Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Stephen Bahl's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, June 21st, 2009
1:47 pm	Book review: Into the Cool by Eric D. Schneider & Dorian Sagan I don't think I can give this one a fair review, but I'm going to try. I read the first few chapters without really getting into it, noticed the book was due soon, read almost all of it in one day a week ago, renewed it, then finally finished the very last chapter today. Some parts I didn't read very thoroughly and all of this probably has more to do with me being burnt out on nonfiction for now than it does with the actual quality of the book. As far as that goes, it's fascinating, but flawed. Reading Into the Cool, I got the strong impression that I would have preferred it as a blog, rather than a book. The chapters are slightly too long to be normal blog entries, but seemed more like Schneider & Sagan's Thermodynamics of Biology Blog than a book with a real thesis to it. And that's unfortunate, because this one tries very hard to be a book. Strains, I'd say. It's as though the authors want a "theory of everything" too much to see that they could have written a really great book by focusing more on the parts where the book is good. When Into the Cool summarized the history of thermodynamics, it came close to enthralling. But it's not a history book. The short appendix is intended to present the points of Into the Cool more formally, and it does the argument justice. The central claim is that "nature abhors a gradient" and that living things are just one type of system that drives energy across the entropy gradient. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book is the second part, which explores other such systems. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't know think it's possible to present thermodynamics properly without using some math, and the authors eschew math entirely for this project. So that second part explores other systems and how gradients can lead to surprising and complex phenomena. It's actually the shortest of the four main sections. The first part is all about the history of thermodynamics and is good reading. The third part, the longest one, deals with biology. The chapter on abiogenesis was what I pictured this whole book would be about and was my reason for checking it out. Although it was probably my favorite chapter and gave an excellent overview on competing hypotheses of abiogenesis, albeit a bit biased toward ones that emphasize metabolism before genetics (one of the big questions abiogenesis is which came first between metabolism and genetics—this unabashedly sides with metabolism first), it was here that I started to see the problem with the way Into the Cool was turning out. Scheider and Sagan are capable of presenting facts and making them interesting, but they can't seem to stop interjecting with philosophy. Sure, the "nature abhors a gradient" thing makes sense as far as a simplification of the second law of thermodynamics goes, but that doesn't mean it's the core principle behind everything ever. And it doesn't diminish the importance of all those other things that aren't the second law either. If this were just about abiogenesis, it would be overemphasis on one aspect, but the book does more than that. Well, not right away. We delve into ecology, then evolution. Thermodynamics in ecology seems to be Schneider's specialty and those chapters are good. It's the fourth section where things derail. The authors start espousing the second law as the driving force in aging (the authors should really have read Aubrey de Grey's book, but it was published two years after Into the Cool, so I guess that couldn't have happened), economics, and finally as the "purpose" of life. It occurs to me now, viewing the table of contents, that what would have made this a great book would have been a focus on biology. That's where the authors are apparently strongest. The first and fourth parts taint the rest of this book. The first and second parts should have been topics for other books. The third part should have been expanded to fit the entire book. I guess the fourth part could have been its own book too—just not one I would bother reading. I've mostly talked about flaws, but I don't mean that this is a bad book. It's a good book. I'm just miffed because it misses out on greatness because of those flaws. If you have any interest at all about how thermodynamics applies to ecology, you should read Into the Cool. Man, enough of this nerdy stuff. I'm going to read some Conan. Nonfiction can wait. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 5th, 2009
2:42 pm	Theories of parapsychology I just watched a video on Youtube in which the author was talking about parapsychology and skeptical challenges for paranormal claims, such as the James Randi $1,000,000 challenge. I guess opponents of parapsychology criticize it for not having a theory, and the author was claiming that skeptical challenges are in the same situation, which seems fair enough. I attempted to leave a comment regarding scientific theories. After all, they aren't constructed until there is data for them to explain. As far as I know, the data for parapsychology is mundane, ambiguous, or non-reproducible. I've heard rumors about parapsychology experiments that are not in any of those categories, but I want to set those aside for a moment, as I don't believe I have enough knowledge to comment on them. Now, with any of those three, there is room for a theory of parapsychology. Without examining any actual data and using only my own recollection of what I've read on the subject, I can think of these possible theories... Neurological basis for paranormal claims: This theory could fit parapsychological data that is mundane and possibly ambiguous data as well. It would explain paranormal claims as being based in the neurology of the claimants. The research program for testing this theory would involve comparing proposed specific neurological explanations against skeptics and control individuals. There is a limited number of ways in which neurology could provide a basis for the production of paranormal claims or the conviction that events have paranormal causes. As neuroscience progresses, it should be possible to test these proposals until this theory is vindicated and becomes the dominant theory in parapsychology, partially supported and used to explain some but not all paranormal claims, or discarded as untenable. Of course, we're certainly not to this point yet and it might be seen as overly optimistic that we ever will be. Psychological basis for paranormal claims: This theory would be similar to the first one, but with psychological explanations rather than neurological ones. It could be tricky to develop a research program for this theory, but in principle, it could be tested just as much as the neurological basis theory and eventually vindicated, partially supported, or discarded. Of course, it is also possible that some paranormal claims are best explained by one theory and some by another, meaning that a combined neurological/psychological theory might be necessary for parapsychology to have a comprehensive theory. Hoax explanation for paranormal claims: This theory could fit parapsychological data that is non-reproducible by explaining the claimants as hoaxers. Mundane data certainly wouldn't seem to fall under the purview of this theory, as perpetrating a hoax of nothing wouldn't make sense, although they may be ill-conceived or failed attempts at hoaxes that are erroneously ignored as delusions having a neurological or psychological basis. Of course, people must have reasons for perpetrating hoaxes, so perhaps the basis for this would fall under one of the previous theories and again be only part of a comprehensive theory. It should be noted that a hoax theory of paranormal claims would numerous appreciable difficulties to overcome. Hoaxers themselves may be quite clever and distinguishing between a genuine claim and a hoax could be all but impossible in some cases. Genuine claimants may take offense at being grouped with hoaxers. Cases at the edge of our