Minor Thoughts from me to you

An interesting look at what goes on on the football field when it doesn't look like anything's going on on the football field.

He also is sure to make mental notes off the previous play. It might be how the defensive end reacted as he faked on the back side of a run, or what he can see of a cornerback covering a receiver.

By the 30-second mark the voice of Mike McCarthy generally is being heard by Rodgers through the coach-to-quarterback electronic communication device.

There are two speakers in the helmet. When Rodgers had his helmet off during training camp and teammates cruised by, they invariably were stunned how loud it was.

"I'm, like, 'Yeah, try wearing it all the time,'" said Rodgers.

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David Friedman shares an interesting tidbit.

…In the early 20th century, a common pattern was for engaged couples to have sex with the understanding that if the woman got pregnant they would get married; evidence from several late 19th century European cities suggests that about a third of brides were pregnant. One problem was the risk of that the man, having gotten the sex, would dump his fiancee instead of marrying her. One solution to that, in U.S. law, was the tort action for breach of promise to marry. In a society where marriage was the main career open to women and the fact that a woman was known not to be a virgin substantially reduced her marriage prospects, seduction could impose substantial costs and result in a substantial damage payment.

Starting in 1935 in Indiana, U.S. states started altering their laws to abolish the action for breach of promise. Women responded, by Brinig's account, by requiring a down payment from their fiancees in the form of an expensive ring—which forfeited if the fiancee terminated the engagement. Think of it as a performance bond.

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Nixon and Kissinger
by Robert Dallek

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 30 July 2013 - 6 September 2013

I have a few thoughts after reading this book.

1. It felt really long. Obviously, it was long. But some long books feel short and some short books feel long. This book felt really long.
2. How in the world did we manage to elect a neurotic, insecure, narcissistic man like Nixon to the Presidency? Especially one who would work in close partnership with another thin-skinned neurotic, in Kissinger? Sure, Johnson was also a power hungry manipulator. But he wasn't actually mentally unstable the way that Nixon appears to have been.
3. Why does Dallek always refer to Nixon as "Nixon" but mostly refer to Kissinger as "Henry"? It seems very odd.
4. It's a wonder that the U.S., and the rest of the world, survived the Nixon / Kissinger partnership as well as they did. Between Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pakistan War, it was pretty bad. But it could have been a whole lot worse.
5. The book was aptly titled. It was entirely about situations that involved both Nixon and Kissinger. Dallek focused exclusively on foreign policy. He entirely excluded domestic policy from the book. Aside from the inescapable inclusion of Watergate during the last 6 months of Nixon's Presidency, you could be forgiven for forgetting that anything outside of foreign policy even happened between 1968 and 1974.
6. Even Nixon himself disappeared from the pages of the book when he wasn't dealing with foreign policy. Dallek focused almost exclusively on Kissinger's actions during the last 6 months of Nixon's presidency.

If you want an overview of the Nixon presidency combined with his partnership with Kissinger, I can't recommend this book. If you're interested in the detailed day by day account of Nixon and Kissinger's foreign adventures together, this is the book you've been looking for.

Last weekend, Bush torture lawyer John Yoo wrote about his disgust with the Manning verdict.

Bradley Manning caused one of the most harmful leaks in American history. He released into the public eye the identities of foreigners helping the U.S. in war zones, the means and methods of U.S. military operations, and our sensitive diplomatic communications with other nations. Lives — American and foreign — no doubt were lost because of the leaks. If anyone can think of a more harmful blow to U.S. intelligence in our history, let’s hear it. 

I've heard other people refer to the Manning leak as one of the most harmful in American history. But I don't think I've ever seen anyone offer any proof for that assertion. John Yoo needs to do something to prove that it was the most harmful leak in American history. Where's the evidence?

Manning published data that supposedly contained the names and identities of various American (and allied) agents who were working undercover. The data also allegedly contained the names of various Iraqis and Afghanis who were helping us, against the terrorists and the Taliban. I've seen people allege that our enemies would use that data to punish our friends.

