Review: Locked in the Cabinet

Locked in the Cabinet by Robert B. Reich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I completed my Metal Model Maker apprenticeship in 1995 and keep my Certificate of Completion of Apprenticeship framed in my office, next to my degrees. I consider it an on-par accomplishment.



I always figured it was signed by a machine, like the one Robert Reich tended in the office of Robert F. Kennedy at the humble start of his political career, as mentioned here in one of the many flashback recollections. Now, I feel I can hold some hope it may have been hand-signed, as this was during the United States federal government shutdowns of 1995–1996. My certificate is dated 28 November 1995 and in the closest entry here, 21 November, Reich recalls being alone in the cavernous Dept. of Labor building with a security guard and "There are still papers to be signed..."

In this personal memoir, Reich recalls being repelled by the manipulations of Fed head Alan Greenspan and Dick Morris. Reich sees Morris' downfall in a prostitute scandal, but more importantly to him the Family and Medical Leave Act, a raise to the minimum wage, and legs for the term "corporate welfare", apparently re-coined by Reich in his own mind.

Reich finds the role as Secretary of Labor unfulfilling and ineffectual in a presidency where only a handful hold real power and Bill Clinton lacked courage to match his convictions. This is insightful on how government really works (or doesn’t), the effects of such a career on family and peace of mind, and what it can be like trying to make job opportunities for the lower class in a government beholden to Wall Street and corporate heads.

View all my reviews

Review: A Seminar on Graph Theory

A Seminar on Graph Theory by Frank Harary
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Frank Harary was a prolific American mathematician specializing in graph theory. Dover published this collection he edited on the decennial of his passing. Harary held a faculty position in the University of Michigan Department of Mathematics from 1948-86 and in 1955 taught UM’s first graph theory and combinatorial theory courses. That department’s obituary recalls Harary as the “father” of modern graph theory, a discipline he helped found and popularize. Colleagues, peers and students fondly referred to Harary as “Mr. Graph Theory.”

A congenial warmth and exposition with a sense of humor come across in this two-part collection of lectures delivered by experts in the field over 1962–63 at University College, London. Harary’s own lectures make up first part of material from the seminar. The final three of these half-dozen talks on the then current topics focuses on work from George Pólya largely in an area of great interest to Harary: graph enumeration. This is a fast-paced, high-level overview of the state of the art with proofs mostly omitted entirely as Harary surveys the field for the audience. Of course, this was over a decade before the four color theorem became in 1976 the first major theorem proved using a computer, so it is described here as an open problem...

[Look for my entire review up at MAA Reviews.

View all my reviews

Review: Locked in the Cabinet

Locked in the Cabinet by Robert B. Reich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Frank Harary was a prolific American mathematician specializing in graph theory. Dover published this collection he edited on the decennial of his passing. Harary held a faculty position in the University of Michigan Department of Mathematics from 1948-86 and in 1955 taught UM’s first graph theory and combinatorial theory courses. That department’s obituary recalls Harary as the “father” of modern graph theory, a discipline he helped found and popularize. Colleagues, peers and students fondly referred to Harary as “Mr. Graph Theory.”

A congenial warmth and exposition with a sense of humor come across in this two-part collection of lectures delivered by experts in the field over 1962–63 at University College, London. Harary’s own lectures make up first part of material from the seminar. The final three of these half-dozen talks on the then current topics focuses on work from George Pólya largely in an area of great interest to Harary: graph enumeration. This is a fast-paced, high-level overview of the state of the art with proofs mostly omitted entirely as Harary surveys the field for the audience. Of course, this was over a decade before the four color theorem became in 1976 the first major theorem proved using a computer, so it is described here as an open problem...

[Look for my entire review up at MAA Reviews.

View all my reviews

Review: The Chimes

The Chimes by Charles Dickens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was ably narrated by Richard Armitage, though not in character Dwarf prince and leader Thorin Oakenshield. This tripe-triggered sojourn into goblin-run chiming is part "It's A Wonderful Life", part A Christmas Carol, and is a darker, more gothic Christmas tale on Dickens' series. My favorite Dickesn character name, here? Mrs. Chickenstalker!

View all my reviews

Review: The Intimate Henry Miller

The Intimate Henry Miller by Henry Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am often reminded of an essay I read by Henry Miller in The Intimate Henry Miller here on the subject of obscenity. He pointed out that when something obscene (in any one's definition) has been created to express a point, could that same point or feeling have been expressed in any other way?