understanding may mistakenly be written off as hoaxes and dismissed unfairly. However, in some rather high-profile cases, hoaxes have indeed been confirmed, and the possibility of future hoaxes is not to be discounted. Skeptical influence basis for skewed results in testing paranormal claims: Under this theory, some paranormal claims may describe real effects, but lead to bad results in testing due to some disturbance by skeptical investigators. This could be either due to the effect of experimenter bias or due to the ability of some or all skeptics to suppress paranormal phenomena with paranormal abilities of their own. In the first case, experimental procedures should be designed to eliminate or minimize the potential effect of experimenter bias. In the second case, the same should be done, but in addition, investigation of this skeptic's result-warping power should also be undertaken by parapsychologists. Since the contribution of either of these effects isn't necessarily known, parapsychologists should probably exercise maximum caution in this area. Flawed methodology basis for skewed results in testing paranormal claims: Under this theory, some paranormal claims may describe real effects, but lead to bad results in testing due to flawed experimental procedures, not strictly limited to issues regarding experimenter bias. Alternatively, under this theory, some paranormal claims may have data that seems ambiguous or even positive where it should actually be mundane to due to flawed experimental procedures. This is not the same as dismissing the entire field of parapsychology as unscientific because of flawed methodology. The proper response to flawed methodology is to point out flaws and correct them, not to make sweeping generalizations about entire fields based on the identification of a few flaws here and there. Notably, flawed methodology may account for some experiments seeming more convincing than they actually are, putting this theory into a comprehensive theory in which the primary explanation is neurological/psychological while flawed methodology bolsters some claims and possibly helps propagate the seeming plausibility of paranormal claims. Perhaps more importantly, paranormal claims that describe effects that are real but particularly weak or minor might be wrongly dismissed if flawed methodology categorizes statistically significant effects as statistically insignificant. Evil pixies conspiracy: This possibility is either the most troubling or a ludicrous non-concern, depending on your point of view. It explains some or all mundane, ambiguous, and non-reproducible test results and possibly paranormal claims themselves as being due to the intervention of one or more intelligent entities with superhuman abilities who are deliberately confusing parapsychologists and skeptics by tampering with things. Depending on the extent to which such entities are capable of deceiving scientists, this possibility may be considered pseudoscientific. If our deceivers are invisible, intangible, undetectable by any scientific instruments, capable of manipulating any technology we have without our notice, smarter than us and generally able to elude us at every turn, all while manifesting in various ways to isolated individuals, then there is no way to falsify this possibility or say anything meaningful about it at all from a scientific point of view. However, this does not preclude such a scenario from being true. If they suspect that such is the case, I suppose parapsychologists should either put it on hold or, if they believe themselves sufficiently clever, try to outwit these elusive pranksters and capture conclusive evidence of their existence. Pixie world: Similar to the above scenario, but without any intelligent entities doing the work. Instead, the universe itself might have some properties that make some "paranormal" phenomena intrinsically elusive. Concerns about falsifiability or irrelevance with the previous scenario also apply to this one. However, I think this possibility has something going for it that the previous one does not: we have the precedent of other apparent properties of the universe that do seem to intrinsically limit information available to us. For example, we have the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the observer effect. There is no reason to assume that properties of the universe might not affect things in ways relevant to parapsychology. To test this, parapsychologists should familiarize themselves with physics and determine what constraints their experiments might have. Personally I suspect, perhaps a bit cynically, that a lot of parapsychologists would reject all of these choices because, as I've presented them, it is always acknowledged that paranormal claims are rather unsupported and that the data is ambiguous at best. I think many parapsychologists would prefer to think that, at least in the case of their pet paranormal research program, the data is quite unambiguous, reproducible, and clearly supports their particular conclusions on the matter. For those who would say that this tells us something damning about parapsychology as a whole, I point out that this is far from unique and happens in more respected fields of science all the time. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
2:34 am	CONAN! Nick got me The Complete Chronicles of Conan, which is definitely the coolest present I've gotten in a long time and possibly ever. So now once I finish this book I'm reading now that's all, "blah blah blah thermodynamics blah blah blah biophysics blah blah blah" I can read all about Conan and the things he kills. Hell yes. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
3:02 am	The Same and Not the Same is a wonderful book I finished it yesterday morning and started on my next book this afternoon. I hesitate to say it's the nonfiction book I recommend most highly, being pretty biased. I already find the subject matter interesting and don't need the author to work in order to hold my interest. But I really think he did an excellent job here and that this was the best nonfiction book I've ever read. I kind of want my own copy and might actually buy it. This is truly a fantastic book and you should read it even if you don't like chemistry at all. You probably won't like it quite as much as I do, but I think just about anyone would enjoy this book. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 11th, 2009
1:17 pm	Stephen Bahl quotes from the book he's reading (yet again) I'm reading "The Same and Not the Same" by Roald Hoffman. The whole book is great, so I'm going to have to resist the temptation to quote all of it, because that would be silly. But this part was so good I just couldn't resist. It's called "Fighting Reductionism." The ingenuity that went into assigning a structure to gyrinidal is repeated a thousand times daily by chemists, organic and inorganic. Structure determination uses physical measurements and their interpretation. The chemical practitioner of this art understands roughly the physics behind a given spectroscopy, but then uses that physics often by analogy, observing that a thousand other compounds have such and such a peak at a certain place in the spectrum. To some people that does not constitute sufficient understanding. They would say that you need to delve deeper into the physics, identify the various mechanism or causes which are behind that signal from within, and actually compute their outcome. You should not claim to understand the technique until you really know that a peak should come at 9.97 and not, for example, 9.87 or 10.07.       What can we say about a person who seeks that kind of understanding? We cannot deny that it is a good thing. That searcher fore understanding will go back deeper and deeper, entering a reductionist mode. He or she will become engrossed in the sources of the physical phenomenon, likely do good science. But I hazard a guess that he or she will not likely solve many structures. The psychology of finding solutions involves a certain mental "drawing of the line," a self-imposed limit on how deep you need to go in. The people who go deeper and deeper are seeking another kind of knowledge than those who want to solve the problem.       