It seems like it would be pretty easy to quantify how deadly this leak was, if it was deadly. Which agents and allies, named in the leaked documents, have since been killed, terrorized, or harmed by our enemies? Whose lives were lost because of Manning's leak? If this was a deadly leak, wouldn't that be dramatic proof? Wouldn't something have come out in a Congressional hearing, Department of Defense or Homeland Security press release, or presidential interview? Wouldn't the Administration and its allies constantly trumpet how harmful Manning's leak was?

Unless I've completely missed it, no one has done anything of the sort. I'm not convinced that Manning's leak was the most harmful in American history. And I'm not inclined to take the bald-faced word of a lawyer who thinks that the Constitution places no restraints on the President's powers to order people tortured.

Analog Science Fiction And Fact, September 2013
by Trevor Quachri

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 16 July 2013 - 24 August 2013

There were some decent stories in this issue.

• Murder on the Aldrin Express—The hard nosed captain of a solar transport investigates a potential murder. There are more than a few references to a similarly named Agatha Christie story.
• Creatures From a Blue Lagoon—Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be an intergalactic, inter species veterinarian? Probably not nearly as much fun as you'd think. But this story was fun.
• Life of the Author Plus Seventy—Debts. Cryogenics. And statutes of limitations. Can you win against the machine?
• Wreck Support—Archaeological find of an ancient tech support document.

Wyrd Sisters
by Terry Pratchett

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 20 August 2013 - 23 August 2013

I can tell I'm reading a good Discworld novel when the humor walks up behind me with a cudgel and lays me low. It starts with a surprised snort and devolves into irrepressible giggling. I can force it down but it threatens to come back whenever I think of the offending passage.

This book had that effect on me. It may have borrowed a bit too heavily from Shakespeare (and particularly Macbeth) but it was still a good Discworld novel.

This is the bit that got me.

"Would you care to share our lunch, old...good wo...miss?" he said. "It's only salt pork, I'm afraid."

"Meat is extremely bad for the digestive system," said Magrat. "If you could see inside your colon you'd be horrified."

"I think I would," muttered Hwel.

Megan McArdle wrote recently about the power of bias, as applied to people's opinions of George Zimmerman. I recommended reading it for insight into how our thinking can be affected by bias. But, given the still swirling gun control debates, I was also struck by this passage.

Parents find it easy to imagine their child being kidnapped by a stranger, which is why many children under the age of 12 or 13 are now escorted everywhere by a parent or another trusted adult. But stranger abductions are incredibly rare and always have been, even in the days when first-graders regularly walked themselves to school. Parents find it easy to imagine their children dying in a gun accident, which is why you hear about parents who won’t have guns in the house, and refuse to let their kids play at the homes of parents who do. But those sorts of accidental shootings involving young children are about as rare as stranger abductions. On the other hand, very few parents would say “I won’t let you play at their house -- they have a swimming pool,” even though drowning is one of the most common ways for young children to die. Economist Steven Levitt estimates that swimming pools are about 100 times more dangerous than a gun in the home.

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Using the latest in 360-degree scanning and 3-D printing technologies, Twinkind, a new company based in Hamburg, Germany, will turn you, your loved ones, or your pets into a marvelously detailed little statues. It might seem a bit gimmicky if the results weren’t so stunning. The final figurines, which can range in size from roughly 6″ (around $300) to 13″ (around $1,700), are strikingly, maybe even a little unsettlingly realistic, capturing everything from poses and facial expressions down to hair styles and the folds in clothes, all in full, faithful color.

It's probably a bit gauche to make a model of yourself. But why not put models of your family in your office, instead of just a flat portrait?

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by Ray Bradbury

It rained.

It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

"It's stopping, it's stopping!"

"Yes, yes!"

Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

This is a beautiful (and haunting) short story by one of the best craftsmen to ever write.

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Maria Popova, at brain pickings, has this fascinating look at the history of why we say "please" and "thank you".

