Books – Page 94 – artdiamondblog.com

“Long, Lonely Odyssey “from Heresy to Orthodoxy””

Source of book image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. D5) As the Nobel committee put it in the 1997 citation for Dr. Prusiner’s prize in physiology or medicine, he had established “a novel principle of infection” — one so controversial that a few experts in the field still continue to search for that elusive virus. But as far as Dr. Prusiner is concerned, the Nobel confirmed that his long, lonely odyssey “from heresy to orthodoxy” was over.

The journey he details was full of hurdles. Some were of the kind likely to befall any researcher: insufficient laboratory space, poor correlation between needs and resources. (At one point, Dr. Prusiner calculated that for a single year’s worth of experiments he would have to house and feed 72,000 mice, an impossible multimillion-dollar proposition.) He submitted a grant application that was not just rejected for funding but actually “disapproved,” often the kiss of death for a train of scientific thought.
Some of his problems were a little darker but still universal — graduate students captured by competing labs, data appropriated and misrepresented by erstwhile colleagues, bitter authorship battles.
Some of Dr. Prusiner’s shoals, however, seem more particular to his personal operating style. As a teenager he was blessed with what he describes as indefatigable self-confidence, and this trait apparently endures, to the considerable irritation of others.

For the full review, see:
ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D. “Books; A Victory Lap for a Heretical Neurologist.” The New York Times (Sat., May 20, 2014): D5.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 19, 2014.)

The book under review is:
Prusiner, Stanley B. Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions–a New Biological Principle of Disease. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.

Open Source Guru Admits to “Mismatched Incentives” and “Serious Trouble Down the Road”

“Eric S. Raymond said that the code-checking system had failed in the case of Heartbleed.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — The Heartbleed bug that made news last week drew attention to one of the least understood elements of the Internet: Much of the invisible backbone of websites from Google to Amazon to the Federal Bureau of Investigation was built by volunteer programmers in what is known as the open-source community.

Heartbleed originated in this community, in which these volunteers, connected over the Internet, work together to build free software, to maintain and improve it and to look for bugs. Ideally, they check one another’s work in a peer review system similar to that found in science, or at least on the nonprofit Wikipedia, where motivated volunteers regularly add new information and fix others’ mistakes.
This process, advocates say, ensures trustworthy computer code.
But since the Heartbleed flaw got through, causing fears — as yet unproved — of widespread damage, members of that world are questioning whether the system is working the way it should.
“This bug was introduced two years ago, and yet nobody took the time to notice it,” said Steven M. Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University. “Everybody’s job is not anybody’s job.”
. . .
(p. B2) Unlike proprietary software, which is built and maintained by only a few employees, open-source code like OpenSSL can be vetted by programmers the world over, advocates say.
“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” is how Eric S. Raymond, one of the elders of the open-source movement, put it in his 1997 book, “The Cathedral & the Bazaar,” a kind of manifesto for open-source philosophy.
In the case of Heartbleed, though, “there weren’t any eyeballs,” Mr. Raymond said in an interview this week.
. . .
The problem, Mr. Raymond and other open-source advocates say, boils down to mismatched incentives. Mr. Raymond said firms don’t maintain OpenSSL code because they don’t profit directly from it, even though it is integrated into their products, and governments don’t feel political pain when the code has problems.
With OpenSSL, by contrast, “for those that do work on this, there’s no financial support, no salaries, no health insurance,” Mr. Raymond said. “They either have to live like monks or work nights and weekends. That is a recipe for serious trouble down the road.”

For the full story, see:
Perlroth, Nicole. “A Contradiction at the Heart of the Web.” The New York Times (Sat., April 19, 2014): B1 & B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated APRIL 18, 2014, and has the title “Heartbleed Highlights a Contradiction in the Web.”)

Raymond’s open source manifesto is:
Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1999.

“The World’s Greatest Inventor, World’s Greatest Damn Fool”

(p. 290) One of his employees recalled walking past him one day as the inventor stepped briskly between buildings at the lab. He cheerfully greeted his employer: “Morning, Mr. Edison.” Edison gave him a glance, raised his finger to show a major pronouncement would follow, and said, “The world’s greatest inventor, world’s greatest damn fool,” then hurried on.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Reigning Intellectual Orthodoxy on Race Is Wrong

Source of book image: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BYpEQumNL._.jpg

(p. C5) The reigning intellectual orthodoxy is that race is a “social construct,” a cultural artifact without biological merit.