This brings us to reductionism and ways of understanding. By reductionism I mean the idea that there is a hierarchy of sciences, with an associated definition of understanding and an implied judgment about he quality of that understanding. That hierarchy goes from the humanities, through the social sciences to biology, to chemistry, physics, and mathematics. In a caricature of reductionism one aspires to the day when literature and the social sciences will be explained by biological functions, biological ones by chemical ones, and so on. We probably owe the beginnings of this philosophy to Descartes, and its more explicit statement to Auguste Comte and the French rationalist tradition.       Scientists have bought the reductionist mode of thinking as their guiding ideology. Yet this philosophy bears so little relationship to the reality within which scientists themselves operate. And it carries potential danger to the discourse of scientist with the rest of society.      I think the reality of understanding is the following: Every field of human knowledge or art develops its own complexity of questions. The problems facing chemistry are in some ways more complex than the ones in physics. Much of what people call understanding is a discussion of question in the context of the complexity or hierarchy of concepts which are developed within that field. If you wanted to deprecate this way of thinking, you would call it quasi-circular. I wouldn't deprecate it; I think this kind of understanding is quintessentially human and has led to great art and science.      There are vertical and horizontal ways of understanding. The vertical way is by reducing a phenomenon to something deeper—classical reductionism. The horizontal way is by analyzing the phenomenon within its own discipline and seeing its relationships to other concepts of equal complexity.      Let me illustrate the futility of reductionism with a reductio ad absurdum. Suppose you receive an anonymous letter. In that letter is a sheet of paper with a four-line poem, "Eternity," by William Blake: He who binds himself to joy Does the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise. Knowing the sequence of firing of neurons when the poet wrote that line, or in your mind when you read it, or in the mind of the person who sent the letter, knowing the fantastic, beautiful complexity of biochemical actions behind the firing of neurons and the physics behind that, that knowledge is incredible and desirable, that knowledge is going to get you a lot of of Nobel Prizes, I want that knowledge, but…it has nothing to do with understanding the poem, in the sense that you and I understand a poem, or drive a car, or otherwise live in this terrible and wonderful world. The "understanding" of Blake's poem is to be sought at the level of the language in which it is written, and the psychology involved in the writing and reading of it. Not in the firing of neurons.      If you are willing to accept a leap between the humanities and science, I tell you that even in two "hard natural science" fields as close to each other as chemistry and physics, even there there are concepts in chemistry which are not reducible to physics. Or if they are so reduced, they lose much that is interesting about them. I would ask the reader who is a chemist to think of ideas such as aromaticity, acidity and basicity, the concept of a functional group, or a substituent effect. Those constrcuts have a tendency to wilt at the edges as one tries to define them too closely. They cannot be mathematicized, they cannot be defined unambiguously, but they are of fantastic utility to our science.      Reductionism is often used as a psychological crutch rather than a realistic description of how understanding functions. You might think, for instance, that physicists would be happy with a reductionist philosophy, because they are near the base. Deeper still, perhaps, are mathematicians. One might expect therefore that physicists should have a positive attitude toward mathematicians. But just ask your local physicist what his or her feeling is about mathematicians. What you usuallly get is a host of negative responses such as "mathematicians are impractical," "they do not take their inspiration from us," they do not deal with reality." It is obvious that for physicists the reductionist chain stops at physics. And for a chemist, talking to an economist or biologist, it too often stops at chemistry.      Moreover, adherence to reductionist philosophy is potentially dangerous. A vertical mode of understanding, if championed as the only mode of understanding, creates a gap between us and our friends in the arts and humanities. They know very well that there isn't just one way of "understanding" or dealing with the death of a parent, or our country's drug problem, or a woodcut by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The world out there is refractory to reduction, and if we insist that it must be reducible, all that we do is put ourselves into a box. The box is the limited calss of problems that are susceptible to a reductionist understanding. It's a small box. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
11:47 pm	Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood Well, this will be an odd way to start a book review, but I think that it's every once in a while, I probably should read a book that disappoints me—to help me keep my perspective, if nothing else. And for now, The Handmaid's Tale has been that book. By this, I do not mean that it's a terrible book. I'd call this an average book. The disappointment is, in part, because The Handmaid's Tale is considered a great classic and has been showered with awards. I usually put little stock in such things, but I guess I'd been having good experiences with award-winning books recently. Mostly, it's because the book looked interesting and had enough power of intrigue to hook me in for a while. I like a good dystopia novel, but it occurs to me that I haven't encountered very many. 1984 and Brave New World are both great. And I might once have put Fahrenheit 451 in that category, but in retrospect, it's unconvincing. Speaking of which, that also happens to be the glaring flaw in The Handmaid's Tale. This is a book that strives to be convincing. It's obvious. In your face, even. Atwood's effort to make this a convincing and compelling story is quite visible, and in a way, it uses simplicity as a powerful tool in the quest to be convincing. There's no doublethink. No soma. No global conspiracy. The dystopia is merely occupying one country. And that happens in real life. Countries do sometimes go terribly wrong. And the things that have happened are things that might cause a country to go terribly wrong. That isn't the way in which The Handmaid's Tale is unconvincing. I could try to pin down the problem here and I'm actually tempted to because I find it interesting, but that's really beyond the scope of the type of short book review I write here. And it's really not the point, anyway. I mean, it's not up to me to articulate every way in which The Handmaid's Tale is unconvincing. It was the book's job to be convincing. And the book failed. I don't know why that sounds like the harshest criticism one could possibly level. Should it be? Is being convincing the most important quality in a novel? I really don't know, but I know that for this book, for this set of circumstances the author crafted, everything hinged on the scenario being convincing. And it just isn't. Oh, and that's certainly not my only qualm with The Handmaid's Tale. That's just the part that was disappointing to me. The characters are either dull or amorphous. Even the major ones, with the sole exception of the narrator, are more like shadows than real people. The plot is dull and sometimes outright silly. These flaws I could forgive if the book were convincing. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