In English, “thank you” derives from “think,” it originally meant, “I will remember what you did for me” — which is usually not true either — but in other languages (the Portuguese obrigado is a good example) the standard term follows the form of the English “much obliged” — it actually does means “I am in your debt.” The French merci is even more graphic: it derives from “mercy,” as in begging for mercy; by saying it you are symbolically placing yourself in your benefactor”s power — since a debtor is, after all, a criminal. Saying “you’re welcome,” or “it’s nothing” (French de rien, Spanish de nada) — the latter has at least the advantage of often being literally true — is a way of reassuring the one to whom one has passed the salt that you are not actually inscribing a debit in your imaginary moral account book. So is saying “my pleasure” — you are saying, “No, actually, it’s a credit, not a debit — you did me a favor because in asking me to pass the salt, you gave me the opportunity to do something I found rewarding in itself!” …

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Equal Rites
by Terry Pratchett

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 17 August 2013 - 19 August 2013

Another fun, enjoyable read in the Discworld universe. A dying wizard tries to give his staff to the newly born eighth son of an eighth son. But the new son turns out to be a new daughter and the Discworld is about to see its first female wizard. Or its first wizard witch. Or something. The result is, as you might expect, both humorous and poignant.

This book definitely has Pratchett's trademark humor. I loved his pun on Granny Weatherwax's observation that "good fences make good neighbors".

The Uplift War
by David Brin

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 28 July 2013 - 6 August 2013

This is the concluding book in David Brin's original Uplift trilogy. These stories take place in an imaginative universe.

All races in the Galaxy have been “uplifted” into sentience by a prior alien race, in a chain stretching back to the Progenitors. Humans have even uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees into sentience. But who uplifted humanity? This is a great mystery and the other races are antagonistic towards the “wolfing” human race, without patrons or lineage.

The last book, Startide Rising, dealt primarily with the neo-dolphins that humanity has Uplifted into intelligence. This book deals primarily with the neo-chimpanzees that have been similarly Uplifted.

Startide Rising dealt almost entirely with the neo-dolphins. The Galactics were in the story but we only got cursory glimpses of them and didn't become familiar with any one race. The Uplift War turns that around.

The action takes place on the planet of Garth, a human and neo-chimp colony. Garth is invaded by the Gubru (an avian species). Several of the chimp characters take leading roles. Humanity is allied with another alien species, the Tymbrimi. The story also features Athacleana, the daughter of the Tymbrimi ambassador.

I liked this focus on the chimp and Tymbrimi characters. David Brin does a pretty good job at bringing a non-human perspective to the story. (I did feel, at times, that Athacleana was acting too much like a human female though.)

Brin has hinted in the previous books about the different species, their behaviors, and Galactic customs. In this book, he moved from hints to specifics. He used this story to narrow the focus from all of the Galactics to just two or three specific species. He then dove into the details of how the races acted, politicked, and made war. It gave a lot of depth and realism to his universe.

This was a very good end to Brin's original trilogy. It didn't answer any of the big mysteries from Startide Rising, but it expanded the scope of the story and made it clear that there are many, many more stories that could yet be told.

Red Planet
by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 26 July 2013 - 27 July 2013

Once I'd finished Tunnel in the Sky (it was such a quick read), I wasn't ready to be done with Heinlein. And I had this book sitting around, checked out from the library. So I went ahead and read it. It's another of Heinlein's juveniles. It's not as much of a coming of age story as Tunnel in the Sky. It certainly has elements of that but it's a bit more focused on the line between authority and tyranny.

Heinlein hits on some familiar themes: responsibility is a matter of maturity and skill, not of age. Self-defense is the right of every person. The man asking (or requiring) you to disarm yourself doesn't have your best interests at heart. He undoubtedly has someone's best interests in mind, but it's not you. Respect for other civilizations and peoples is not only a matter of decency, it can also be a matter of life and death. Self-reliance and initiative is far preferable to dependency and trust in good intentions.

It's an entertaining story, with a necessary message about life. It's another one that I'll be recommending to my daughters, as they grow up.

