Tag: books

An Epidemic of Absence

This groundbreaking book explores the promising but controversial “worm therapy”—deliberate infection with parasitic worms—in development to treat autoimmune disease. It explains why farmers’ children so rarely get hay fever, why allergy is less prevalent in former Eastern Bloc countries, and how one cancer-causing bacterium may be good for us. It probes the link between autism and a dysfunctional immune system. It investigates the newly apparent fetal origins of allergic disease—that a mother’s inflammatory response imprints on her unborn child, tipping the scales toward allergy. In the future, preventive treatment—something as simple as a probiotic—will necessarily begin before birth.

our immune system is tuned for the presence of parasites. remove those, and it overshoots, creating allergies.

Ultrasociety

another must read, Peter Turchin’s Ultrasociety, How 10 ka of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth. This seems like an excellent complement to Ian Morris’ War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots, which I have not managed to get to read, in part because I want to hit Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve. Yet I’ve read a fair number of Peter’s books (see my 10 questions for him), so I’ll probably be moving this up the stack.

Peter is a serious thinker, and human social complexity and cooperation is an important, and unresolved topic (I am not as sanguine or flip on this David Sloan Wilson).

Rust, enemy of Civilization

Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and other dramatic natural disasters can leave mounds of wreckage in a matter of seconds. Rust is different. It is insidious and slow-moving. It takes years for it to discolor buildings, thin steel pipelines and tankers carrying oil, and weaken bridges to the point of spontaneous collapse. Rust, the oxidation that turns aluminum white, copper green and steel brown, “is costlier than all other natural disasters combined,” amounting in the US alone to $437B a year, which approaches 3% of our nation’s GDP. By comparison, the damage done to property by hurricanes Katrina, Sandy and Andrew was, in 2012 $, $128B, $50B and $44B, respectively.

Nitpicking Aurora

First, where I absolutely agree with Kim Stanley Robinson is over the biggest of all Big Lies in hard-SF tales about humans conquering the galaxy… the notion that it will be easy for ortho-humanity to colonize other earthlike worlds. A mere cloning of the European experience settling the Americas, stepping off the boat, inhaling the fresh air, chopping some trees and pushing back natives, building prosperous farms, then cities… this re-figuring of the American West in space is a standard motif, from Poul Anderson to Lois Bujold and a 1000 other authors, and although it is so alluring a dream, it ain’t necessarily so.

I don’t think his composite pressurized structures are very realistic. Flat floored “tents” are very hard to do. I think it would be far lighter, stronger, and safer to have a cylindrical pressure shell, with a lightweight raised flat floor inside, and space under the floor panels for storage. . I also think that 60 seconds from resin mix to strong cure may be reasonable for a patch material, but it makes a lot of what he did nearly impossible. But if he let it get cooler than intended, he could stretch the cure time.

Mormon boob jobs

I wanted to show that god-fearing folks steeped in old-fashioned values are just as susceptible to the effects of shifting sex ratios as cosmopolitan, hookup-happy 20-somethings who frequent Upper East Side wine bars. I have seen more outrageous boob jobs and facial plastic surgery in Utah than almost anywhere in the country—especially among Mormon women. They may claim chastity as a virtue overall, but that’s not stopping anyone from getting a set of double-Ds.

medieval DRM

Considering these 2 practical theft-prevention techniques – chaining your books to something unmovable or putting them into a safe – the third seems kind of odd: to write a curse against book thieves inside the book. Your typical curse (or anathema) simply stated that the thief would be cursed, like this one in a book from an unidentified Church of St Caecilia: “Whoever takes this book or steals it or in some evil way removes it from the Church of St Caecilia, may he be damned and cursed forever, unless he returns it or atones for his act” (source). Some of these book curses really rub it in: “If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgement the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Balzac After 50 Coffees

No. 1: Ah! What a great way to start my day, by drinking a cup of delicious hot coffee.

No. 47: Finally, there’s the mind—the greatest prisoner of all! This is because the skull that surrounds the mind is very hard.

No. 48: It now occurs to me that this isn’t a very good idea. I should maybe wait until I have consumed 50 cups before I start having ideas.

No. 49: One day I will figure out who makes all this coffee for me

2015 Nebula Award Winners

Novel:
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (Winner)
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
Coming Home, Jack McDevitt

Novella:
Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress (Winner)
We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory
“The Regular,” Ken Liu
“The Mothers of Voorhisville,” Mary Rickert
Calendrical Regression, Lawrence Schoen
“Grand Jeté (The Great Leap),” Rachel Swirsky