6:52 pm	Stephen Bahl kind of actually updates sort of kind of I'm not at judo right now because I hurt my knee. It's not incredibly bad and it seems to be getting better, but it's still not strong enough to do judo on. I knew I was forgetting something when I wrote my last entry and now I remember what it is. I was writing something about how I need to read more nonfiction. But I forgot about expanding the scope of the nonfiction I read. This should be easy enough since I work in a library and have to understand how the books are organized and all. But I really do want book recommendations. All of the good nonfiction books I can think of that I've read have either been autobiographies or science-related. I'll certainly be reading more of those, but I also want to add some stuff from outside my comfort zone or whatever. Anyway, recommendations. I want them. History books or whatever it is that you like to read. What are your favorites? Also, I just got one of my holds at the library: The Same and Not the Same by Roald Hoffman. It has a 540 Dewey Decimal number, and that means chemistry. I'm not sure if I'm excited to read it because I'll actually be reading a real book about chemistry (that's not a school textbook) or because it actually does sound really interesting. Before I start the book, I should update that neglected blog of mine. I should try to do that tonight. I also have a book I'm still not finished with, which is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I'm two thirds of the way through it. Pretty good. Also unusual, for me anyway. I'll review it when I'm actually done with it. But I liked this part I read earlier today enough to transcribe it here...           I pray where I am, sitting by the window, looking out through the curtain at the empty garden. I don't even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, it's an equal darkness. Or light.      My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within.      I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean. But You will do as well as anything.      I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not Your doing; I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant.      I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it.      Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.      I suppose I should say forgive whoever did this, and whatever they're doing now. I'll try, but it isn't easy.      Temptation comes next. At the Center, temptation was anything more than eating and sleeping. Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you, Aunt Lydia used to say.      Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.      I think about the chandelier too much, though it's gone now. But you could use a hook, in the closet. I've considered the possibilities. All you'd have to do, after attaching yourself, would be to lean your weight forward and not fight.      Deliver us from evil.      Then there's the Kindgom, power and glory. It takes a lot to believe in those right now. But I'll try anyway. In Hope, as they say on the gravestones.      You must feel pretty ripped off. I guess it's not the first time.      I I were You I'd be fed up. I'd be really sick of it. I guess that's the difference between us.      I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I'm talking to a wall. I wish You'd answer. I feel so alone.      All alone by the telephone. Except I can't use a telephone. And if I could, who could I call?      Oh God. It's no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living?   I just realized I didn't give any context for that or anything. Oh well. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
11:15 pm	Stephen Bahl needs to use more titles with "Stephen Bahl" in them... Yeah, the title of this entry was going to be something about ranking books, but I realized that I've been slacking off for the purposes of Project Stephen Bahl and the video game guy is totally dominating me in Google rankings right now. Rankings, rankings, rankings. So I can't remember whether I mentioned that I officially made my top 50 books list be a fiction list with hopes of constructing a nonfiction list later. At the time, it probably involved removing like one thing anyway. I forget. Anyway, I recently tried to start listing nonfiction I've read to see how much I had so far. Turns out it's not much. I haven't read a whole lot of nonfiction, some of it I read so long ago I've since forgotten about, some of it was anthologies or textbooks, and I didn't necessarily like all of what I could come up with. That leaves maybe ten books. But I am already working on this. No, really. Three of these nonfiction books are from this year and I think like five of them are from last year. And I'm even more excited about the two books I have on hold now, because they're both about chemistry. Seriously. This is the sort of thing I get excited about. There are also some books I've read large excerpts from or multiple chapters or didn't read straight through. I want to, by the end of this year, get those all cleared up (at least reading the parts I didn't already cover or hopefully reading them all the way through). These books are On Liberty, A Devil's Chaplain, The Elements of Style, and On the Origin of Species. But even once I get that out of the way, my nonfiction book list will certainly not be ready. And I don't really care to repost my fiction one again either, for now. But the movies list has actually changed a lot since the last time I posted it here and since I'm not watching a ton of movies to add to it, now might be a good time to repost it. So that should happen in the near future. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 1st, 2009
1:42 am	Book Review: A Fire Upon the Deep Before I begin, I have to say that only yesterday did I realize that I'm apparently back on a regular reading schedule. By that I mean that I'm never without a book. I am neglecting my precious internet in favor of this obsolete technology. Horrid, I know. But I can't help it. The poor chemistry blog I started is atrophying in an unintentional hiatus. On the other hand, the two books I have on hold are both about chemistry. I'm so excited! Even so, finishing A Fire Upon the Deep at work forced me to check out another book. I'll read some more of that, but also try to get caught up on cyberspace-related matters and report back sometime this weekend. I have stuff to write about and free time in which to do it. I'm just not managing my time or something (as always). So yeah, more later. On with the book review. I'm not going to go all crazy with this one like I did with A Deepness in the Sky. I could, but writing that kind of book review is probably beyond the scope of this journal or something. I don't know. As far as comparisons with its prequel go, I'll tentatively say that A Fire Upon the Deep isn't quite as good, but there's no shame in that and really, it's pretty close. It's a great science fiction novel and is, in some ways, more interesting. Some things are familiar in both, but I don't know how many of those are Vernor Vinge's normal deals and how many are just particular to this series. Supposedly the series is ongoing, as Vinge is working on a third book, so maybe I'll be able to read that one when it comes out (I almost never read new books). One feature the two have in common is alternation between scenes with human main characters and alien main characters. In this one, the aliens are packs of doglike creatures that form group minds linking individual animals through organs that appear to be transmitting/receiving sound and ultrasound signals. There are other aliens too, though. Lots of them, actually. And Pham Nuwen is, of course, badass, although not quite in the same way. In this book, he's mostly being used by other characters, starting out as the tool of a godlike entity that resurrected him after finding his ship. His thoughts are invaded by super-aliens and the possibility is raised that his memories of past adventures are fabricated, much to his dismay. Against this, A Deepness in the Sky seems even more powerful. But A Fire Upon the Deep goes further. The prequel, it turns out, took place entirely in the "slow zone" of the galaxy. Closer to the galactic center are the "unthinking depths" and any ships unfortunate enough to wander into those are pretty much doomed (Pham Nuwen goes there between the two books). In the "beyond" several technologies are possible that break down in the "slow zone" (including faster-than-light ships). Further out is the "transcend," the realm of godlike intergalactic entities that possibly don't live all that long (or just move on to other things and cease communicating with those in the beyond after a certain growth stage). The entire book is a battle against a nearly unstoppable entity known as the Blight, with the one weapon that can kill it stranded on the world of the "tines" (the aforementioned dog aliens). Particularly amusing is the "net" that the beyond uses (this book was written in in 1992), which is an obvious parody of Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep can also be sobering, exploring issues such as xenophobia, transcendence, the wonders and dangers of technology, and moral dilemmas. I definitely recommend this book and the "series" as a whole. Not sure which order would be best to read them in. I read them in chronological order. I'm thinking publication order would be better, but I'm not sure. (Comment on this)
