Atsiliepimai ir komentarai

An entertaining book on mathematics with, of course, bad drawings (but illuminating ones) that covers several sections of mathematics. Separated into different parts, it can be read at a sitting, but I found that to be an overwhelming read, as it is thick with information that needs time to digest. Digging into its sections at leisure would probably be a better way to digest the entertaining and interesting mathematical information provided in the book.

Part One is on how to think like a mathematician and looks at mathematics from various viewpoints: the teacher, the student, mathematicians and scientists. Each has a different view on mathematics, and probably accounts for why some people learning mathematics have a hard time understanding the relevance of mathematics to their lives until much later.

Part Two looks at geometry and via examples like the design of girders, why the A4 paper has irrational dimensions, the geometric scaling laws and the design of many sided dices, shows how geometry plays a part in our daily lives. He closes with an entertaining example about a fictional Star Wars Imperial Engineer grumbling over the various trade-offs required to design the Death Star to Grand Moff Tarkin's specifications.

Part Three looks at probability and via various examples like the lottery, genetics, telling the odds, the costs of buying (and not buying) certain types of insurance and misunderstanding the odds that an event are independent of other events (the pricing of CDOs [collateralized debt obligations]), show how probabilities can mislead people in thinking that the odds of certain events happening are actually lower or higher than people imagine them to be.

Part Four is related to Part Three but looks at statistics. It starts with a look at the terms used by statistics (like mean, median, etc.) and show how each of them can lead or mislead people into understanding statistical results if you don't know what they show (and don't show). The next part on baseball statistics may bore or interest you and covers the history of the various baseball statistics. Next, the P-value used in scientific statistics is covered and shows how and why it can mislead scientists into believing that an experimental finding is 'statistically significant' when it is not. Going closer to the author's field (teaching), he looks at the measures used to score schools and asks whether such scores are used as a window on a school's performance or as a score to show how good or bad a school is, both of which produce different outcomes for the schools concerned. The final section of statistics looks at the interesting field of determining authorship based on the statistics of words and sentences used by various authors over time.

Part Five is a bit of a mixture with the theme of how small changes can have large effects. He first looks at the misunderstanding over marginal tax rates and tax brackets and how they affect your actual income and tax rates. The issue of voting, voting boundaries and gerrymandering is then looked at, followed by chaos theory and a look at fractal dimensions.

All in all, an interesting book that is best read part by part as and when you feel a need to learn or refresh your memory of some aspects of mathematics covered in the book.

An above average issue with interesting stories by Y.M. Pang, Hanuš Seiner (translated by Julie Novakova), Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Bo Balder.

• "Thanksgiving" by Jeffrey Ford: a Thanksgiving dinner takes a strange turn when the members begin to realize that one of their visiting relatives isn't really known by anybody there at all. Various hypotheses are provided for his presence, but it all comes to a head when he appears at the next Thanksgiving and their probing questions begin to reveal that all is not what it seems.

• "The Lady of Butterflies" by Y.M. Pang: an interesting story about a lady who suddenly appears in the garden of an Emperor with little memory of who she is or how she got there. The viewpoint character is the Emperor's swordperson, who is assign the task of educating the lady. When a violent confrontation occurs after a foreign king appears, more is revealed about the origins of the strange lady and the apparent attraction of butterflies to her. In the end, the swordperson must decide where her loyalties lie: with the Emperor whom she is to protect or with the lady with whom she had developed at attachment to.

• "Extreme" by Sean Mcmullen: a man who likes to push himself to extremes meets an unknown, possibly very rich woman, who offers him an extreme assassination job. But that would only prove to be a test, for the woman wanted to see if he was a fit candidate for a coming change to the world where his skills at surviving in extreme conditions would be needed.

