Read one, you want to read the next: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories

    Patricia Craig, ed. The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (1990) Craig has done wonderful job. A handful of the classics are here (e.g., “Silver Blaze”), and I’ve read work by many of the authors. But about half are new to me, and if the samples indicate their skill, they are underrated, for example Cyril Hare, whose “Miss Burnside’s Dilemma” shows how point of view can be used not only to narrate a crime but also to show its ripple effects.
     The collection covers about half a century, when detective stories concentrated on the puzzle, and the characters were just complicated enough to make both the crime and its discovery believable. What struck me was how little we need to be told of a character to construct an impression of the backstory that grounds motive in reality and method in plausibility. It was as often as not the style, the throw-away phrase or word, that created these impressions, I think because they create a vivid narrator. Make the story-teller sound trustworthy, and we will follow their lead.
     A potato-chip book: when you finish a story, you immediately want to read another. ***

Economics 201: Thermodynamics and efficiency

 Thermodynamics and economics: Why a car is the most expensive mode of transport.

A typical gasoline engine in a car runs at about 25% efficiency. That is, the energy in 1 out of every 4 litres (or gallons) of fuel in the tank does “useful work”. The energy is mostly converted to waste heat, but some is wasted in "internal losses", such friction in the engine and transmission, pumping coolant etc. (Efficiency in the lab can be much higher, but we’re talking real-world here, not lab conditions).

The “useful work” consists of moving the car. So about 1 of 4 litres of fuel is used to move the car and its driver. Let’s assume the car plus driver weighs a tonne (1000kg), of which the driver weighs 90kg. Since a litre is 1,000ml, the system burns 1ml of fuel per kg of weight. Of this, 90ml will be used to move the driver. The rest (910ml) is used to move the car. So out of a total of  4,000ml of fuel, 90 ml is used to move the driver. That’s approximately 1/4%.

Therefore: If the fuel costs $1/litre, you’ve spent $4 to move yourself, of which 1 cent's worth of fuel moves you, 99 cents’ worth moves the car, and $3 pays for internal losses and waste heat. One can scavenge some of that waste heat to warm the cabin in winter, so it’s not entirely wasted.

The above calculation ignores the effect of speed, because speed increases fuel consumption overall. However, since with increasing speed an increasing fraction of the energy is used to push air out of the way, the fraction used to move the driver decreases. In other words, at most 1/4% of the fuel moves the driver down the highway.

I’ve also ignored the effect of passengers, stuff in the trunk, etc, since those merely increase total weight and hence total fuel consumption. The amount of available useful work will still be about 25% of the energy in the fuel. The fractions for moving the car and moving the people in it will change somewhat: a loaded car will transport people and their gear a little more efficiently than a nearly empty one.

But however you tweak the scenario, using a car to transport people is appallingly wasteful.

The Sackett Brand: vengeance for murder.

     Louis L’Amour. The Sackett Brand (1965) One of the earlier Sackett stories: William Tell Sackett, a lonely man who has found Ange, his true love, is bushwhacked while scouting the trail for his wagon, tumbles down a cliff, and plunges into the river. Badly injured, but determined to get back to Ange, he finds her murdered. He eventually tracks down and kills her murderer. His quest causes rumours, so a bunch of Sacketts come to his aid. The story ends with his realisation that he will never be lonely again, with all those Sacketts surrounding him.
     A typical L’Amour romance, with a hero just this side of unbelievably tough. A good read for a fan of Westerns, a good introduction to L’Amour for those who haven’t discovered him yet. Average for L’Amour, above average for the genre. **½

Roy Daniells: The Chequered Shade

     Roy Daniells. The Chequered Shade (1963) I recently read three of Daniells poems at a public event. They were well received.
     Every time I reread Daniells’ poems, I like them better. They are beautifully crafted. Daniells does sonnets especially well. His language is plain or not, varying with his subjects and themes. Most are narratives, sometimes of an encounter with a place, sometimes a riff on ancient tales. His responses are sometimes explicit comments, sometimes implicit in the language.
     The book has three sections. “Where the Great Caesar Came”, a travelogue in verse. “The Immemorial Stones”, biblical stories and themes. “The Map Nailed Up”, a manifesto and confession of his poetic practice and his own life.
     I’ll quote “Noah 2", which I think shows how Daniells takes his subject seriously. This Noah is no mere mythic-symbolic semi-abstraction, he’s a real man in the real world. The poem epitomises Daniells method of translating well-worn myth and cliched history into felt reality. I suspect that the poem mirrors Daniells' own experience with resistance to visionary projects.

They gathered round and told him not to do it.
They formed a committee and tried to take control.
They cancelled his building permit and they stole
His plans. I sometimes wonder he got through it.
He told them wrath was coming, they would rue it.
He begged them to believe the tides would roll,
He ooffered them passage to his destined goal,
A new world. They were finished and he knew it.
All to no end.
                       And then the rain began.
A splatter at first that barely wet the soil,
Then showers, quick rivulets lacing the town,
Then deluge universal. The old man
Arthritic from his years of scorn and toil
Leaned from his admiral’s walk and watched them drown.

