My Nerdy Friend

book 47/48/49 – Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson

Confession: I bought this book years ago, thinking it was “In Search Of Schrodinger’s Cat” by John Gribbin, a book about quantum theory and reality that I keep lending to people and losing. When I realized it was definitely not the John Gribbin version, I decided to keep it and see if one day I might actually read it. Well, I finally picked it up as part of this year long reading challenge, and it actually turns out to be a science fiction trilogy, loosely based on 3 different models of quantum theory. (The fact that it’s actually a trilogy means I am counting it as three books, even though they’ve all been bound into a single volume. It’s a bit of a cheat, but I’m taking it. So there.)

• The Universe Next Door is based on the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory, where it seems the characters in the book occasionally “drift” between universes. Or not. It’s kind of hard to tell.
• The Trick Top Hat is a story in which the characters are connected through the principle of non-locality. When their cross paths they become joined in quantum entanglement. At least, this is what I read in a review. It is also moderately pornographic. In one scene, a character volunteers at a sex clinic where she gratifies herself using a machine that consists of the amputated penis of another character who underwent gender transformation surgery. I kid you not.
• The Homing Pigeons is based on the Copenhagen interpretation, wherein the observer causes the collapse of the quantum probability wave. At least, this must be what it’s about, because by process of elimination it’s the only remaining theory.

Seriously this pseudo-trilogy is one of the strangest books I have ever read. To be fair, The Universe Next Door was actually kind of intriguing, and I didn’t dislike it (which doesn’t mean that I understood it). But the other two … wow! Totally weird.

Rating: Skip it. Unless you absolutely have to “see for yourself”, in which case you can have my copy if you want it.

book 46 – An Illustrated book of Bad Arguments

When I was in university I took a course on logic which ended up being about logical arguments. I loved it, but, although I retained a few things (begging the question, ad hominem), I have since forgotten lots of it. This book provides a perfect synopsis of 19 logical fallacies, along with cute little illustrations to help with comprehension and memory.

What I enjoyed while reading the book was trying to come up with an example of each fallacy. I started out trying to pick events in the current presidential election, but this proved to be WAY too easy, so I went a different way …

1. Argument from Consequences- “You must agree with the pipeline project, otherwise what? You want us to all go back to living in caves??” Popular with people who don’t know how to construct a logical argument but desperately want you to believe their proposition.

2. Straw Man- “You say evolution is true, so you obviously believe we all evolved from apes!” Popular with anti-evolutionists and fear mongers.

3. Appeal to Irrelevant Authority- “Acupuncture works because it has been practised by ancient Chinese medicine for thousands of years.” Popular with new-age medicine and therapy practitioners.

4. Equivocation- “The sign said ‘fine for parking here’, and since it was fine, I parked there.” Popular with husbands when arguing with their wives.

5. False Dilemma- “Did you complete the work assignment, or did you leave your brain at home?” Very popular with me 🙂

6. Not a Cause for a Cause (post hoc ergo propter hoc and cum hoc ergo propter hoc for you Latin lovers out there)- “Whenever I wear this sweater, our hockey team wins, therefore I will always wear this sweater on game day.” Popular with sports enthusiasts and players who insist on growing horrifying grizzly-adams beards during playoff season.

7. Appeal to Fear- “If you don’t believe in God then you will burn in the fiery pit of HELL for all of ETERNITY.” Really popular with fundamentalists.

8. Hasty Generalization- “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest toothpaste, which means it’s the best.” Popular with commercial advertising firms.

9. Appeal to Ignorance- “There was this strange light in the sky that moved around in a weird way. I don’t know of anything that moves like that, so it’s obviously a UFO.” Popular with Ufologists. And yes, that’s actually a thing.

10. No True Scotsman- “If you support the killing of unborn babies, you are not a true Christian.” Popular with organized religions.

11. Genetic Fallacy- “The sling is the best way to carry a newborn baby, because our ancestors used to carry their babies this way when they worked in the fields.” Popular with ‘natural’ childbirth proponents.