12:42 am	Writer's Block: End of the World as We Know It Robert Frost speculated about the world ending in fire or in ice. Which do you think is likely to end us all: meteorite, global warming, nuclear weapons, zombies, or the superflu? View other answers None of these are likely to end us all. Meteorite This one doesn't even make sense. How would a meteorite end us all? Meteorites don't really do anything particularly deadly. Mostly, they just sit around. Are we talking about magic or alien invaders or something? Because that seems pretty unlikely. Global warming Well, this one won't kill us all by itself. It could certainly kill some people and generally cause problems. But wiping out human life is a bit of a stretch. Actually, it's a lot of a stretch. Nuclear weapons Possible. Unlikely, I suspect. Nuclear war would still leave a lot of survivors. It could destroy civilization, but killing all of us is a tall order. Zombies The answer is pretty much "no." Maybe it depends on the type of zombie, though. All of the types I can think of either don't exist or wouldn't really have a means of wiping us out (or both). Superflu Like zombies, this is fictional. I really don't know why I have to explain this, but fictional things tend not to be able to do anything because they aren't real. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
1:26 am	Another entry that's really just a link I love this: http://cenblog.org/2008/12/04/when-chemistry-was-swell/ (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
2:01 am	Double book review: The Demon-Haunted World and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Apparently all I read anymore is science and science fiction. I mean, technically, I started some book by Charles Dickens a while ago, but I left it in Nick's car or something, got it back while I was reading something else, and haven't returned to it yet. I might not. If you've seen my ranked lists of books you know that not everything on there is science fiction. The book I've rated consistently as being #1 isn't science fiction. And I'm pretty sure I said at some point in the past that I wanted to start diversifying more or whatever and reading different genres. I guess I changed my mind? The last books I've read have been Second Foundation, A Deepness in the Sky, Big Bang, The Demon-Haunted World, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and (the one I'm on now) A Fire Upon the Deep. Before that I think was Silent Spring and that's still kind of a science book. Speaking of which, the theme for the staff picks section this month is "Spring is here" and someone chose Silent Spring for it, which is hilarious, but it wasn't me (I wish it was). So I've wanted to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, but I seem to be doing something else instead, just because of how things work out. I couldn't renew The Demon-Haunted World so I started it right after I finished Big Bang. Then I read through The Moon is a Harsh Mistress so quickly that I knew I needed to find something else, and A Fire Upon the Deep arrived on my holdshelf just in time. I'm following a "nnffnnff" pattern instead of a "nfnfnfnf" pattern, but whatever. I had high expectations for The Demon-Haunted World. Did it live up to them? Kind of. And I'm not saying that I'm disappointed, because kind of living up to really high expectations isn't bad at all. Really, I'm not even sure what I expected, but I'd only heard good things. While the book deserves praise, I wouldn't really say it's a must-read. I noticed my biggest problem with The Demon-Haunted World almost right away: it isn't persuasive. This could use some clarification. The book seems to try to be persuasive. And Carl Sagan wouldn't have written it if he wasn't trying to get a point across. Also, I don't mean that book isn't moving or compelling. It's quite moving. Emotionally, it's powerful—moreso than I thought a book on this particular subject could be and it's certainly the most emotionally powerful science book I've ever read, so that by itself is pretty notable and maybe reason enough to read the thing. But that's not the same as being persuasive. I found myself agreeing with Sagan about almost everything (and everything important, I think). Here's the problem: these were areas in which I already agreed with him and didn't need any convincing. I don't think the idea here is to preach to the choir. But I know this just wouldn't be effective on the people who actually need the book's message (assuming one got them to read it in the first place, which is pretty unlikely). If the book gave those of us who don't need the message some sort of deeper understanding, that would be great and beats persuasive power (as something desireable in a book) by my reckoning. But I don't think it does that either. I don't think I learned much new about superstition or pseudoscience or any of that. I got new details that matched my previous understanding of such things. Maybe the problem is that I am particularly knowledgeable about the subject matter and by the time I got to this book, everything in it was already old news. I really doubt that. More likely, Sagan and I just came to the same conclusions about the subject matter independently (not because I'm oh-so-clever or anything, but just because we both happen to be right). In no way do I mean that book was a waste of time. Those details I didn't know about were interesting and probably did add to my understanding without me even realizing it. It was also valuable to have someone else articulate things better than I could. The copy of the book I read was from 1996 (I think it was originally published in 1995). Carl Sagan died in 1996. So the stuff at the beginning about the author and such was all written like he was still alive. This combined with the fact that everything he was saying seemed so familiar, so relevant to today was kind of eerie. Part of it might be that he was just such a good writer that spending any length of time reading the book made it feel like he was actually talking to me. But of course he's been dead for over a decade and technically, the book might be considered out of date. There was an odd mixture of points that are timeless anyway and a feeling of being pulled back into the 90's. I highly doubt this book was written to be a time machine, but for me it functioned as one in a way. And that made me pissed off at how little has changed, because there are things that should have changed, dammit. Important things. Also, people are stupid. Glad I'm not one. And then there was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I forget why I picked it, other than the author's whose books I've always liked. This one was great, though. Not as good as Stranger in a Strange Land, but next best after it. If I don't watch out for it, I find myself talking like the characters in this novel, which is a bit disconcerting (and funny). I don't know where to rank this on my list because I think I need to redo the order again. It's top ten material, though. Highly recommended. I could write a whole lot more about this one, but my entry on A Deepness in the Sky was way too long and I'm pretty tired, so just read the book. How about that? Also, I still want to start Lunar University. If you beat me to starting a university on the moon, fine. But if you use "Lunar University" as the name, I will stab you. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