View all my reviews

Review: First-Person America

First-Person America by Ann Banks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From between 1938 and 1942 when the Federal Writers’ Project set out to create a first-person portrait of America through young writers (many of whom later became successful like Stetson Kennedy) interviewing people from varied occupations and backgrounds. This book presents 80 of these diverse life histories, all narrated from texts including often the interviewers qualitative assessment of the subject, observations, and notes on techniques. Included are the stories of a North Carolina patent-medicine pitchman, a retired Oregon prospector and other mining industry veterans, a Bahamian midwife from Florida with her philosophic medicine, a Key West smuggler claiming to be the model for To Have and Have Not), and Chicago jazz musicians recalling Jimmy McPartland and Bix Beiderbecke. There are also a few, strident recollections of laboring women on the stresses and needs for unionizing slaughterhouses and other sweatshops.

View all my reviews

Review: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had an appreciation of Hitchens for his radical atheism, wit as a pundit on cable TV shows, and sparrer with the faithful in regular debates. This autobiography opened a much more complete picture of the writer to me: Hitchens's mother's suicide, her secret Jewishness, his activities with anti-Communist socialism inspired by Leon Trotsky, typically British boys' school confrontations with homosexuality, knowing and loathing Bill Clinton, and a friendship with Martin Amis. Recommending Ami's memoir Expérience and other books like Watching the Door: Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast make this a real treat for avid readers as it generates a list of must reads. The Clinton thing I found interesting: Hitchens was there when Clinton didn't inhale, because he was ravenous for the brownies!

The narration by the author himself, with an added special of an interview with him at the end, makes this a special audiobook package. Unfortunately, his trademark low-pitch, understated delivery is easily overwhelmed by background sounds in this production. Personally, I don't blame the narrator, I blame the audio engineer.

There are some very moving chapters here, like why he became an American citizen, and on helping a family deal with the grief of their son killed in Iraq where he went inspired by Hitchens writings.

View all my reviews

Review: The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed

The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed by John McPhee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

AEREON is an aircraft manufacturer specializing in unique hybrid airships. It was founded in Princeton, New Jersey in 1959 and produced many models and prototypes up to 1971. The AEREON 26 and 7 are highlighted here. Each was an experimental aircraft developed to investigate lifting body design with a view to using its shape to create hybrid designs, part airship, part conventional aircraft. It was powered by a piston engine, driving a pusher propeller, and generated lift through the aerodynamics of its lozenge-shaped fuselage without wings. Although results of flight tests conducted in 1971 were promising, funding for larger and semi-buoyant aircraft was not forthcoming at the time, largely the result of some mysterious brakes put on by the SEC.

The Hindenburg exploded, in part, because a US embargo on exporting helium to Nazi Germany forced them to use the more dangerous hydrogen. This put a chilling effect on lighter than error craft. However, those 13 passengers that unfortunately died then were the sum total of all airship passenger deaths. These craft require a resource (helium) largely located in the U.S. and take a small percentage of fuel to move forward compared to heavier than air planes, let along large ships. Green, fueled by the USA, and safe - do I have something here this country could get behind?

View all my reviews

Review: Windmills of Holland

Windmills of Holland by C. P. Braay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting, concise history of the windmill of Holland. Photos, diagrams, and history of specific windmill types cover antecedents like the watermill and "treadmill" (as in horse tread). I never knew that the typical windmill completely or internally rotates to catch the wind. Also, interesting was windmill configurations for community messages.

View all my reviews

Review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a young child I was drawn to the fantastic world of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory by all the normal reasons, but also by the fact
that I was skinny and toe-headed with an excess of hair, much like the child-hero Charlie. The synoptic aspect of this piece is a verse-to-scene comparison between the movie and the story of The Fall in the Book of Genesis.
After seeing the movie at State Theatre in Detroit and drinking after at the now long gone Elwood bar I began to see the movie in this way. The movie has stayed
with me my whole life. I am watching it for the umpteenth time as I write this. “Pure Imagination” played in the place of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” in our
wedding. (See the Seussian aspect of that wedding.)

Now, I feel this approach is unique, so I want to differentiate from comparisons to the children the Cardinal Sins. Of course, the four "naughty little children" are not numerous enough to
represent the Seven Deadly Sins, unlike the population of Gilligan’s Island . "Greedy boy" Augustus Gloop shows gluttony. Spoiled Veruca Salt shows all the signs of greed
unleashed. Violet “Can it, you nit!” Beauregarde, who cuts off her parents during her interview when she gets the ticket, is quick to anger. "A boy who does nothing but watch television" named Mike Teavee is surely slothful. (Their
parent may be even more sinful.) As a matter of fact, they are all a bundle of all the Deadly Sins, save the sin reserved for adults: lust; unless you count their lust for Wonka’s holdings.