Tunnel in the Sky
by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 25 July 2013 - 26 July 2013

After reading (and being disappointed by) Darkship Renegades, I decided to read something from Heinlein himself, to cleanse the palate. I'd heard about Tunnel in the Sky last July, from a blog comment on Tor.com.

Whenever you’re sitting around and thinking to yourself, “You know I could really go for a novel in which is exactly like Lord of the Flies, but only in space,” then this is your book. Funnily enough, this book was published the same year as Golding’s Lord of the Flies and if it were up to me, it would be taught instead. The primary SF conceit of the novel deals with interplanetary colonization through big teleport jumps. Naturally some younger folks get stranded and certain ugly aspects of human nature are revealed. The only one of Heinlein’s “juvenilia” that I feel gets overlooked, and easily my favorite from that period.

It's a short read and I ripped through it pretty quickly. But it's a good one. As a "juvenile" (what we'd now call young adult) novel, it's a coming of age novel. Heinlein writes a story that's character driven, moves quickly, and is entertaining.

Heinlein spends a lot of time talking (through the story's events) about responsibility, proper attitudes towards survival, and what makes civilization. He uses the story to make a strong argument that proper government is a necessary component of civilization. That sounds odd, coming from a libertarian, but I think he wins his argument.

The government doesn't have to be large, overbearing, or especially powerful. But there are certain tasks that need to be done to protect the civilization (no matter how small it is). There are certain matters of organization and defense that need to be arranged. Someone has to give those orders and everyone else has to accept those orders as legitimate and proper.

Humanity invented government to allow that to happen. The type of government will differ in different times and different places. And each group of people will need to make their own decisions about what constitutes legitimate authority. Heinlein effortlessly illustrates all of this through the story as these lost students (high school and college aged) work to build a society once they realize that they've been stranded on an alien planet.

This story works on all levels. It's both thought provoking and entertaining. The philosphy doesn't interfere with the adventure, it merely backs it up and deepens it. This is definitely a story that I'll be recommending to my daughters as they grow older.

Darkship Renegades
by Sarah A. Hoyt

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 22 July 2013 - 24 July 2013

Goodreads book summary:

Entry number two in Sarah A. Hoyt’s rollicking and popular Darkship series, sequel to Darkship Thieves,and winner of the Prometheus Award. After rescuing her star pilot husband and discovering the dark secret of her own past on Earth, Athena Hera Sinistra returns to space habitat Eden to start life anew. Not happening. Thena and Kit are placed under arrest for the crime of coming back alive. The only escape from a death sentence: return to Earth and bring back the lost method for creating the Powertrees, the energy source of both Eden and Earth whose technological origins have been lost to war. But that mission is secondary to a greater imperative. Above all else, Thena must not get caught. If she does, then suicide is to be the only option.

I had trouble reviewing Ms. Hoyt's previous entry in this series, Darkship Thieves. At the time, I ended the review by saying "It felt very uneven and not all that 'real'." After reading this book, I have a better understanding of what I don't like about this series.

Sarah Hoyt is a strong libertarian and an admirer of Robert Anson Heinlein. (She dedicated this book to her son, Robert Anson Hoyt.) I think these books are intended to be an imitation of, and homage to, Heinlein's more openly political novels.

Hoyt has her characters sharing political asides with each other and also shares their inner monologues and thoughts. In these novels though, it doesn't really work. Hoyt is not as good of a writer as Heinlein (but who is?) and isn't able to pull off what he can pull off. The political insertions feel awkward and contrived rather than natural. It makes the story limp along and is, in my opinion, what drags this down from being a 4-star adventure story.

Startide Rising
by David Brin

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 17 July - 21 July

This is the second entry in David Brin's Uplift series. The first book, Sundiver, was a mediocre story in a very interesting universe. This book is a very interesting story in the same very interesting universe.

All races in the Galaxy have been "uplifted" into sentience by a prior alien race, in a chain stretching back to the Progenitors. Humans have even uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees into sentience. But who uplifted humanity? This is a great mystery and the other races are antagonistic towards the "wolfing" human race, without patrons or lineage.