12. Guilt by Association- “The candidate wants to deport all Muslims. You know who else deported religious groups? Hitler!!” Popular in politics, especially election campaigns. It’s shocking how many new Hitlers we have out there.

13. Affirming the Consequent- “The flu makes you throw up, and I was up all night vomiting, therefore I have the flu.” Popular with self-diagnosticians.

14. Appeal to Hypocrisy (Tu Quoque)- “You say eating animals is immoral but you are wearing leather shoes, so apparently it’s not really true.” Popular with anti-vegetarians.

15. Slippery Slope- “If we let gay people marry, next thing we’ll have people wanting to marry their farm animals!” Popular with most anti-social movements.

16. Appeal to the Bandwagon- “It must be awesome, because everyone else is doing it.” This is what made your mom ask if you would also jump off a bridge just because all your friends did it. Mom was right in this case.

17. Ad Hominem- “She would make a very bad president because she’s a very nasty woman.” Popular with Donald Trump.

18. Circular Reasoning- “The bible is true because it’s the word of God, We know this because the bible tells us so.” A popular one from Sunday School.

19. Composition and Division- “You like beef, potatoes, and green beans, so you will like this beef, potato, and green been casserole.” Popular with my mother, but oh, soooo wrong.

Rating: Buy it. Or get it as a gift (thanks Ken!)

book 44 – How to Age

This might be the most important book I read during this past year. Anne Karpf challenges our way of looking at ageing (and death) as something to be avoided by aggressively pursuing youth and proposes that we are simply setting ourselves up for greater disappointment when age does finally catch up, as it must inevitably do.

Karpf argues that we have created a prejudice against our future selves and in doing so, we demonize all elderly people (that is, anyone older than we currently are). One way in which we have done this in modern times is to medicalize ageing and death, citing that since 1951 nobody in the USA has died of “old age”. In fact, it is illegal to cite “natural causes” under cause of death on death certificates in the USA. This leads to the false belief that ageing can be vanquished and we see old people as unforgivably failing to do so.

More importantly, she offers compelling arguments that embracing and celebrating your ageing leads to a fuller life and greater happiness. She provides many examples of people “learning new tricks” at ages that we might consider to be “old dogs”, as well as examples of people completely redefining the direction of their life at the age of 50, or 60 or even 70 or 80! These people keep changing and learning, not because they think about how much or how little time they have left, but because as long as they do so, they are learning and are fulfilled. What a wonderful way to look approach life. Not that it’s never too late to start something new, but that the expression “it’s never too late” doesn’t even exist!

On a personal level, the book has me thinking about some of the ways in which my friends discuss our middle age. “You don’t look 50” is a common one, to which I now feel obliged to respond “Yes I do, because I’m 50 and this is exactly what 50 looks like”. I also need to give some thought to what should be reasonable boundaries around grooming and appearance. Am I upholding a philosophy of a positive lookout on ageing if I dye my hair (god, I hope the answer to this one is yes)? And what about facial hair removal? Botox? Surgery? I suspect the answer is in finding a balance between feeling good about how I look and requiring that I look younger than my actual age.

I’ll leave this post with one of my favourite quotes from the book: “People who cannot look ahead as they grow older back into the future so all they see is the past” – Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Rating: Buy it, and a copy for all of your friends (I just did). And live well.

book 43 – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Every now and then you come across a book that you’ve never read but that is the foundation of a myriad of cultural references that you recognize and completely understand. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of those books that few people have read (like me!), but the plot of which shows up everywhere from bugs bunny (Hyde and Hare, 1955) to Star Trek (The Enemy Within, 1966).

As a short book, or more of a novella, it is, by necessity, tight. Robert Louis Stevenson invokes vivid imagery and interesting character development with few wasted words. To be able to write short stories is a skill I admire for this reason.

It was also fun just to have the actual Jekyll and Hyde story revealed! Similar to Dracula or Frankenstein, it’s a story we think we know because of its influence in pop culture, but in reality, we don’t.