Everyone sees Charlie as angelic and sin-less in this regard, but I feel he bears the sin of pride. Mrs. Bucket tries to counter this haughtiness: “And after this contest is over, you'll be no different from the billions of others who didn't find one.” Only to have Charlie retort, “But I am different.  I want it more than any of them.” Mrs. Bucket tries to sing down this pride in “Cheer Up, Charlie.”

However, there may be more to the sins- Gilligan’s Island connection and even the Dark Side of the Moon-Wizard of Oz connection than my Paradise revisited angle. But, I enjoy ruminating on this aspect of interpretation, anyway. I say “revisited”, because I think this best works as Eden re-opened for a second chance to a new set of humans to see how they will do with a God no less flamboyant, aloof or judgmental than the Old Testament deity. This time Wonka-God hedges his bets with a pool of applicants and when one does win pass new orchestrated and imponderable test he gets more than is promised – including Paradise and a trip to heaven in the glass elevator (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator)!

Roald Dahl is surely a literary genius and a unique and important voice in children’s literature. It may seem strange to have an atheist like myself promote the Fall of Man through Dahl’s story in this movie edition, but without worrying too much about that, I must tell you I see a big different in the movie and the book. As a matter of fact, this is the only case I have encountered, where I like the movie much better than the book on a plot-story level. Dahl’s placement of black pygmies in the book version were a racist feature to a story delivered a bit of distaste appearing as a white man’s burden apologia packaged for impressionable children.

However, the karmic balance that runs as a theme in many of Dahl’s books may be working to support the re-entry to paradise angle. The reflexive justice exhibited in Dahl’s work includes Uncle Oswald the seducer getting seduced (“The Visitor”), the antique dealer (“Parson's Pleasure” and the Twits in The Twits (1980) get glued in the end. Each of the children other than Charlie carries the seeds of their own destruction in their fetish-like obsessions with eating (Augustus), chewing (Violet), having (Veruca) and watching (Teavee). The First Pair found in their awareness their end: they did the one thing they were aware they should not. Here is the relevant story from the first verses of Genesis

I am sure you know well the Wonka story, if not reread the script or get if from Amazon.com
on DVD
or VHS.
Also, tell me what you think! BTW, I thought this up one night at the pre-Comerica Park Elwood Bar one night after seeing the film at The State Theatre.

1.1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Consider the lyrics to “The Candy Man”, the song that starts off this musical. This song introduces Wonka as a creator-candy maker with power over the havens and “And makes the world taste good.”.



1.25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Peter Ostrum, that actor that did nothing more than the Charlie role, went on to be a veterinarian and cares for all these creations.



2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

In his first words of the film, Slugworth ends his insidious offer to Chartlie with “And don't forget the name: Everlasting Gobstopper.” Popular interpretation of the Genesis story is that Adam and Eve got knowledge and mortality from the apple-bearing tree passing up eternal life from the other tree.

2:10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; ...
In this case, a chocolate river.

2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Of course, tasting the knowledge of any of Wonka’s secrets gets the children booted from the running. Charlie, too, commits this sin when he and Grandpa hang back to surreptitiously sample the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. In the end, what matters is not getting caught! Because, while the omniscient does know of this crime, in the end only Charlie is given the opportunity avoid the one unpardonable of choosing ignorance over bliss by returning the Everlasting Gobstopper in what is revealed to be a Job-like setup.


3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Who could me more subtle than the serpentine Slugworth mentioned before the golden tickets, but shown to us subtly advising Augustus Gloop.

3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
WONKA: “Little surprises around every corner but nothing dangerous.” Of course, the reality of the factory was that one’s actions had just as severe repercussions as for Adam and Eve in the garden. Taking the non-dangerous path would be as rewarding as Wonka intones in “Pure Imagination”: “IF YOU WANT TO VIEW PARADISE
SIMPLY LOOK AROUND AND VIEW IT

ANYTHING YOU WANT TO, DO IT

WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD

THERE'S NOTHING TO IT

THERE IS NO LIFE I KNOW

TO COMPARE WITH PURE IMAGINATION


LIVING THERE YOU'LL BE FREE IF YOU TRULY WISH TO BE”

3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life
This makes me think of the eerie, mysterious “tinker” at the gates of the factory. “Nobody ever goes in, . . . and nobody ever comes out!” This sets the stage of a “postlapsarian” Paradise re-introduced to humanity. As a special note, the tinker quotes from the wonderful poem “The Fairies”, by William Allingham.