The orthodoxy’s equivalent of the Nicene Creed has two scientific tenets. The first, promulgated by geneticist Richard Lewontin in “The Apportionment of Human Diversity” (1972), is that the races are so close to genetically identical that “racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.” The second, popularized by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, is that human evolution in everything but cosmetic differences stopped before humans left Africa, meaning that “human equality is a contingent fact of history,” as he put it in an essay of that title in 1984.
Since the sequencing of the human genome in 2003, what is known by geneticists has increasingly diverged from this orthodoxy, even as social scientists and the mainstream press have steadfastly ignored the new research. Nicholas Wade, for more than 20 years a highly regarded science writer at the New York Times, has written a book that pulls back the curtain.
It is hard to convey how rich this book is. It could be the textbook for a semester’s college course on human evolution, systematically surveying as it does the basics of genetics, evolutionary psychology, Homo sapiens’s diaspora and the recent discoveries about the evolutionary adaptations that have occurred since then. The book is a delight to read–conversational and lucid. And it will trigger an intellectual explosion the likes of which we haven’t seen for a few decades.
The title gives fair warning: “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.” At the heart of the book, stated quietly but with command of the technical literature, is a bombshell. It is now known with a high level of scientific confidence that both tenets of the orthodoxy are wrong.

For the full review, see:
CHARLES MURRAY. “The Diversity of Life; A scientific revolution is under way–upending one of our reigning orthodoxies.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 3, 2014): C5 & C7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 2, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ by Nicholas Wade; A scientific revolution is under way–upending one of our reigning orthodoxies.”)

The book under review is:
Wade, Nicholas. A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014.

They Begged for a Chance to Help Edison Create the Future

(p. 289) He, and anyone working for him, were perceived as standing at the very outer edge of the present, where it abuts the future. When a young John Lawson sought a position at Edison’s lab and wrote in 1879 that he was “willing to do anything, dirty work–become anything, almost a slave, only give me a chance,” he spoke with a fervency familiar to applicants knocking today on the door of the hot tech company du jour. In the age of the computer, different companies at different times–for example, Apple in the early 1980s, Microsoft in the early 1990s, Google in the first decade of the twenty-first century–inherited the temporary aura that once hovered over Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, attracting young talents who applied in impossibly large numbers, all seeking a role in the creation of the zeitgeist (and, like John Ott, at the same time open to a chance to become wealthy). The lucky ones got inside (Lawson got a position and worked on electric light).

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Catholic Church Banned Infinitesimals from European Classrooms Taught by Jesuits

Source of book image: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/science/08SCIB/08SCIB-superJumbo.jpg

(p. C9) Mr. Alexander’s narrative opens in the early 17th century, when Catholic Church administrators in Rome, following a campaign by Euclidean stalwart Christopher Clavius, banned the infinitesimal from the classrooms of Jesuit schools throughout Europe. Instructors’ teachings and writings were monitored to enforce strict adherence to the classical Euclidean geometrical tradition. Mr. Alexander portrays the church’s reactionary stance not as a huff over mathematical philosophy but as a desperate counterattack against existential threats: Euclid’s rules-based structure offered the church a model with which it hoped to rein in a restive flock, roiled by economic and political currents and by an ascendant Protestantism. Martial metaphors abound in the author’s telling: “war against disorder,” “enemies of the infinitely small,” “forces of hierarchy and order.” This was no friendly debate.

For the full review, see:
ALAN HIRSHFELD. “The Limit of Reason; In the 1700s, the idea of an infinitely tiny quantity was so unsettling that the Church banned it from classrooms.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 3, 2014): C9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 2, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Infinitesimal’ by Amir Alexander; The idea of an infinitely tiny quantity–the foundation of calculus–was so unsettling that in the 17th century the Church banned it from classrooms.”)

The book under review is:
Alexander, Amir. Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

We Were Right to Honor Edison

It is said that the long inventor is dead, and some go so far as to say that the lone inventor never was. They downplay Edison’s role in bringing us the light. After all, we now use Tesla and Westinghouse’s AC current, rather than Edison’s DC.
But George Gilder is right when he emphasizes the importance of showing for the first time that something can be done–‘proof of concept’ matters, and clears the path for others to do the same, often in better ways.
In his Pearl Street plant, Edison proved that affordable, reliable, safe electric light was possible. The country was right to honor him before and after his death.

