Family Affair (Stout)

     Rex Stout. Family Affair (1975) An acquaintance arrives at Wolfe’s brownstone late at night, seeking shelter and advice. He lights a “cigar” and is killed. Wolfe is furious, of course. The search for the murderer leads to an earlier murder, and causes a third. In the end, one of Wolfe’s operatives is the culprit. He takes The Only Way Out (tm.)
     As usual, well plotted, well written, with a minimum of the Rex Stout tricks. One reads these confections for the same reason one buys the same chocolate bar: one knows exactly what one is getting. I do wish Stout developed the characters more, especially since he hints at ongoing relationships (highly idealised in the case of Archie Goodwin and Lily Rowan.) Later writers tell not only a series of murder mysteries but also an extended novel of relationships and character. However, this book is very good of its limited kind, ie, a cut above most mysteries. *** (2001)

How the Mind Works (Pinker)

     Steven Pinker. How the Mind Works (1997) Just what it says: a survey of what is (was) known about the workings of the brain/mind at the time of writing. Pinker’s angle is evolutionary, and it works. He claims that the brain is a computational cognitive device. Our abilities (so many of which seem easy to us merely because 99% of the computations are unconscious) are just those that would improve reproductive fitness for a creature like our ancestors: a foraging omnivore with no special weapons, etc. The evolutionary niche our ancestors entered was the cognitive one, says Pinker, and the book is a pretty good demonstration of that claim.
     Pinker suffers from a blind spot: he is an agnostic skeptic, and so sees no clear use for religion. I think religion does confer fitness on the individual, and in two ways. One, faith (the attitude behind or underlying religious expression) increases hope, and hope increases the likelihood that the organism will strive to survive in the face of overwhelming odds, odds that a cognitive creature would compute automatically, BTW. Also there is evidence that a hopeful outlook on life improves not only attitudes but the immune system. Secondly, religion cements social bonds, so that expression of religious belief is a method of increasing alliances, a factor Pinker has already convincingly argued is necessary in a social creature like ourselves. Belief is not necessary, merely religious expression. The horrible effects of religious fanaticism are IMO effects of extreme alliance. OTOH, Pinker’s claim that the mind can ask questions it is not equipped to answer is plausible. That includes questions religion seeks to answer, but also suggests real limits on scientific investigation. See Devlin’s The Math Gene for another angle on this issue.
     Since the book was written, a brain area involved in the sense of self has been discovered: it’s in the right prefrontal cortex. I’ve put a clipping about this into the book.
     A book worth reading, more than once. *** (2001)

Twenty-first Century Capitalism (Heilbronner)