Startide Rising is the story of the first dolphin crewed spaceship. The Streaker made the find of the millenium and was rewarded by hot pursuit from most of the galaxy's inhabitants. After fleeing from a battle, the Streaker crash lands on the water world of Kithrup.

The neo-dolphins must hide from the aliens currently engaged in combat above the planet, attempt to repair their ship, and hope for an opportunity to sneak away again. The resulting adventure deals with dolphin psychology and features an intriguing version of a dolphin language. It also showcases the various alien races and their unique perspectives on the universe and the purpose of life.

This is both a fun read and a chilling one. It's a hostile universe, full of races that would like nothing more than the opportunity to gain power over humanity and tweak and twist our genetic code until they've turned us into something more to their liking. David Brin's universe is interesting but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live in it.

The book ends on a delightfully unresolved note. We end the book still not knowing what the Streaker found, what its importance is, or what will ultimately happen to Earth and the human race. That's as it should be for a universe with this much scope.

Michael Malice, writing at Reason.com, on his experiences while touring North Korea.

Some North Korean humor, though, is actually quite good. As I was driven into Pyongyang from the airport, our guide referred to the monolith Ryugyong Hotel as “our latest rocket launch,” a quip that both acknowledged the tension between our respective nations and simultaneously defused it (pun intended, God help us), all while seeming quite daring to an outsider. It was the first of a constant series of surprises I experienced during my eye-opening visit to the world’s darkest dictatorship.

I found it to be a poignant read. He's publishing a book soon on North Korea and, based on this article, I think I might want to read it.

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Carl Zimmer, writing for The Atlantic.

Peeper’s diagnosis meant that, over her lifetime, she would essentially develop a second skeleton. Within a few years, she would begin to grow new bones that would stretch across her body, some fusing to her original skeleton. Bone by bone, the disease would lock her into stillness. The Mayo doctors didn’t tell Peeper’s parents that. All they did say was that Peeper would not live long.

... “Your muscle isn’t turning to bone,” says Shore. “It’s being replaced by bone.”

Strange disease. Incredible story.

∞

Jason Brennan, at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, offered some thoughts about the arguments in favor of a living wage.

Isn’t it more plausible to think that if there’s some enforceable positive duty to provide Bob with enough stuff to lead a life, that all of us, together share this burdensome duty, rather than just Bob’s employer? Why should Bob’s employer, specifically, be the one that has to bear the burden and lose all this money to keep him alive (at whatever level you consider decent)? This just seems like a kind of moral outsourcing to me. Why not instead Bob’s neighbors, parents, friends, or sexual partners? Bob does McBurger a service, and McBurger pays him for that service.

I think this can apply to more than just a living wage though. Think about any employer mandate: salary, health care, paid vacation time, paid sick time, birth control, etc. Why should Bob's (or Barbara's) employer be responsible for those costs. If "we" in society think that all employees are entitled to those benefits than shouldn't "we" in society be responsible for paying for them?

If the goverment mandated cost of entry-level employees keeps going up and up and up, why wouldn't you expect employers to be a lot more picky about who gets those "entry-level" jobs? I love having these benefits at my job and I'd love for everyone to have access to them. But if we load them all onto employers, I think we'll soon find that the poorest among us are sitting home, unemployed. And that pains my bleeding heart.

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Alex Tabarrok, on Senator Warren's proposal to resurrect the Depression-era Glass Steagall legislation.

Separate commercial and investment banking? Please. The problem was that investment banking, in the form of shadow banking, become so separated from commercial banking that the Fed no longer had any idea where a majority of credit was being generated. Credit creation separated from banking as understood by the Fed, and moved into the shadows, hence, the term shadow banking.

...

Glass-Steagall would merely shuffle around organizational boxes in the less important regulated banking sector. Indeed, why would anyone think that 1930s policy is the solution to a 21st century problem?

Indeed. Senator Warren strikes me as the worst kind of Senator: interested in sound bites that play well on TV and in blogs but have little relevance to actual problems and solutions.

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