View all my reviews

Review: Harp

Harp by John Gregory Dunne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Novelist Dunne begins bookends this memoir with the loss of family members. First there is unexpected deaths of a brother and building to the tragic killing of his niece Dominique Dunne. In the middle is a discursive wandering through his techniques for inspiration from travel to peering in other people's medicine cabinets. This has an odd injection of a fantastical Internal Affairs Investigation as a way apparently to allow him to examine his own conscience once removed. While a heart operation looms he navigates us to more expected deaths of elderly relatives as he scours Ireland for roots. ("Harp" is a semi-derogatory term for Irish Catholics while Dunne professes interest in being neither.) Overall, this is interesting and is so lacking in cohesion it can both be read with entertainment at any part, or dismissed entirely.

View all my reviews

Review: The Foot Book: Dr. Seuss's Whacky Book of Opposites

The Foot Book: Dr. Seuss's Whacky Book of Opposites by Dr. Seuss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thick, chewable board pages for the youngest future reader. Great drawings and catchy rhymes, as usual, in a quirky, podial parable of diversity.

View all my reviews

Review: The Cat in the Hat

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me NOW!
It is fun to have fun
But you have to know how."

The Cat in the Hat is the trickster deity of the Seussian pantheon, extended to a trinity by "good Things." He can break the rules and magically fix the damage and it was all acted out joyously and sin-lessly, as if in a dream.

View all my reviews

Review: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently re-read Uncle Tom's Cabin, so I elected to read this edition for the included A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book by Harriet Beecher Stowe published to document the veracity of the depiction of slavery in her anti-slavery novel. So, this ebook has both and I noticed the percentage was right around 5o% going from the novel to its key. So, Stowe felt a need to publish a nonfiction work of the same heft as the work of fiction is defended.

Stowe was the seventh of 13 children born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher and Roxana (Foote), a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. She had brothers who became ministers: including Henry Ward Beecher, who became a famous preacher and abolitionist, Charles Beecher, and Edward Beecher. Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, where she received a traditional academic education usually reserved for males at the time with a focus in the classics, including study of languages and mathematics. In 1832, at the age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. Areas of the city had been wracked in the Cincinnati riots of 1829, when ethnic Irish attacked blacks, trying to push competitors out of the city. Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841, driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists. It was in a literary club there that she met Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower who was a professor at the seminary. The two married on January 6, 1836. He was an ardent critic of slavery, and the Stowes supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. Most slaves continued north to secure freedom in Canada.

So, by 1851 when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she was approaching building this edifice of social realism in literature, utilizing descriptive and critical realism, with a goal in mind not unlike John Steinbeck did with The Grapes of Wrath.

In they, we have three parts. The first part is key characters and scenes backed up by the sources and events that inspired them. This part includes lively correspondence from readers attacking Stowe, declaring they had seen the real Uncle Tom or other character, or felt trapped by an economic reality: "Would anyone believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to Virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them."

The next two parts are an indictment and call to arms for organized Christianity. First, she highlights the duplicity of Christian institutions in defending and supporting slavery, such as this document from the southern Methodists' shoddy record:

"THE GEORGIA ANNUAL CONFERENCE.
Resolved unanimously, that whereas there is a clause in the discipline of our church which states that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil of slavery; and whereas, the said clause has been perverted by some, and used in such a manner as to produce the impression that the Methodist Episcopal Church believed slavery to be a moral evil— Therefore Resolved, that it is the sense of the Georgia Annual Conference that slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil. Resolved, that we view slavery as a civil and domestic institution, and one with which, as ministers of Christ, we have nothing to do, further than to ameliorate the condition of the slave, by endeavouring to impart to him and his master the benign influences of the religion of Christ, and aiding both on their way to heaven."

The third part is Stowe's call to action for American churches to work to the end of slavery nationally and globally. Here concluding line is the same Jesus quote I would offer as the most exposing of hypocrisy then, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

View all my reviews

Review: Girl with Glasses: My Optic History

Girl with Glasses: My Optic History by Marissa Walsh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I would give narrator Margie Lenhart four stars and will watch for other audiobooks where I can enjoy her cheerful, crisp, and eloquent delivery. As for the book itself, Marissa Walsh is a former children’s book editor living in Long Island City, New York. This "comic memoir" isn't hilarious, but it is self-affirming I think for "GWGs" (Girls With Glasses). I think this is YA nonfiction especially for young women wondering if they can stand out, succeed, and participate with their pair, as Walsh successfully has.

