and tries (not so successfully) to address the lay reader.
     The most interesting of his claims is that consciousness arises in the oldest parts of the brain. Damage to these (eg, brain stem, cingulate, etc) impairs consciousness in ways that damage to so-called higher structures (eg, frontal cortex, the language areas) does not. If he is right (and I see no reason why not), then all creatures with brains have some sort of proto-self, and those with more complex brains will have core-consciousness. That is, they will have emotions, and some of them will have feelings. This means that the anthropocentrics, who ascribe human personalities to animals, are partly right.
     Excellent content, so-so style. ***

Short Short Stories (David & Redfern)

     Jack David and Jon Redfern. Short Short Stories. (1981) A text for senior high school or first year college, consisting of 40 very short stories (all under 4 pages, and most under 3) a few exercises and discussion questions, and an essay by Raymond Carver. The questions are very 80s; the stories are all interesting and most are excellent; and the essay by Carver is worth rereading. Borrowed from Jon, who found it in a yard sale or used book store, and so paid far less for it than it was worth. *** (2001)

The Anti-Book List (Redhead & MacLeish)

     Brian Redhead and Kenneth McLeish, eds. The Anti-Booklist. (1981) A collection of short essays attacking the reputations of certain books (and their authors.) Witty and well read. Most of the criticisms of the classic, well-known, or merely popular books rest on moral grounds and/or simply bad writing. This book reminds us not so much that even good writers write bad books, but that we often value books for the wrong reasons. The other point this book makes, albeit unintentionally: it demonstrates that much of what we think of as literary judgement, positive or negative, consists of little more than following the current fashions. Many of  this book's targets no longer loom large enough in the literary world to merit this much attention (eg, Evelyn Waugh.) Nothing fades as fast as a best-seller’s popularity. A quick read, but once is enough. **½ (2001)

Model Railroad Planning 2001

     Model Railroad Planning 2001. MRR Annual. This year, Koester has chosen articles with two main themes: changing modelling goals, and smaller layouts. There are still a couple of large layouts featured, and the overall modelling philosophy is still prototype-based, but strict prototype modelling has lost its premier place. In fact, the end-piece describes Jeff Wilson’s tearing down his strictly prototype layout and replacing it with a "prototype themes" freelance plan. Iain Rice designs a couple of granger-style roads (10'x15', HO & N), Robert Nicholson designs a "based-on" fictitious Georgian branchline (15'x22, S or On2.5), and Eric Hausmann designs a 12'x12' plan based on West Virginia’s glass industry. All three use prototypes for inspiration and guidance, but each adapts and modifies the prototype to suit his space and tastes. Most importantly, each thinks in terms of the space available, and the total impression possible within that space.
     The April MRR happens to include a very small layout - 8'x8'. So perhaps the prototype fanatics are losing their predominance in the hobby. Good thing, too. A letter in MRRP 2001 laments the split in model railroading in the UK - on the one side the strictly prototype nutters, who can’t even agree on standards among themselves; and on the other the ordinary modellers, who are faced with a horrible mix of largely incompatible proprietary standards, and insufficient help from the "true" modellers. (However, Hornby and Bachmann seem to be moving towards track/wheel dimensions compatible with NEM and NMRA - about time.,)
     An intriguing engineering concept, a track elevator, extends the design possibilities. The author has built two, and his experience validates the concept. It’s billed as the helix killer - but IMO the helix is an under-valued and under-utilised scenic element, and I intend to sketch an LDA that lets the helix come into its own. *** (2001)
     Update 2013: MRP 2013 includes an example of one turn of a helix "brought forward" into the open. The builder says that now operators know where their train is, and also (bonus) it adds both a scenic element and another operating point (passing siding with team track).
     Update 2020: Even a multi-level helix can feature scenic element. The trick is to bring one or more of the levels out of the stack into the open. There, they can feature a cliff-side bench, or a curved trestle over a steep transverse gorge, or a remote and lonely station, prehaps with a water tank.

250 posts!

The review of John Armstrong's Classic Layout Designs is the 250th post. If you wish to use that a an excuse to celebrate, please do so. There are precious few reason to celebrate, so every excuse counts.

Classic Layout Designs (John Armstrong)

     John Armstrong Classic Layout Designs (2000) 15 articles reprinted from Model Railroader, all with beautifully reproduced new prototype photos. The drawings were also brought to a common standard, but the computer operator had some problems: elevation marks are inconsistent. As with most perfect-bound books, the gutters are too narrow, and bleeding pictures to the inside causes an irritating loss of graphic information.
     Armstrong has added brief comments on his articles, which are entertaining to read. He notes that "layover tracks" are now called staging. He emphasises that layouts should be designed to be built in stages. But he’s too modest to draw attention to his four primary contributions to layout design: a) scene-by-scene plans based on prototypes (the "layout design element" or LDE of the layout design SIG); b) fitting main lines into a space subdivided into squares based on minimum radius; c) staging; d) use of backdrops (even double-sided) and hidden trackage to limit the visible layout to one scene at a time. All these are aspects of total layout design, an approach that his disciple Iain Rice has also mastered. About the only difference between Armstrong and modern designers is aisle-width: 30" or more is now considered minimal.
     Reading Armstrong’s plans can be difficult, as he was a master of squeezing every last inch of track into the space available, a skill no doubt developed because he designed for real people living in real houses. This creates a deceptively spaghetti-bowl look. Careful study reveals that very rarely can one see more than one scene at a time, however, and then usually only by elevating oneself to helicopter level. Printing the scenic suggestions in darker ink could have mitigated the problem.
     Only the wretched physical design of the book prevents four stars. *** (2001)

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine July/August 1997

      Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, July/August 1997. Borrowed from WCESS. Demonstrates that the short story is the mystery genre’s best format: just long enough to create barely believable characters and a plausible plot, but compressed enough for an easily visible shape of the story. Most of the stories are sentimental, a few have the Hitchcockian twist of the crook inadvertently double-crossing himself (or herself) through excessive ingenuity, and a couple work on every level.
     Memories (Wanda Jones) plays a nice variation on Southern Gothic: a plain girl’s nasty older brother gets his just deserts in a psychologically satisfying way. Stop, Thief! (Dan Sontup) works the double-cross motif expertly: honest citizen wants to use petty crook in an insurance scam and set him up as the fall guy, but makes the common error of thinking crooks are dumber than honest citizens. Streetwise (J. A Paul) believably mixes a smart kid, school bullies, an observant cop, and a martial arts coach into a well-paced yarn. Most of the stories are competently written (or edited). A few are a bit precious in style or concept, but I guess the magazine has to cater to a wide range of tastes. ** to *** (2001)

Murder on Location (Howard Engel)

     Howard Engel Murder on Location (1982) One of the Benny Cooperman series, which had a moderate success some years ago. (There’s a new one out, so I guess he’s still popular). Soft-boiled PI, gris rather than noir in mood. Plot somewhat convoluted, and Engel is not as adept at planting clues and red herrings as other writers: the reader (me) gets confused. Perhaps more recent stories are better constructed. The characters are attractive and real enough to engage interest, the style is competent, the atmosphere realistic in the mannered style of such confections. Two people are murdered; the roots of the crime are deep in the past. Cooperman is a shadowy figure, however, despite the first-person narrative. The book will do as an airplane read. ** (2001)
     Upfate 2013: I read all the Cooperman stories eventually. Most of them are better than this one.