     Robert Heilbronner Twenty-first Century Capitalism (1992) Text for 1992 Massey Lectures. Heilbronner gives a good overview of capitalism: what it isn’t, what it is, and how it might develop. His contrast with traditional and command economies is excellent, and clarifies his thesis admirably. But he doesn’t explain what money is, an odd omission since capital is of course an accumulation of money. Or so it seems. His explanation of wealth is unclear, for he says that capital both is and isn’t wealth. He notes the self-destructive character of capitalism, but merely hints at the political and ecological consequences of this. His posits government as the counter-balance to capital, but doesn’t foresee the corruption of democratic institutions by capital. He claims there is a link between the economic liberty of capitalism and a democratic polity, but doesn’t note that the tyrannies of South America and South East Asia were and are extremely hospitable to capital. His analysis of the trans-national corporation is incomplete. Like many economists, he doesn’t fully understand the dependence of “the economy” on the ecological systems that sustain all life. All in all the book is superficial and misleading.
    His best contribution to the debate about the nature and future of capitalism is his contrasting traditional, command, and capitalistic economies. But because of his confusion about the relationship between capital and wealth, he doesn’t see that money is merely a measure of capital, and not its essence. Neither does he see that markets don’t need money: barter markets work exactly as monetised markets do. Because of his unstated and inconsistent assumptions about the nature of money, he doesn’t see that the Soviet Union was in fact a capitalistic economy. It merely measured capital in terms of product, not in terms of money.
     Underlying his confusion is a set of implicit assumptions about money, which as far as I can make out are inconsistent (his claim that capital both is and is not wealth, depending on circumstance makes this confusion clear.) He doesn’t consider money as information, yet he claims that the market works by the “signals” given by price fluctuations -- ie, by the function of money as information. He doesn’t distinguish between money and what it measures, and so doesn’t see that other ways of measuring inputs and outputs are possible. He does note that the Soviet system collapsed because the bureaucrats couldn’t measure the supply-demand relationship properly, but he doesn’t see that that has nothing to do with what measures are used and everything to do with the complexity of a market economy. The Soviet Union was also a market economy, it’s just that the market operated at the level of managers and bureaucrats, not consumers. The market operated perfectly rationally at that level: goods were measured in terms of performance (ie, compliance with quota directives), and people tried to accumulate wealth as measured by this standard. The fact that this is a stupid system if you want to produce goods and services doesn’t matter. The transition to a monetised goods and services market is of course a problem when you are used to measure wealth in terms of bureaucratic power and influence.
     I think Heilbronner suffers from not having chaos theory in his armamentarium. He comes close: he is very good on explaining how the “invisible hand” works. He also notes that the market can become unstable, and that inflation can cause a reduction of supply while there is an increase in demand, IOW  that the market can flip to a new attractor, in chaos theory terms.
     He may also be trying to mollify his audience: in his earlier work, he has been a profound critic of the ecological and social corrosives of a capitalistic economy. Here he tries to have it both ways. He notes the negative social and political effects, he notes that there is a market imbalance between labour and owner, he notes the distorting effect of externalities on the market (because they cause a misstatement of the cost of goods), and so on. But he also praises the wealth-creating power of capitalism, and thinks the expansion of human consumption is a Good Thing.
     Heilbronner is most interesting in my opinion in his observation that there is no necessary connection between a market economy and capitalism. I think this is an acute observation. After reading this book, I conclude that capitalism requires a market economy, but not vice versa. In fact, capitalism is a pathology of the market: it comes about by making one’s economic goal the accumulation of money rather than the creation of wealth. Or better: the monetisation of capital has more negative than positive effects.
     BTW, Heilbronner’s claim that pre-capitalistic societies don’t have economies is a neat semantic trick. He claims that you have to have an understanding of economics to understand a market economy and capitalism. I beg to differ. You have to have an understanding of costs and prices as measures of value, which isn’t quite the same. Primitive economies used other measures of value to allocate economic effort and resources, but like all societies, they had to have a value system to determine production and distribution. In my opinion, modern economic theory’s greatest failure is its ignorance of how primitive economies actually work. The consequence is that economists have an appallingly limited notion of value, and therefore have a great deal of trouble explaining the observed fact that most people use values in addition to and often in place of those measured by money in the economic decisions.
     Nevertheless, a useful book. Heilbronner writes clearly: he has the knack of stating complex ideas simply. He could use a few more concrete examples, though. *** (2001)
     Update 2013: Kahneman and his colleagues have studied the non-monetary values that operate in economic decisions, and added to that the effects of limited reasoning skills.

The Man Born To Be King (Sayers)

Dorothy Sayers The Man Born to be King (1943; reprinted 1990) Twelve radio plays (first broadcast in 1943 by the BBC) telling the story of Jesus from shortly after his birth to after the Resurrection. It is told from a believer’s stance: Sayers is trying to make those events historically and narratively real, and she succeeds superbly.
     For example, she brings in a secondary plot of an aborted Zealot uprising, which provides both historical and human motivation for a variety of otherwise puzzling actions, chief of which is Judas betrayal of Jesus. Judas wanted Jesus to be the Messiah as Judas conceived him, which of course he was, up to a point. However, because he has insufficient information and does not trust Jesus, Judas misinterprets Jesus’ actions, thinks Jesus has sold out. The betrayal follows inevitably.
     Another example is Pilate’s puzzling decision to reopen the case against Jesus after throwing out the Sanhedrin’s petition. Claudia, Pilate’s wife, has had bad dreams about Jesus, whom she has encountered earlier. Pilate’s one great virtue is his love for his wife, so when she warns him, he listens. And the story follows its natural course.
     In other words, Sayers shows that the events of Jesus Passion all had hinged on human beings pursuing their various political, spiritual, personal, and careerist ends. God did not twist events to follow a pre-arranged pattern. Even Judas’s betrayal did not have to happen. If Judas had been less egotistical, and more trusting (if he had had fides, faith), he would have drawn back from his bargain with the High Priest, but Caiaphas’s men would have arrested Jesus anyhow. And so it goes. The events of the story are inevitable, but at each step some other decision could have been made, and the cost to some individuals would have been less.
     The scripts are written for the ear, which makes them easier to follow. Sayers's notes to each script (directed to the producers and actors) are worth reading just for the theological and psychological insight they offer. Sayers is an uncompromising Christian, in the sense that she takes Jesus’s godhead and all that flows from it for granted. However, she is no pietistic literalist, and knows that God works with the material at hand. This includes Sayers’s own plays: they work as plays, first and foremost. Though we know the story before we read them, they convince as dramatic story-telling. You don’t have to be Christian to understand and enjoy them. For the Christian, however, these plays may help clarify several mysteries: God-in-Man, the function of free will in God’s plans, the variety of religious experience, and so on.
     A wonderful book. **** (2001)