View all my reviews

Review: The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict by Austin Reed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this whole package -it needs both parts: text and exegesis. The discovered manuscript of a juvenile delinquents incarceration memoir is bookended with explanation of the life and times of the author, the prison system for young offenders, and the light emendations to enhance clarity and readability. Reed is haunted by, it seems, his crimes and the thought of masturbation as he cycles in and out of a workhouse/indentured servitude system featuring medieval tortures. No wonder we can believe some on the outside would help a boy on the run from such hells.

View all my reviews

Review: White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History

White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History by George M. Fredrickson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This work really focuses on 18th & 19th Century histories of institutional racism, injustice, and slavery in South Africa and the United States. The author context switches between these continental differences often at the paragraph frequency, which strikes me as too frequent for this comparative study. The telling in detail ends abruptly before the 20th Century with the run-up to WW I in the last few pages. There is no Sun City or Mandela Nelson here, though I get the feeling while it is not overtly stated that South Africa's longer if less bloody trek through Apartheid is what would have happened in the U.S. had it not been for the messy catharsis of the Civil War.

View all my reviews

Review: America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve by Roger Lowenstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This bit of political and financial history was more interesting and engaging than I expected. I had not known or forgotten that we are in the third and this time expectedly permanent central bank system here in the U.S. The First Bank of the United States, famously pushed for by Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, lasted 1791–1811and was a present absence in the need to finance the War of 1812. The Second Bank of the United States (1816–1836) which James Madison signed the charter of, was a reaction to runaway inflation that had plagued the country during the five-year interim between national banks. Populist Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1828, denounced the bank as an engine of corruption. His destruction of the bank was a major political issue in the 1830s and shaped the Second Party System, as Democrats in the states opposed banks and Whigs supported them. Most of the book is about the 1907 - 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve System we now have. This includes the cabalistic genesis on Jekyll Island, GA to the The United States presidential election of 1912 and its rare four-way contest between incumbent President William Howard Taft (renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing), former President Theodore Roosevelt and his own Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party"), Democrat Woodrow Wilson finally nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, and Eugene V. Debs running for a fourth time as the nominee of the Socialist Party of America.

View all my reviews

Review: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mary Roach's book here seems to combine the charms and idiosyncrasies of all here titles I have read: a zealous if fruitless search for sex in space (Bonk), what death from depressurization would really be like (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers) and a lengthy examination of icky food and resultant egesta (poo and pee) in the rockets (Gulp). I had been kinda over book-length discourses on space discoveries that haven't happened (The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and put off reading this, since NASA has not even scheduled a date to send men to mars. However, there is much more to this book, and the Mars angle is really a footnote. This is more about the history of technological development, mainly by the U.S. and Russia, to put humans in space, allow them to work there, and bring them back.

View all my reviews

Review: Knots, Molecules, and the Universe: An Introduction to Topology

Knots, Molecules, and the Universe: An Introduction to Topology by Erica Flapan
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

...This book introduces the elementary mathematics of topology with applications to chemistry and cosmology. Basically self-contained, it does not assume or require any mathematical background beyond the most basic algebra and set theory concepts and notation. Clearly meant to be fun, this can be an enjoyable read for the interested and nontechnical, or used as an undergraduate textbook. There are some ambitious undertakings by the authors, considering the audience, as the second chapter “Visualizing Four Dimensions” and the exploration of the Klein Bottle later in “Part 1: Universes”. Sticking with the material, the reader will have a good understanding of orientability, manifolds, Euler characteristic, and the genus of a surface. Keeping with the theme of assuming no real prior mathematical sophistication on the reader, proving the sidedness of a non-orientable 3-manifold is patiently walked through beginning with defining “if and only if”. This Part concludes with a thorough and enlightening dive info Euclid’s Axioms, since throughout non-Euclidean surfaces must be confronted...

[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]



View all my reviews

Review: Ann-Margret: My Story

Ann-Margret: My Story by Ann Margret
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really don't know for Ann-Margret of the big and small screens, but was attracted to this work due to my affection for the album "The Cowboy & the Lady", which she did with Lee Hazlewood. That opus only gets on sentences, and Lee isn't mentioned, although her disco album gets a whole paragraph! For the music fan, there is a whole chapter on working on Tommy, and the resulting friendship with Tina Turner. Most of the book is about growing up in Sweden, her career and marriage to Roger Smith, recovering from a tragic fall, and beating alcoholism and pill-popping. A quick, easy read of a vivacious woman with a rich life.