5:19 pm	Actually updating LJ is for suckers I just found out about this. So yeah, that's awesome. It seems really groundbreaking for abiogenesis, but I haven't read the full paper yet because I'm lazy and now I'm addicted to this website. I forget what else I've been doing lately, but even if I remembered, it's not like I'd tell you: actually updating LJ is for suckers. But seriously, real update later. Not today. Maybe a different day this week. Whatever. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
4:04 pm	Book Review: Big Bang I don't feel nearly well-read enough to make a ranked list of nonfiction books the way I did with fiction. But if I tried, Simon Singh's Big Bang (the subtitle is The most important scientific discovery of all time and why you need to know about it but the edtiion I read, possibly because it's the American version, is subtitle The Origin of the Universe) would come close to the top of the whole list, possibly higher than any other book about science. I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about this book. When I read a book about biology, I know enough to comment on the author's choice of details and such. I'm not as familiar with cosmology, but this book was a marvelous introduction to the subject. It really deals with the history of cosmology, and in doing so tells the story of how science developed from philosophy. It also does something that I think is much more important, and does it better than any other book I've ever read. Singh shows the reader how the science works and how it is possible to learn about things with which we cannot directly interact. Comprehension of this should be valuable to anyone and I could confidently recommend the book to anyone on this basis alone, but it's good for other reasons. I have only three qualms with Big Bang. The first is a minor quibble about scientific terminology and not particularly important for the purposes of this review. The second is that the book almost completely eschews the mathematics that the scientists it describes are using. The approach is to give the reader a grasp of the concepts being used, but it leaves me wanting more information. On the other hand, by employing this method, Singh made the book accessible to nearly everyone who can read English, and I suppose that's worth sacrificing some technical details. I guess I wish there were an "advanced" version for people who thought they could handle it. The only other thing I take issue with in Singh's presentation is that he moves through history brilliantly, then suddenly stops around 1992 even though he wrote the book in 2004. The things he discusses in the conclusion are important, and the book is already 493 pages as it is (532 counting the glossary, bibliography, appendix, picture credits, and index). So maybe he made the right move there too. It's not like I'm an expert. I mentioned earlier that I'm not as equipped to critique this book as I have been with biology books. I don't know much astronomy and I don't know much physics. However, Big Bang also goes into chemistry (not a lot, but it does come up), which I do know. And Singh's presentation of chemistry is quite impressive. I should also note that the author of this book is currently being sued for libel by a bunch of quacks. I don't know anything about English law, so I don't know how good his chances of winning are, but if you're on Facebook, you should join this group. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 27th, 2009
12:37 pm	Stephen Bahl vs. RICE Last week on Thursday night I sprained my ankle at judo practice. Even though I sprain my ankle all the time, this time it was worse than any of those other times since the initial sprain that started this. And it might have been worse if only because I'm older now and don't heal as quickly (I was like 12 or 13 probably when it was first sprained). I iced it during practice, went home and took some Advil, and mostly ignored it after that. It still felt pretty tender on Monday, so I didn't go to practice then. On Tuesday I went and everyone noticed the big purple line on my foot. I knew it wasn't from impact or anything, so all of the bruising must be from the swelling, which seemed pretty bad. I took it easy and everything seemed fine, so I concluded that it looked worse than it actually was. On Wednesday, I went to practice again and it looked the same. I did a hit from the bony part of one guy's ankle to the swollen part of mine, and that really hurt. Other than that, I was fine. It buckled that night in my driveway and I stumbled a little, but ignored it. Then yesterday it was worse. My ankle was as swollen as the night of the injury and the purple was creeping up my leg. At work I was miserable and tried to keep as much weight off my ankle as I could. I skipped judo last night and kept my ankle elevated after that. It feels better now and I think the swelling's going down again, but clearly I need to stop being stupid about this and take care of this. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
11:29 pm	I want a book that teaches me how to sin... Yesterday I got to go to this cool class at work that was about intellectual freedom in libraries. You probably don't know very much about the history of libraries in the United States and neither did I, so I learned some interesting things. You may or may not know that these days, the ALA is all about intellectual freedom. They're huge fans. But it wasn't always that way. In 1908, the president of the ALA said this during his inauguration speech... It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature...Books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank Heaven they do not tempt the librarian. See, things do change. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, March 20th, 2009
12:44 am	Better than videos other people are posting... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
10:56 pm	Writer's Block: My Definition of Greatness How do you define greatness? Sponsored by Nature Made View other answers By using words. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, March 13th, 2009
11:25 am	Stephen Bahl vs. Well, I'm not really sure what For some reason, I think I've been humoring people too much on certain things. But maybe it's because I'm not just hearing these things in face-to-face conversation. So much I see online is this way too. I'm referring to politics. Specifically, I'm referring to the fact that almost everyone is an armchair economist and pretends to knows exactly how every problem works and what the ideal solution is. I think for the past few months I've fallen into this a bit myself. But I'm back now. I've snapped out of it. And now this bullshit is pissing me off more than ever. What is wrong with people? Maybe everyone needs hobbies, but blabbering about politics and managing to not even learn anything of substance seems like such a vulgar one. To be fair, that's not exactly what I'm getting at. Some very intelligent people who say things I agree with still manage to provoke this reaction from me by obsessing over things. I should have thought to find and example before writing this entry. Yeah, this isn't really going anywhere. Maybe I'll try again later... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