When I first saw Casablanca, I was astounded by the number of quotes from the movie that have become common-place expressions in modern-day language. It was a complete surprise the impact that the movie has had on our current culture and language. This is not the same as Jekyll and Hyde, because we know the impact in advance and are looking to discover the original source, but the reading of the book reminded me of that first time watching of Casablanca.

Rating: Buy it. I think this is one you should have in your collection. (You should own a copy of Casablanca, too, by the way.)

book 41 – Station Eleven

I really, really enjoyed this book! The book kicks off with the on-stage death of a Shakespearean actor (heart attack), immediately followed by the outbreak of a pandemic that kills over 99% of the population. Aaaannnnnd … it’s 20 years later, and we are suddenly in a dystopian future world, following the exploits of a travelling theatre group who perform Shakespeare plays for communities of survivors. Then, unexpectedly, we are back in the past with the previously deceased actor. The book carries on this way, making unexpected, yet strangely elegant, jumps in time to tell different people’s stories. Eventually, connections start to reveal themselves and, by the end, you sort of get it, and it’s beautiful.

Throughout the book, despite some harrowing encounters and the death of most of the people on earth, there is an optimism that permeates throughout the survivor communities. Maybe because I’ve watched too much Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, I kept expecting the worst. But in the end, a beautiful peace and path to recovery seems to prevail. Simply put, this book made me happy.

Rating: Buy it.

book 40 – The Art of War

I absolutely read this book because it’s on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list of 8 “must read” books (the rest are listed at the bottom of this post, if you are interested). I picked up a free copy on Amazon that was translated and annotated by Lionel Giles, and he, in turn, has summarized and analysed the annotations of an additional 11 commentators. I wasn’t intending to pick up an annotated copy, but as it turns out, Giles includes many examples of actual battles in ancient China to demonstrate a point of interpretation which provides this particular copy with some nice tidbits of Chinese history.

The book itself is a very short, 50-odd page treatise on the proper execution of war and advises the reader in various strategies around how to win. In fact, one key strategy for engaging in war is to only do so if you are certain you can win, and that you can do so in short order because a long, drawn-out war is too costly (and risky). Essentially, the book advises that the general understand in detail the terrain, weather patterns, emotions of the army, and goals and strategies of the enemy. Because of how the book provides a template for winning a war with minimal battle engagement, the book has also become a guideline for business tactics such as trial strategy, negotiating and corporate tactics. I’m not entirely convinced the extension of The Art of War into business and law is a great idea since at the end of the day it describes a zero-sum game, whereas I believe there are strategies to be considered where neither party has to necessarily “lose”. But it is interesting and enlightening to think that war strategies from 2500 years ago have developed into applications in use today.

Rating: Buy it. I mean, it’s basically free (totally free electronically, in fact). The hardest decision will be whether to pick up an annotated copy.

The book list from NdGT:

1. The Bible (public library; free ebook), to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself
2. The System of the World (public library; free ebook) by Isaac Newton, to learn that the universe is a knowable place
3. On the Origin of Species (public library; free ebook) by Charles Darwin, to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth
4. Gulliver’s Travels (public library; free ebook) by Jonathan Swift, to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos
5. The Age of Reason (public library; free ebook) by Thomas Paine, to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world
6. The Wealth of Nations (public library; free ebook) by Adam Smith, to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself
7. The Art of War (public library; free ebook) by Sun Tzu, to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art
8. The Prince (public library; free ebook) by Machiavelli, to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it

book 39 – Mr. Mercedes

I have no idea why I ever thought Stephen King was a good writer. Maybe he WAS good, in his early days, or maybe he was just novel (no pun intended!). Whatever the case, somewhere around The Tommyknockers he just stopped being good and started being lazy. (To be honest, this might actually have started around Firestarter, but I was a HUGE fan at one time and gave him tons of leeway for probably way too long.) His books have a certain mass-produced feel to them, which is not overly surprising considering he’s written over 50 of them. I was especially put off when he started self-indulgently writing books with lead characters who were writers (Misery is the exception, I did enjoy that one).

I have occasionally tried to connect with Stephen King books again, wishfully thinking I might find one that hearkens back to his early works, but I haven’t succeeded yet. This particular book attracted me because it’s a trilogy around a central character, a retired Detective named Bill Hodges and I do like police mysteries as a general rule. But I won’t be reading the next two books.