View all my reviews

Review: Walden Two

Walden Two by B.F. Skinner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) created by B. F. Skinner would be enough to assure fame for the American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. This renaissance man is also a novelist. Having recently read Walden, I decided to take on this “controversial novel”. Technocrats of an apparently unexciting alternative 40s American decide on a lark to visit a self-sustaining commune, Walden Two. The productivity and happiness of citizens in this community is far greater than in the outside world because the residents practice scientific social planning and use operant conditioning in raising their children. Walden Two, like Henry David Thoreau, champions a lifestyle that does not support war or foster competition and social strife. It encourages a lifestyle of minimal consumption, rich social relationships, personal happiness, satisfying work and leisure. Unlike thorough, the community is not about one man’s solitude or a rejection of modern technology. Quite the opposite. (In 1967, Kat Kinkade founded the Twin Oaks Community, using Walden Two as a blueprint. The community still exists and continues to use the Planner-Manager system and other aspects described in Skinner's book.) Rather than "Walden Two", I think this book would be better named "The Republic Two", since the scale and approach has more to do with The Republic. As Will Durant says in The Story of Philosophy, "...policies should be administered by officials specifically prepared for the purpose, than by men who stumble out of commerce or manufacturing into political office without any training in the arts of is statesmanship." Skinner's Planner-Managers are more akin to the Philosopher-King guardians of Plato than Thoreau's self-sufficient loner.

The visiting group seems split in their opinions and a friendly fascism of the founder seems darker in this outburst on refuting the value of historical context:

"Are you saying that you gain no perspective-I mean, no detached
opinion-from a sense of history?"

"I mean that and more. Nothing confuses our evaluation of the present more than a sense of history-unless it's a sense of destiny. Your Hitlers are the men who use history to real advantage. It's exactly what they need. It obfuscates every attempt to get a clear appreciation of the present.

"Race, family, ancestor worship-these are the handmaidens of history, and we should have learned to beware of them by now. What we give our young people in Walden Two is a grasp of the current forces which a culture must deal with. None of your myths, none of your heroes-no history, no destiny-simply the Now! The present is the thing. It's the only thing we can deal
with, anyway, in a scientific way. But we've got a long way from the dictator.

Some parts of the founder’s philosophy seem calculated to offend some, such as finding autocratic powers in turning the other cheek:

"No, accident. Jesus discovered one principle because it had immediate consequences, and he got another thrown in for good measure.”

I began to see light.

"You mean the principle of love your enemies'?'' I
said.

"Exactly! To 'do good to those who despitefully use you' has two unrelated consequences. You gain the peace of mind we talked about the other day. Let the stronger man push you around-at least you avoid the torture of your own rage. That's the immediate consequence. What an astonishing discovery it must have been to find that in the long run you could control the stronger man in the same way!"

There is a hopefully benevolent paternalism here,

"The question is: Can men live in freedom and peace? And the answer is: Yes, if we can build a social structure which will satisfy the needs of everyone and in which everyone will want to observe the supporting code. But so far this has 'been achieved only in Walden Two. Your ruthless accusations to the contrary, Mr. Castle, this is the freest place on earth. And it is free precisely because we make no use of force or the threat of force. Every bit of our research, from the nursery through the psychological management of our adult membership, is directed toward that end-to exploit every alternative to forcible control. By skillful planning, by a wise choice of techniques we increase the feeling of freedom.

"It's not planning which infringes upon freedom, but planning which uses force. A sense of freedom was practically unknown in the planned society of Nazi Germany, because the planners made a fantastic use of force and the threat of force.

"No, Mr. Castle, when a science of behavior has once been achieved, there's no alternative to a planned society. We can't leave mankind to an accidental or biased control. But by using the principle of positive reinforcement-carefully avoiding force or the threat of force-we can preserve a personal sense of freedom."

Still, even Utopia needs its sheep. The practical commune is a subculture, needing larger culture to survive not really even an alternative culture or model for society at large.

"Suppose we need experts. Why not elect them?"

“For a very simple reason. The people are in no position to evaluate experts. And elected experts are never able to act as they think best. They can't experiment. The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his expert to know. And he's utterly incapable of sustaining the period of doubt during which an experiment works itself out. The experts must either disguise their experiments and pretend to know the outcome in advance or stop experimenting altogether and struggle to maintain the status quo."