12:46 am	So high, so low, so many things to know. I've been reading the fairly long "A Deepness in the Sky" (774 pages) for a while now. I was going to finish it today at work so that I could turn it back in and find something else to check out. Unfortunately, I have no willpower, so I finished the whole book this morning. Well, part of the blame goes to me not being able to fall asleep on account of some damned noise. But the book was also really awesome. I originally got "A Deepness in the Sky" because I'd never read anything by Vernor Vinge and I decided that it was about time I did so. My first impression from the back of the cover and the back of the book was that it was, if not a bit pulpy, one of those science fiction novels driven by the setting and the technology the author wants to carve the rest of the narrative around. My sister said something similar when she read the summary on the back. But nothing could be further from the truth. "A Deepness in the Sky" is extremely character-driven. It's apparently one of the most awarded science fiction novels in recent history (it was written in 1999), so maybe I should have known better. But I actually hadn't heard of it before putting it on hold. Speaking of the setting, the story takes place in the future (of course). Humans have spaceships that can travel very quickly, but can't actually reach light speed (it is noted that one ship would be able to achieve greater than 30% of light speed). Since stars are far apart, it takes a very long time to get anywhere. Life extension exists, but people still only live a few hundred years, so they use special chambers to hold them in a stasis called "cold sleep" for most of travel. Humans have colonized much of the galaxy, but without superluminal travel or communication, these communities are isolated. The one thing that keeps civilization even partly interconnected is a trading network: the Qeng Ho. They seek out skilled individuals of all professions, regulating universities in order to cultivate expertise they can use, and trade for the technologies developed by more sessile civilizations, building up a library of all human knowledge that survives the collapses of civilizations. The novel actually begins with a manhunt. It is invested in heavily and highly secretive. We aren't told just why this man is so important, but the Qeng Ho have virtually bankrupted some of their investor families trying to track this guy down and have been at it for over 800 years. They succeed and recapture this enigmatic old man, preparing to rehabilitate him, then the whole fleet sets off on a journey for the "On/Off" star system, where most of the story takes place. This star, for reasons physicists do not yet understand, has a precise 250-year cycle, mostly sitting their all smoldering and dead-like, then bursting to life like clockwork and providing energy for the lifeforms on the only planet orbiting it for 45 years out of 250. What interests the humans so much, aside from the unexplained conditions of the star and the entire system, is that this civilization has recently discovered radio, making it the only the third intelligent alien species ever found, and of the first two one was extinct and the other was still rather primitive. This would be important by itself, but the conditions on the planet seem too harsh for life to have evolved there, so it's possible that a long-departed starfaring alien race was actually responsible for this. However, right after the Qeng Ho arrive, another human faction gets there too. They call themselves the "Emergents" and they traveled a shorter distance to get to this system, but with less advanced technology and a larger fleet. We learn that the Emergents come from a collapsed civilization they've been rebuilding by observing the Qeng Ho and learning from them. They also have a very different culture and don't seem at all interested in trading with the aliens or the Qeng Ho. The Emergents ambush the Qeng Ho and take over. The rest of the book deals with the covert struggles within and between the two human groups that are ostensibly cooperating, all while the aliens are undergoing a technological revolution. Even relatively minor characters on all sides have appreciable depth. The plot has several surprises (that I'm totally going to give away). Characters Pham Nuwen: One of the most badass characters in any story ever. I hear he's featured in another book by Vinge, so I'll have to check that one out soon. When we first meet Pham Nuwen, he is an old, senile man living in a monastery on a backwater planet and sitting in a wheelchair, going by an alias to hide from the Qeng Ho. The fleet captain locates him and takes him aboard the Qeng Ho fleet to rehabilitate him. Then there are some hints that Pham Trinli, a likeable but somewhat oafish low-ranking armsman is serving in the Qeng Ho fleet during negotiations with the Emergents. So we don't really know anything about him and he's an enigmatic minor character. Then the Emergent fleet ambushes the Qeng Ho fleet. Their flagship is destroyed, they are outnumbered, outgunned, and disoriented from a bioweapon the Emergents infected them with. Pham Nuwen secretly controls the Qeng Ho fleet and starts dominating the Emergents. He would have won, but the "mindrot" bioweapon incapacitates almost everyone and the Qeng Ho are forced to surrender. So he passes himself off as harmless and works with a Qeng Ho conspiracy to overthrow the Emergents. When they foil that, he still manages to escape unharmed, convincing the Emergents that he was only a minor member of the conspiracy. He then proceeds to manipulate everyone on both sides, tricking the Emergents into using security technology that he has full control over, throwing them off his trail at every turn and then killing them with his martial prowess when they finally go after him. He does a lot more, but I don't want to give the impression that he's one-dimensional. He has character flaws, including megalomania, sexism, and cynicism. Tomas Nau: The main villain, and a nasty one. The thing that makes him such a great villain is that he is willing to repeatedly make seemingly insane sacrifices that give him more control over everyone and everything. He sets up the initial ambush knowing that he'll lose a lot of his forces in the battle (although his losses were even greater than anticipated thanks to Pham Nuwen), but takes advantage of the situation by framing the Qeng Ho for supposedly attacking first and appeals to them to cooperate so that both sides can overcome their losses and succeed. He knows of the first conspiracy against him, but rather than stopping it, stores the bodies of the victims he tortured to death and a bunch of explosives on one of his own ships and frames the conspirators for blowing it up in a vain attempt to get the upper hand. He uses this to again appeal to his former enemies to cooperate with him, which they do, even though the damage from the act jeopordized any hope of leaving the star system without support from their alien neighbors on the planet below. And his reasoning for behaving as he does even makes sense. Tomas Nau isn't evil for the sake of being evil. He's spent all his life in a culture where cunning and treachery in the face of disaster are the only way to survive, and where managing one's slaves optimally is the means to achieving power, security, and status. Ritser Brughel: Tomas Nau's second-in-command. His character is notable because at first, he's a generic thug with a bad temper. He's a dynamic character who learns from Tomas Nau and becomes more manipulative and intimidating over time. He doesn't transform into Nau Jr. He always relies more on physical force. What he does do is figure out how to get into people's heads and use fear more to motivate those underneath him. Anne Reynolt: One of the most interesting characters in the whole book. The Emergents rely on "zipheads" who are, through manipulation of a specially engineered brain virus, kept focused to superhuman levels on their specialties. Anne Reynolt runs this program in Tomas Nau's fleet, carefully calibrating the slaves and guarding against sabotage from outside. We find out that she's a ziphead herself, a rare individual who still has some interpersonal skills while under "Focus." This makes her an even more deadly enemy than Tomas Nau. She sees right through everyone and has teams of human computers at her disposal to scrutinize anyone she suspects of anything. Pham Nuwen tries to assassinate her, but can't bring himself to. In the end, she