King’s bad writing and laziness runs rampant in Mr. Mercedes, so much so I just decided to list a few:

• The characters don’t talk like real people, they talk in weird colloquial ways that seem fake. In one case, describing how it would be impossible to forget to lock a car: “step three, close the door and push the button stamped with the padlock icon”. Padlock icon? Really?? Have these people been time-warped into 2009 from the 50’s?
• A 40-something woman who suffers from crippling depression and still lives with her mother, somehow becomes a computer genius after taking an on-line computer course on Skype. She is also come kind of expert on computer security as a result of this course.
• The computer genius trying to determine a password empties a wallet of everything, even credit cards, trying various number and letter combinations on the things she finds, but does not empty photos from a plastic accordion photo holder where, on the back of one of the pictures, is (surprise!) the password she has been searching for.

Normally I wouldn’t reference someone else’s review, but this one really sums up how I feel.

Rating: Skip it. If you feel a need to read Stephen King, read The Shining. Or The Stand.

book 38 – Montana 1948

A book club choice, Montana 1948 is short but captivating story about life in (you guessed it) Montana an 1948. When the beloved town doctor and war hero is accused of raping Indian women, his brother, the town sheriff must run the investigation. This pits the sheriff against his father, the family against the town, and the town against the Sioux community. All of this is told through the eyes of the 11 year old son of the sheriff as his family struggles to find a way to do the right thing.

The small town USA vibe reminds me a little of To Kill A Mockingbird and I wonder how many towns in the USA (and Canada for that matter) are still like this today. There’s a kind of resistance to change and mistrust of outsiders and “their ways” that I think forms the base of conservatism today.

Rating: Borrow it.

book 37 – f**k it Do What You Love

A confession: I am a few blog posts behind. A recovery plan: I am going to sit here, give myself a timeline of 30 mins per entry, and just get them done! This is a terrific lesson on managing procrastination that I first learned from Oliver Burkeman’s book, and read about once again in f**k it in a sub-chapter called “set unrealistic deadlines”.  The theory is that we can get a lot more  done that we think we can, if we just focus on doing it as quickly as possible.

So here we are. f**k it in 30 minutes (actually I only have about 20 minutes left). I enjoyed this book, but it’s possibly because I am exactly in this head space right now. I don’t like what I’m doing (or possibly where I’m doing it, or who I’d doing it for) and I need inspiration for change. The book is quite specific, walking you through how to figure out what you love, and how to make money actually doing it. Honestly, it seems fine for someone who doesn’t have many financial responsibilities such as mortgages and children and university tuition and planning for retirement but it strikes me as a little impractical for the rest of us who do. However, without actually taking the time to answer the questions or complete the exercises, I finished the book with a new plan for my life. It’s not exactly the radical approach of dropping everything I currently do and starting over as a quantum physicist, but it IS taking what I am good at and like doing and finding a way to do these things on my own terms.

So maybe the book provides just enough inspiration to start thinking about your life differently. And certainly, if you have the means/comfort/desire to go “all in”, then it seems to provide a very detailed and helpful roadmap for figuring out how to do what you love and earn a living doing it.

My criticism of this book seems to be common to all “self help” books, which is simply that they seem to run on in the last few chapters and either become repetitive (got to fill those 250 pages!), or lose focus (wait, here are 10 other things that I want to include but they just didn’t seem to fit in any other chapter). f**k it seems to be of the “lose focus” variety, suddenly trying to provide too much detail too quickly on ways to make a living doing what you love. It seems like the final chapter is the whole point of the book, but it’s a sharp contrast from the earlier chapters of taking the time to really figure out what it is that you love in the first place. I think it would have worked better as a series of focused appendices, or even a website supplement.

Still, I have a plan that I am very happy with, and I believe significant credit goes to this book for helping me get there.

Rating: Buy it if you are even the least bit unhappy with what you are doing. It might not change your life, but it might inspire you to at least spend more time doing things you love.