Skinner’s vision is an improved democracy at a time when Socialism held broad appeal (Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is referred to, along with other Utopian works):

"The government of Walden Two," he continued, "has the virtues of democracy, but none of the defects. It's much closer to the theory or intent of democracy than the actual practice in America today. The will of the people is carefully ascertained. We have no election campaigns
to falsify issues or obscure them with emotional appeals, but a careful study of the satisfaction of the membership is made. Every member has a direct channel through which he may protest to the Managers or even the Planners. And these protests are taken as seriously as the pilot of an airplane takes a sputtering engine…

Ultimately, this is a controlled experiment, and an experiment of control that is both complete and gentle:

"What is love,,' he said, with a shrug, "except another name for the use of positive reinforcement?"
it Or vice versa," I said.

Definitely, a thought-provoking work and an interesting way to present a community blueprint.

View all my reviews

Review: The Republic

The Republic by Plato
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have come now to The Republic for at least the third time. Each time, my reaction is as much about my age and where I am at in life at the time. The first time, as a teen, it was all very heavy and I was self-satisfied to be considering with Plato’s’ Socrates such weighty issues. Later, in my 20s and considering myself progressive I thought Plato a crypto-fascist and him an unreconstructed fraud. Now, in my 40s, my feelings are more nuanced. Just as my changing eyesight makes me look closer at things close to me. The minor tragedy I see in Cephalus jumps out. Cephalus, son of Lysanias from Syracuse (5th century BCE), a wealthy elderly arms manufacturer living in Athens engages in dialogue with Socrates here at his home outside the city. He was the father of another dialogue participant, Polemarchus. There is Cephalus who drew in the young men for a night of conversation with his chairs arranged.
For Socrates, Polemarchus's father Cephalus is an old friend. The two begin a conversation about the pros and cons of being old. As they continue to chat, their topic gradually shifts from old age to the idea of justice, and that's something that gets everyone's attention. Cephalus seems glad of the company and just wants to talk, but I feel he gets disrespected in his own home and it begins to dawn on him the barbs from Socrates aren’t worth his time. Cephalus bows out at this point, and his son Polemarchus starts debating with Socrates about the nature of justice. They start talking about: 1) what justice really means, and 2) whether justice is actually a good and useful thing to have in the real world. Word. Socrates is just as methodical and a bit condescending to Polemarchus, but Polemarchus seems more tolerant of the young philosopher.

As for fascism, Plato is definitely down on a pure expressive arts movement, but also argues strenuously through Socrates for a greater role of women in civic and military affairs. So, it not just one way. So, Plato would have been fine in principle with Hillary Rodham Clinton running to be our "guardian" and his plans for state child-rearing is beyond the paternalism of It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us to the dystopic Brave New World.

It is hard not to read this and reflect on current and recent events – whenever I read it. Robert Bowdrie "Bowe" Bergdahl is a United States Army soldier who was held captive by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan from June 2009 until his release in May 2014. The circumstances under which Bergdahl went missing and how he was captured by the Taliban have since become subjects of intense media scrutiny. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said in October 2015 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl should have been executed for leaving his post in Afghanistan. Platos says, “Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of husbandmen; gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken prisoners, may be presented to the enemy.” Not that Plato would care a whit for Trump’s opinions. As a businessman and untrained in philosophy, he would not make for a ruler in Plato’s mind. Indeed, “And when persons who are unworthy of education approach philosophy…what sort of ideas and opinions are likely to be generated? Will they not be sophisms captivating to the ear, having nothing in them genuine, or worthy of or akin to true wisdom?” And, more pointedly, "Ruin comes when the trader, whose heart is lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler."

I can see how Socrates’ disputations could have gotten him in trouble. By disagreeing with myths and heroes he would raise the ire of conservatives. Personally, I would like an abridged version that dispensed with the numerology and some of the mythology and just retained the kernel of essaying the role and makeup of government.

The Republic contains Plato's Allegory of the cave, but there is much more here. As a math teach, I wholly agree with his view on the value of a mathematical education: “I must add how charming the science of arithmetic is! and in how many ways it is a subtle and useful tool to achieve our purposes, if pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, and not of a shopkeeper!'

'How do you mean?', he asked.

'I mean, as I was saying, that arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the mind to reason about abstract number,…

'And here is another point, that those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and even the slow-witted if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would otherwise have been.'

'Very true,' he said.

'And indeed, you will not easily find a more difficult study, which come harder to those who learn and practice it.'

'You will not.'

'And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the brightest citizens should be trained, and which must not be given up.'

'I agree.'

Also, this edition has excellent, engaging narration!