Big Planet (Vance)

     Jack Vance Big Planet (1952) A picaresque story set on a large but low-density, metal-poor planet in some far off star system. The Earth settlers have splintered into a variety of societies, all marked by their hunger for metal. A group of Earth officials crash land, and must find their way the Earth Enclave. The book is a failed attempt at creating exotic cultures. Like most adventure-action stories it’s just one damn thing after another; there’s no plot, just a series of events. It was originally serialised in one of the 1950s SF mags, which paid by the word, and tended to edit stories down to the bare bones to minimise their costs (and to increase the number of stories per issue.) This means a loss of all that makes a story of this type interesting: not what happens, but the incidentals that give context and develop character. I stopped reading about half-way through. I just didn’t care what happened to the protagonists. Bomb

The Christmas Spy (Howlett)

     John Howlett The Christmas Spy (1975) The title refers to the time frame. A muddled plot, in which the title hero stumbles on a drug-smuggling operation on the Italian-Swiss border, and old ghosts are raised by his encounter with his opposite number in Italy. This man is killed, probably by the Mafia. “Paris” tries to control the operation. The Italian police and the carabinieri also get involved. There is another death, conveniently labelled suicide, a bit of sex, a bit of family pathos, and so on. A very bleak story with a muddled plot. An example of the pornography of evil: the writer relishes the awfulness of his world, and invites us to relish it with him. Much of the action takes place on trains, which is the reason I bought the book (second-hand), and but for that I wouldn’t have read it. Howlett is good at atmosphere, and not much else. **

Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide 1993

     Leonard Maltin Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide 1993 (1992) I’ve used this book a lot, and its tattered look proves it. Compared to other movie/video guides, Maltin has two great strengths. First, he lists all movies ever shown on TV, including those not available on video. Second, he is very good on everything except science fiction. I also like the fact that he puts dates, credits, etc at the head of the entry. His only serious weakness is that he doesn’t understand science fiction, and so of course he over-praises things like Metropolis and Forbidden Planet, while he puts down Bladerunner. Otherwise an indispensable reference. It’s time I got a newer version! *** (2001)

Dining by Rail (Porterfield)

James D. Porterfield Dining by Rail (1993) Just what it says: a brief history, with emphasis on the menus, the experience, and the operation of dining cars, followed by a selection of dishes served by various railroads in North America. The history is sound, the photos are poorly reproduced (this is a p/b version), and the recipes sound yummy. Not a book to read from cover to cover, but one to dip into, both for tidbits of history and reminiscence, and for the recipes. I hope Marie tries a few; I may have to learn to cook, however. As railroadiana, it’s very good. I can’t judge it as a cookbook, but it sounds luscious. *** (2001)

Stations (Flanagan)

    Michael Flanagan Stations (1994) Forty paintings depicting a fictional album of photographs and a few maps of two fictional railroads set in Virginia. They are the Buffalo and Shenandoah Railroad, and the Powhatan Railroad. The album pages bear hand-written notes by photographer Russell’s lover Anna, herself an artist, and sister of the memoirist Lucius. Lucius writes the notes for the pictures. The combination builds a blend of family memoir and regional history whose effect is hard to describe. A family tree and an extended introduction preface the “reproduction” of the album. A few items of apparatus (reference to a local professor of history, who has written an essay on the photographs; footnotes; careful crediting of the sources of the annotations) help with the illusion of authenticity.

     The album pages themselves look weathered, creased, and worn. Flanagan went to a lot of trouble to create that trompe l’oeil effect. At normal viewing distances, his images look like photos, too. Several paintings are based on actual photographs (credited). One of the photographs relates to an encounter with “Virgil Ross”, a model railroad builder who lived near the Powhatan Railroad. His model railroad and his character indicate that Flanagan knew about John Allen. I think he should have credited Allen, especially since the track plan of “Ross’s” layout is almost identical to the Gorre and Daphetid.
     A wonderful book, with a dreamy realism mixed with sharp edges, like sand mixed with broken stones. The overall tone is elegiac: Look what we have lost, it says, yet consider also how hard were the lives of the people who built and operated these railroads, and the people who lived near them and depended on them. Russell and Anna are misfits, for they cherish the reminders of the past, the bits and pieces of history. Russell’s project, to photograph every named place on the two railroads, reminds us that we tend to amnesia. *** (2001)

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. ***