(p. 285) Making New Jersey’s plan to turn off all lights a national one, President Hoover asked the country’s citizens to mark their sorrow at Edison’s death by turning off all electric lights simultaneously across the country on the evening of Edison’s funeral, at ten o’clock eastern time. He had considered shutting down generators to effect a perfectly synchronized tribute but realized that it might lead to deaths; even this thought was put in service of a tribute to Edison, for the country’s life-and-death dependence upon electricity, he said, “is in itself a monument to Mr. Edison’s genius.”

Edison really had been privileged to hear his own eulogy in advance: (p. 286) The one read at the Light’s Golden Jubilee two years before was used again at his service. That night, the two radio networks, the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadcasting Company, jointly broadcast an eight-minute tribute that ended on the hour, when listeners were asked to turn out the lights. The White House did so and much of the nation followed, more or less together, some a minute before the hour, others on the hour. On Broadway, about 75 percent of the electrified signs were turned off briefly. Movie theaters went dark for a moment. Traffic lights blinked out. Everything seemed connected to Edison: the indoor lights, the traffic lights, the electric advertising, everyone connected via radio, which Edison now received credit for helping “to perfect.” In the simple narrative that provided inspiration for posterity, one man had done it all.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Proof-of-Concept: Life Can Be Very Long

“Rare Eucalyptus (species redacted for protection) (13,000 years old; New South Wales, Australia). This critically endangered eucalyptus is around 13,000 years old, and one of fewer than five individuals of its kind left on the planet. The species name might hint too heavily at its location, so it has been redacted.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. C12) Photographer Rachel Sussman has spent the past decade looking for the oldest things alive. . . . She documents 30 of those organisms in her new book, “The Oldest Living Things in the World” (University of Chicago Press, $45).

For the full, brief, review, see:
Alexandra Wolfe. “EXHIBIT; The 2,000-Year-Old Plant.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 26, 2014): C12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 25, 2014, and has the title “EXHIBIT; The 2,000-Year-Old Plant.”)

The book under review is:
Sussman, Rachel. The Oldest Living Things in the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

“Bristlecone Pine (White Mountains, California). Bristlecone pines are the oldest unitary organisms in the world, known to surpass 5,000 years in age. In the 1960s, a then-grad student cut down what would have been the oldest known tree in the world while retrieving a lost coring bit. A cross section of that tree was placed in a Nevada casino.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited above.

Summers’s Unbreakable Washington Power Elite Rule: Insiders Don’t Criticize Other Insiders

(p. 5) A telling anecdote involves a dinner that Ms. Warren had with Lawrence H. Summers, then the director of the National Economic Council and a top economic adviser to President Obama. The dinner took place in the spring of 2009, after the oversight panel had produced its third report, concluding that American taxpayers were at far greater risk to losses in TARP than the Treasury had let on.
After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,” Ms. Warren writes. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”
“I had been warned,” Ms. Warren concluded.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Summers did not respond to a request for comment.

For the full commentary, see:
GRETCHEN MORGENSON. “Fair Game; From Outside or Inside, the Deck Looks Stacked.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., APRIL 27, 2014): 1 & 5.
(Note: italics in original commentary, and in Warren book. I added a missing quotation mark.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date APRIL 26, 2014.)

The Warren passages quoted above are from p. 106 of her book:
Warren, Elizabeth. A Fighting Chance. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014.

Insull the Innovator

(p. 262) Willing to take risks, he picked up for a bargain price a state-of-the-art engine and pair of generators from General Electric that had been on display at the 1893 world’s fair. In only his second year on the job, he arranged to acquire his larger competitor, the Chicago Arc Light and Power Company. Branching farther out, he acquired coal mines and a steam railroad that provided vertical integration. Most innovative of all, he introduced new pricing schemes to encourage high-volume residential use spread over the entire day so that he could optimize the greatest volume of business for the least possible capital investment. With the acquisition of neighboring utilities, he created a six-thousand-square-mile regional network of power.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Rickenbacker Wasn’t the Best Pilot or the Best Shot “but He Could Put More Holes in a Target that Was Shooting Back”

Source of book image: http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9781250033772.jpg

(p. C6) With his unpolished manners, Rickenbacker encountered a good deal of arrogance from the privileged sons of Harvard and Yale, but after he had downed his first five enemies, criticism ceased. About Rickenbacker’s killer instinct his colleague Reed McKinley Chambers had this to say: “Eddie wasn’t the best pilot in the world. He could not put as many holes in a target that was being towed as I could, but he could put more holes in a target that was shooting back at him than I could.”

For the full review, see:
HENRIK BERING. “Daring Done Deliberately.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 31, 2014): C6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 30, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Enduring Courage’ by John F. Ross.”)

The book under review is:
Ross, John F. Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2014.