• "The Iconoclasma" by Hanuš Seiner, translated by Julie Novakova: a fascinating tale of a future where a geometric form of life can be summoned into existence. With their help, mankind can leap for the stars. But with the lifeform comes danger in the form of a predator of that lifeform that would now also like to devour humanity. In the end, humanity has to decide whether the ability to travel to the stars is worth the danger.

• "Overwintering Habits of the North American Mermaid" by Abra Staffin-Wiebe: flash fiction about mermaids in winter.

• "Every Color of Invisible" by Robert Reed: set in a future with other Reed stories where a young Native American boy is getting an education while remaining 'hidden' from the rest of the world. In this one, the repercussions of the rescue of a rich man's children in another story would be revealed when the boy learns that his hiding days may be over.

• "This Constant Narrowing" by Geoff Ryman: an uncomfortable tale of a time when women have vanished, leaving behind men, some of who unleash sexual-tinged violence on the remaining men. In this tale, the protagonist is injured by a sexual predator as a 'trophy'. As he recovers and tries to avoid the predator's attention, he reflects on his life without women, with other men, and with a world where other groups of people are gradually vanishing unpredictably. One odd thing about the story is how the rest of the world seems to go on much as it is, despite huge numbers of people vanishing without a trace.

• "Other People's Dreams" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: an interesting tale about an artist and apprentice whose job is to weave together dreams made up of threads and 'living dream energy' for their customers. Then an unusual job with a high payoff arrives involving a person from the artist's past arrives, and we get a deeper look into the world of dreams and what it is capable of doing to the living. A nice tale with a background that bears revisiting with more stories in the future.

• "The Baron and His Floating Daughter" by Nick Dichario: the usual fairy tale setting where a Prince sets out to woo the daughter of a Baron. The daughter really floats, and the Prince has made it his goal to find a cure for her condition. But when time runs out, the tale takes a twist and subsequent events show that this story's happily ever after may not involve the Prince at all, or a cure for the daughter.

• "When We Flew Together Through the Ice" by J.R. Dawson: a gritty story of a mother who escapes into space with her daughters for a life among the stars. But this life may not all be sweet as the daughters rebel in their own ways, when fitted out with an AI control who whispers commands to her consciousness. As time goes on and their lives change, it becomes harder to tell which actions are by the daughters and which by her controller, leading to a final action that will change their lives.

• "The Island And Its Boy" by Bo Balder: a fascinating tale about a village that lives on an island that can actually move, react and communicate with its inhabitants. The island circles the world near the arctic north, giving the people an Inuit like culture. But change comes when a 'baby' island is spotted, signalling that the current island has grown too big and will move south with the currents, and the people make plans to move to the new island. But one boy, in this culture where women are dominant, has other plans as he has grown used to the big island and wants to stay there as it goes south. The story looks at his secret plans to stay put along with other followers while his ruling mother plans the move to the baby island. Secrets, traps and counter plans pile up until the moving day arrives.

A not very interesting issue of Interzone, mainly because the stories appear to be on the theme of conflicts (mainly military related) and not of much interest to me. Natalia Theodoridou's story about unusual genetically engineered soldiers is probably the most interesting.

• "Soldier's Things" by Tim Lees: a soldier returns home, injured from a war, to discover that many things have changed: from the way people treat him to his own memories of life and the war.

• "Doomed Youth" by Fiona Moore: a story that mixes together a student's attempt to learn when and where giant ants started appearing with suspicions about 'foreigners' in an alternate world where conflict is more widespread and a terror attack is about to happen.

• "The Path to War" by Louise Hughes: a storyteller wanders through the land, telling stories about peaceful times for food and shelter, as the surrounding country prepares for conflict. But when he is caught by an enemy scout and interrogated for information on a camp he had just left, it would be his storytelling and other abilities that might save him.

• "Heart of an Awl" by Eliza Ruslander: a strange story about the AI of a car that has been transplanted into the body of a deceased man and is now living with the widow. Lots of meandering passages as they travel around together.