The book is out of print. Secondhand copies may be found online. ****

Ig-Nobel Prizes 2 (2004)

     Marc Abrahams. The Ig-Nobel Prizes 2 (2004) The Ig-Nobels began as a lark by Marc Abrahams and his friends: It’s a group of annual prizes for the best examples of research “that first makes you laugh, then makes you think.” That includes both proper research on oddities and quirky questions, complete with experimental and observational data; and fake research by fraudsters, religionists, pseudo-scientists, and the like, featuring more or less batty reasoning about whatever the researcher is investigating. Thus we have both Troy Hurtubise (North Bay, Ontario) who devised, built, and tested a grizzly-proof suit; and Jack and Rexella van Impe, who claim that their research proves that Hell is located in black holes (though they haven’t specified which one or ones).
     Anyone can nominate anyone for an Ig-Nobel. The only ineligible candidates are fictional characters, or people whose actual existence cannot be determined. Go to The Annals of Improbable Research, in which you will find many of the papers whose authors qualify as Ig-Nobel nominees.
     A lovely journey through human folly, wisdom, quirkiness, and delusion. Will be shelved with other reference works. ***

Murder in the Abbey (Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery)

     Louise Penny The Beautiful Mystery (2012) Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir investigate a murder at the abbey of St Gilbert Entre les Loups. Superintendent Sylvain Francoeur, Gamache’s enemy,  arrives a day later and messes things up. Gamache solves the murder, but Beauvoir relapses into oxycontin abuse. The book ends with a rift between the two men, made worse because Jean Guy has fallen in love with Annie Gamache, Armand’s daughter.
     Penny’s strength is character. The puzzle is fairly solved, using the old provoke-a-confession ruse, but the focus is on Gamache and Beauvoir, and their complex relationship, which is tangled up in Sûrete politics and corruption. Gamache is just this side of too good to be true: Penny manages to make him believably sane and incorruptible, but she’s helped in this by the reader’s willingness to believe  such a man is possible. The history of Gregorian chant figures in the story, as do the mystery of monastic life, and the puzzle of faith. It’s a novel, an examination of characters in a specific context, and how that context affects their scope of decision and action, and how their weaknesses limit their options. Penny’s stylistic trick of short paragraphs wears a bit. Well done. ***½

How to Plan Your Model Railroad.

     Tony Koester, ed. Model Railroad Planning 2018 (2018) The annual Model Railroader special issue on planning layouts. Better, on designing them, but the word “design” hasn’t become comfortable usage for model railroaders.
     This one has 15 articles, mostly of the “how I did it” variety”. Each includes a track plan with summary stats such as room size, mainline run, curve radii, etc. The articles focus on the process of deciding what kind of layout the owner wanted, and how they arrived at an acceptable version of it in available space and time. Most of the layouts are large to very large, based more or less accurately on some prototype, and intended mostly for operation by a multi-person crew.
     A couple of exceptions: David Barrow built a small shelf layout in O scale, depicting a small town, perfectly suited for solo operation, and (like all his layouts) about as simple as a layout can be. It’s not much more than track on plywood, with a couple of building mockups and photos of industries tacked to the wall. It's the layout as game board.
     Two layouts, planned by professionals, are designed primarily for train watching. One of them uses vertical staging: shelves along the wall above the work bench, reached by spurs off a helix that hides one end of a folded-dogbone mainline. Each shelf hold two tracks, slightly separated vertically so that the train in front doesn’t completely hide the one at the back. The owner can turn from his work to watch his trains.
     The other one uses a spiral (pioneered by John Armstrong), which allows long runs between towns, and a division point that plausibly requires engine and crew changes, block-switching of through freights, and assembly of local switch runs. This layout gives the owner both the train watcher’s thrill and the pleasure of operating with a crew of friends.
     The lead article by Doug Tagsold tells of how he returned to Colorado narrow gauge modelling, but wanted more reliable mechanisms than HOn3 could guarantee. He devised a scale of 1:72, using HO track and rolling stock tweaked to have the narrow-gauge look. The gauge works out to 3.95 ft (approx. 3 ft 11"). Not exactly narrow gauge, but the overall impression is plausible, judging from the photos. 1:72 is a popular military scale, so there’s lots of material available for scenery.
     Most of the layouts allow both train watching as well as operation, but as usual operation is the main goal. For the average hobbyist, the stories inspire, and may encourage the vaguely dissatisfied to tear down and rebuild with a better notion of what they want from their layout. For the beginner, it’s a showcase of what’s possible, and may help them avoid the beginner’s mistake of trying to have it all. Koester's summary of "Seven things not do" should be tacked up on the wall of every layout room. ***