proves invaluable: when the protagonists are finally able to free her from Focus, she becomes the Emergents' worst nightmare, freeing everyone else from Focus and preparing a fleet to invade their homeland so she can pay them back for what they did to her. Ezr Vinh: Because his family owned part of the Qeng Ho fleet, he was actually somewhat important even before the battle, despite inexperience. Tomas Nau puts him in charge of the surviving Qeng Ho and he tries to help the conspirators the first time around, but fails. He's unsure of himself and can't stand the fact that he can't do anything to stop Tomas Nau, but perseveres anyway, doing what little he can and learning from Pham Nuwen and others as time goes on. A very dynamic character. Qiwi Lin Lisolet: She is only a girl when the Emergents take over. Tomas Nau kills her mother and Focuses her father for his skills in biology. Partially because of her culture, she's motivated to become good at just about everything, but is a genius at engineering. She doesn't realize how evil Tomas Nau is and thinks she can change what flaws in him she does spot. Tomas Nau keeps her as his lover and whenever she finds out the truth about him, has her memory of it wiped, which happens repeatedly. Some of the other characters realize this and feel very sorry for her, but they can't really do anything about it. Trixia Bonsal: Ezr Vinh's girlfriend. The Emergents Focus her because she's the best translator. She becomes a sort of alpha among the zipheads and is so obsessed with the aliens that she secretly starts communicating with them through means Tomas Nau can't detect. While Nau is manipulating the aliens by hacking into all of their digital technology, Trixia Bonsal helps the aliens build a strategy to counter him. Sherkaner Underhill: The scientific genius behind the advances the aliens are making. The humans call the aliens "spiders" and from the description, they are somewhat spiderlike. They have ten limbs, a hard carapace, and several eyes. The spiders have their own wars and traditions and an elaborate cast of characters. But Sherkaner Underhill is the most important. He's not without his own flaws. He has a plan for his side in a war to win, but botches his case by mistaking the military engineer he's speaking to for an ordinary seargent and dumbs his idea down to the point where it isn't convincing. He abandons areas of study when they begin to bore him and it's up to other spiders to make his projects into something workable, which they usually do. But it's his programs and his students who revolutionize the spider's world. And when he realizes, with Trixia Bonsal's help, that the humans are hiding in space and interfering with spider communications for their own purposes, he pretends to become a senile crank with a conspiracy theory about evil aliens, using his family to counteract Tomas Nau's (genocidal) plans. Themes Monsters: Many of the humans are horrified when they finally see the spiders. They already knew what the spiders looked like, but seeing them move seems somehow more terrifying. The spiders refer to humans as monsters without knowing anything about them at all, even using the term when it is purely hypothetical, i.e. a spider character stating that he does not believe in monsters from space sabotaging their communications. But from the reader's perspective, this is made to look silly. Characters in both races are endeared to us through events in the story, and we can appreciate both groups. But being realistic, I'm quite sure that if we ever really did encounter intelligent extraterrestrials that were physically bizarre from our perspective, a lot of people really would have an aversion to them. I'd like to think I wouldn't. But who knows? Aside from splitting the characters into those two groups, the book also has major subgroups. Among the humans, there are the Qeng Ho and the Emergents. Among the spiders, there are multiple nations, some with more progressive-minded individuals, but all of them with at least some religious fundamentalists. Even though the aversion is less extreme than it is between the two species, these cultural differences also cause some to see others as monsters. Technological limitations: Humanity has been around for a long time. As they spy on the spiders, they are amused at the naivete displayed by these aliens, sparking arguments over whether the spiders are stupid compared to humans. The spiders look at some of their own as cranks even though the humans would know that they're wrong. It's pretty subtle at first, but becomes a major message of the book. Don't base your understanding of the world on perceived limitations. It's a fine message and this is a fine novel to present such a message. Motifs Depth: The world of the spiders only has a sun bright enough to warm it a minority of the time. Nothing on the surface of the planet (except for some volcanic bacteria) can survive this (at least in part because when the On/Off star first goes "on" it is intense enough to incinerate just everything except fortified structures). Some organisms use seeds or spores, but large animals, including the spiders, only survive by going deep underground and hibernating in what they call a "deepness." Because of this, spider religions venerate darkness and depth in a way that no human religion to my knowledge has ever done. A commonly held belief is that children do not gain their souls until they've passed through a period of darkness (the custom is to have children during the "waning years" of the star's cycle). The book's title comes from a debate between Sherkaner Underhill and a traditionalist spider who later becomes a minor villain. When she insists that Sherkaner's plan to build cities that will use nuclear power to function full time will remove the need for deepnesses and thereby destroy something valuable (mystery, spirituality, or something, it's not clear), he responds that soon they will build spaceships and that if she wants deepness, there is a deepness in the sky. For the humans, this is exactly what happens. With only subluminal travel available, they are forced to hibernate themselves for most of their time in spaceflight. Governance: The Qeng Ho and the Emergents fight. After the Emergents fight, there are still battles, but they are covert. The spiders have war and their own cultural struggles. In ever conflict the story presents, it is hierarchy and social structure that take center stage. Pham Nuwen wanted to build an empire and failed, which was what got him to where he was when the Qeng Ho found him. The Qeng Ho are content to trade, thinking that no government can last forever, but that a mercantile organization can. Tomas Nau and Pham Nuwen both still hope to build an empire starting with the spider world and conquering humans as well, but their approaches and their visions are different. Ezr Vinh wants to stop Pham Nuwen because the price for building an empire (slavery through the Focus technology of the Emergents) is too high. The spider nations find themselves facing a potential nuclear war reminiscent of our own Cold War. Only through the elimination of treachery and a progressive, benevolent leadershipare the characters able to end the madness and stabilize the situation. Genius: Sherkaner Underhill and Pham Nuwen are the most obvious geniuses. But with Focus, anyone can become a genius. As Pham Nuwen points out, the symptoms of Focus aren't that different from what some people do to themselves. The zipheads give their subjects of interest their full attention, disregarding even basic hygiene. Their whole worldview is fixated on their subjects and their whole sense of reward and punishment is based on their work. The key difference is that in the case of Focus, the whole thing is forced onto these people. Regular geniuses like Qiwi Lin Lisolet, who isn't subject to Focus, choose to spend time and effort on things of their own volition. Overall, this book was awesome and I highly recommend it to anyone who's even mildly interested in science fiction. I've been neglecting my Top 50 list, but I'm putting "A Deepness in the Sky" into the #5 spot. (Comment on this)