• "Zero Day" by Sheldon J. Pacotti: a hacker for the military is on his off day when he meets what he thinks is the girl of his dreams. But his actions to find her and show off to her gets interrupted when various zero-day vulnerabilities are used on that day.

• "Birnam Platoon" by Natalia Theodoridou: a story about the aftermath of a military trial of a doctor who was part of an attempt to use unusual genetically engineered soldiers in conflicts; soldiers that finally decided that peace was better than war at the wrong time.

An interesting introduction to climate change: what it is, why is it happening, what are its effects and what could we do about it. Worth a read to get an overview of the science, politics and economics of climate change.

Chapter 1 looks at the history of climate change: the greenhouse effect, how we know how the climate was in the past and what are the current sources of greenhouse gases.

Chapter 2 looks at the debate around the science of climate change: the history of research into climate change, the mistakes made at the early stage of the science that lead to the conclusion that we were entering a cooling climate stage, the role of the media in reporting climate change and the growing sense that we were causing the current changes in climate.

Chapter 3 looks at the evidence for climate change: from temperature, precipitation and sea level readings and the challenges in making different ways in making the readings compatible. Methods used to measure have changed over the decades, so the data must be adjusted, otherwise the recording methods would bias the conclusions made from the data.

Chapter 4 looks at how the global climate is modelled and how the modelling has grown in sophistication and how scientists use the models to simulate the climate (past, present and future) to come to a confident conclusion that global warming is happening.

Chapter 5 looks at the impact climate change will have, from changes in weather patterns, sea level rise to the effect of more frequent and violent storms, floods and heatwaves. The effects on human health, food and biodiversity are outlined.

Chapter 6 looks at what possible surprises might be in store with global warming, depending on how the global climate reacts (slowly or suddenly) to global warming. Melting ice sheets, changes in ocean circulation patterns and the release of cold methane are some of the consequences.

Chapter 7 looks at the politics around climate change, with a history of the various attempts at coming to agreements about cutting out (or down) on carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon trading and REDD (Reduced Emissions and Deforestation and Forest Degradation) are also covered.

Chapter 8 looks at possible solutions to global warming, from adaptation and mitigation to alternative sources of clean energy. Geoengineering is also mentioned.

Chapter 9 looks to the future of the earth and which 'red lines' have been crossed or could be (like loss of biodiversity), what actions can still be taken and what solutions are possible.

The fifth book in the Secret Coders, series, this one continues their battle against the evil Professor One-Zero who plans to use the controlling potion he's manufactured to control the town, and it's up to the coders to stop him with the help of some programming.

The book makes a digression into the history of Professor Bee, showing where he came from and how his arrival here lead to the creation of his school, via interactions with some famous computer scientists that originally created the Logo programming language.

The book ends with instructions from Professor Bee to return to his home and obtain an item that may be the only way to ultimately stop Professor One-Zero.

As with the rest of the books in the series, the reader is asked to accomplish simple coding tasks before proceeding, and is then shown what the pieces of code do. Drawing with multiple loops as well as a command to draw circles (up to now, coding could only be done with straight lines) are introduced.

The next book in the series is the concluding one and promises to be an interesting showdown.

An average issue, with interesting stories by Stephen Case, Thomas Ha and M. J. Pettit.

• "Every Seed Is a Prayer (And Your World Is a Seed)" by Stephen Case: in the future, an AI is assigned the task of greening the world by using algorithms to replant the trees and to monitor them using drones. But as time passes, the AI begins to make choices and introduce technology that its makers and users barely understand, or what its final objective would be.

• "Window Boy" by Thomas Ha: in the future most people live in sheltered houses, safe from the horrors of the outside world, except for some. The child of a family in such a home somehow becomes friends with one such outside person, who comes to his window. But the view of the outside is 'filtered' and it needs, some willpower for the child to reduce the filters to reveal just what is actually now found outside.

• "Light Speed Is Not a Speed" by Andy Dudak: a meandering story about the life of a storyteller in a world undergoing revolutions.