View all my reviews

Review: Walden Two

Walden Two by B.F. Skinner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) created by B. F. Skinner would be enough to assure fame for the American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. This renaissance man is also a novelist. Having recently read Walden, I decided to take on this “controversial novel”. Technocrats of an apparently unexciting alternative 40s American decide on a lark to visit a self-sustaining commune, Walden Two. The productivity and happiness of citizens in this community is far greater than in the outside world because the residents practice scientific social planning and use operant conditioning in raising their children. Walden Two, like Thoreau, champions a lifestyle that does not support war or foster competition and social strife. It encourages a lifestyle of minimal consumption, rich social relationships, personal happiness, satisfying work and leisure. Unlike thorough, the community is not about one man’s solitude or a rejection of modern technology. Quite the opposite. (In 1967, Kat Kinkade founded the Twin Oaks Community, using Walden Two as a blueprint. The community still exists and continues to use the Planner-Manager system and other aspects described in Skinner's book.)

The visiting group seems split in their opinions and a friendly fascism of the founder seems darker in this outburst on refuting the value of historical context:

"Are you saying that you gain no perspective-I mean, no detached
opinion-from a sense of history?"

"I mean that and more. Nothing confuses our evaluation of the present more than a sense of history-unless it's a sense of destiny. Your Hitlers are the men who use history to real advantage. It's exactly what they need. It obfuscates every attempt to get a clear appreciation of the present.

"Race, family, ancestor worship-these are the handmaidens of history, and we should have learned to beware of them by now. What we give our young people in Walden Two is a grasp of the current forces which a culture must deal with. None of your myths, none of your heroes-no history, no destiny-simply the Now! The present is the thing. It's the only thing we can deal
with, anyway, in a scientific way. But we've got a long way from the dictator.

Some parts of the founder’s philosophy seem calculated to offend some, such as finding autocratic powers in turning the other cheek:

"No, accident. Jesus discovered one principle because it had immediate consequences, and he got another thrown in for good measure.”

I began to see light.

"You mean the principle of love your enemies'?'' I
said.

"Exactly! To 'do good to those who despitefully use you' has two unrelated consequences. You gain the peace of mind we talked about the other day. Let the stronger man push you around-at least you avoid the torture of your own rage. That's the immediate consequence. What an astonishing discovery it must have been to find that in the long run you could control the stronger man in the same way!"

There is a hopefully benevolent paternalism here,

"The question is: Can men live in freedom and peace? And the answer is: Yes, if we can build a social structure which will satisfy the needs of everyone and in which everyone will want to observe the supporting code. But so far this has 'been achieved only in Walden Two. Your ruthless accusations to the contrary, Mr. Castle, this is the freest place on earth. And it is free precisely because we make no use of force or the threat of force. Every bit of our research, from the nursery through the psychological management of our adult membership, is directed toward that end-to exploit every alternative to forcible control. By skillful planning, by a wise choice of techniques we increase the feeling of freedom.

"It's not planning which infringes upon freedom, but planning which uses force. A sense of freedom was practically unknown in the planned society of Nazi Germany, because the planners made a fantastic use of force and the threat of force.

"No, Mr. Castle, when a science of behavior has once been achieved, there's no alternative to a planned society. We can't leave mankind to an accidental or biased control. But by using the principle of positive reinforcement-carefully avoiding force or the threat of force-we can preserve a personal sense of freedom."

Still, even Utopia needs its sheep. The practical commune is a subculture, needing larger culture to survive not really even an alternative culture or model for society at large.

"Suppose we need experts. Why not elect them?"

“For a very simple reason. The people are in no position to evaluate experts. And elected experts are never able to act as they think best. They can't experiment. The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his expert to know. And he's utterly incapable of sustaining the period of doubt during which an experiment works itself out. The experts must either disguise their experiments and pretend to know the outcome in advance or stop experimenting altogether and struggle to maintain the status quo."

Skinner’s vision is an improved democracy at a time when Socialism held broad appeal (Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is referred to, along with other Utopian works):

"The government of Walden Two," he continued, "has the virtues of democracy, but none of the defects. It's much closer to the theory or intent of democracy than the actual practice in America today. The will of the people is carefully ascertained. We have no election campaigns
to falsify issues or obscure them with emotional appeals, but a careful study of the satisfaction of the membership is made. Every member has a direct channel through which he may protest to the Managers or even the Planners. And these protests are taken as seriously as the pilot of an airplane takes a sputtering engine…

Ultimately, this is a controlled experiment, and an experiment of control that is both complete and gentle:

"What is love,,' he said, with a shrug, "except another name for the use of positive reinforcement?"
it Or vice versa," I said.

Definitely, a thought-provoking work and an interesting way to present a community blueprint.


View all my reviews