• "Who Can Have the Moon" by Congyun 'Muming' Gu, translated by Tian Huang: the story of a girl who grows up loving art but is forced by circumstance to work on more mundane artwork. But the future would appear brighter when she starts to gain an appreciate audience for her work.

• "Empathetic Ear" by M. J. Pettit: an overworked academic reluctantly takes part in a study where an earpiece gives her 'advice' to improve her empathy with students. But it becomes too much when it starts to take over her thinking, leading her to wonder which are her thoughts and which are those being fed to her.

• "Gel Pen Notes from Generation Ship Y" by Marisca Pichette: a spaceship is on a long journey to a new world, with only one generation of apparently immortal colonist. But death still happens, by accident or otherwise, and life appears deary to the people waiting for the journey to end. But an unexpected event would give new hope to the colonists.

• "Resistant" by Koji A. Dae: It's a future where nanobots connect the brain of people to the network. But some people are unable to take part due to rejection. One such person goes to a clinic that may offer hope of another kind of implant that may not be approved by other people.

An average issue with interesting stories by Gregor Hartmann, Matthew Hughes, R.S. Benedict and with an especially interesting story about a musical faun by Jerome Stueart.

• "The Unbearable Lightness of Bullets" by Gregor Hartmann: a detective enlists the help of a patrol officer to solve the mystery of the murder of a currency trader that appears to have been too successful.

• "The Plot Against Fantucco’s Armor" by Matthew Hughes: what starts out for the servant as an innocent task to get the design for trouser buckles for his magical master turns into a detective story as the servant finds himself caught up in a conspiracy over who would eventually replace the ruler of a city and is tasked with getting to the bottom of the plot. But as it turns out, the actual target of the plot may not be the ruler after all.

• "At Your Dream’s Edge" by S. Qiouyi Lu: a story about a Nightmare app that does what it says: summons a nightmare to scare you. The user of the app in this story uses it to prepare for an unpleasant meeting with relatives, but in the end, you wonder whether the meeting is really worse than the nightmares faced.

• " All of Me" by R.S. Benedict: an unusual and interesting story that plays with the idea of the mermaid that becomes human. Only this is an unusual 'mermaid' who undergoes radical surgery to appear like a Hollywood starlet and proceeds to use her unusual skills to do more than one thing at a time (actress, writer, 'nature lover', paparazi target, etc.). But when she tires of being human, she plans to go out with a bang.

• "Miscellaneous Notes from the Time an Alien Came to Band Camp Disguised As My Alto Sax" by Tina Connolly: that is what happens in the story. Wrapped around the story of an alien disguised as a sax is a woman who longs to be appreciated by another member of the band, which might lead to another version of sax.

• "The Mark of Cain" by John Kessel: a disjointed story that Kessel originally wrote years ago but put aside that he now picks up that looks at the life of a writer who may have done some bad things in the past. In between are analysis of the character's action.

• "Playscape" by Diana Peterfreund: a story tinged with horror about a mother with a child who knows a neighbour. When the neighbour's child just disappears while playing on a playscape at a park, opinions ranging from murder to child neglect are thrown at the neighbour. But as the mother lets her child play on the very same playscape, you start to wonder if there might be some truth to the neighbour's version of events.

• "The Free Orcs of Cascadia" by Margaret Killjoy: a strange story about a journalist who looks into unusual musical subcultures. In this case, the musical subculture is 'orc music' which somehow develops into an actual orc culture. The journalist gets the chance to interview an orc musician who created an uproar when he kills another orc musician on stage and goes into hiding. The interview would reveal just what kind of orc culture has developed. Think of it as a LARP (live action role playing) game, but played with real seriousness.

• "Dear Sir or Madam" by Paul Park: a letter written to the reader by the protagonist who can fabricate realities. But the story wasn't gripping enough for me to really understand the purpose of the story.

• "Postlude to the Afternoon of a Faun" by Jerome Stueart: a fascinating fantasy story about a faun who loses his clarinet to a religiously righteous person. Many years later, the clarinet returns to him via a student who wants to learn to play it. He yearns to be reunited with the magic of his clarinet, but also to be able to teach the student to play jazz with it. It is only with the help of his fairy friends and some improvised jazz music that he may finally achieve his objectives.

• "Bella and the Blessed Stone" by Nick Dichario: a story of strange coincidences involving a stone from the sky (a meteorite) that saves an abused child from being killed by her father. As the story of the miracle spreads, it would take another strange coincidence to end the story.

• "Contagion’s Eve at the House Noctambulous" by Rich Larson: a story of a future involving a group of families with advanced biological technology that are living in a world after a contagion has wiped most of the rest of humanity. But even in this future, sibling rivalry rears it head, and it would come to a climax on a day when the families 'celebrate' their freedom from the rest of humanity.

An interesting comic that looks at the history of music, and the rise of copyright and licensing. Starting with the beginnings of music notation, the comic proceeds to show how early on, composers and musicians freely borrowed from each other to create new compositions. But even then, some spoke out about the dangers of creating 'new music' and attempted to 'freeze' how music should be performed.

The invention of the printing press and the formalization of music notation would change matters by creating a market for composers to release compositions. But it would also raise the question of what constitutes original work: it is around now that the law steps in, giving authors and composers a legal right over their compositions. But with the history of composers borrowing and altering previous music to create new ones, questions over how much 'copying' of music began to arise.

The technology to record and replay music would change the landscape, for now people have the ability to record new ways of creating music from the same composition. Thus arose the idea of copyright over a particular recording. As music became more popular and commercialized, copyright would become a contentious topic, for while it allowed composers and musicians to make a living from creating and playing music, it also allowed the rights holder to restrict how the music or composition could be used.

The creation of radio would introduce new possibilities and problems. For now, a recording that previously would only be heard by a person who bought the record, could now be broadcast to a vast audience, and the idea of licensing music to be heard was introduced. This would complicate copyright matters, for now the question became whether you needed to license snippets of music. Numerous lawsuits would rise over the question of music sampling. And that is where matters now stand.

Interleaved among the numerous questions raised over the copyright of compositions and licensing of music is the history and connections between the various forms of music, from jazz, soul, rock and roll to rap, as well as historically important musicians who developed the various art forms.

A better than average issue with three good stories by Val Nolan, Maria Haskins and Nicholas Kaufmann and an emotional tale by Shauna O'Meara.

• "Cyberstar" by Val Nolan: an interesting story that starts with the narrator's eyes being gouged out (ewwww), followed by the events that lead up to it and the events following it. He's now part of a cultish group on an asteroid, whose leader plans to immortalize himself and his followers by becoming a part of 'god'. But things don't turn out as planned when the narrator turns out to have altered the immortalization scheme.

• "And You Shall Sing to Me a Deeper Song" by Maria Haskins: a fascinating story about a singer who, when fitted with augmentations, gets the ability to 'hear' and to 'alter' the behaviour of robots, usually destroying them. The story is set in the aftermath of a war against the robots where the singer has escaped from a detention centre and ended up in a farming community hoping to live their lives away from the central military authority. But when soldiers attack and capture children from the camp, the singer sets out to rescue them, revealing the ability that let her escape in the first place and showing how powerful her singing can be.

• "Coriander for the Hidden" by Nicholas Kaufmann: a nice retelling of some of the events from the Old Testament, from the viewpoint of an angel who looks after the flowers in the Garden of Eden. When this angel gets assigned the task to kill the firstborn of Egypt as described in the Book of Exodus, the angel is initially reluctant to kill innocent children. But then the angel gets an idea on how to save the children while fulfilling his duty to the On-High. It is left as an exercise to the reader to ponder whether the result was the On-High's plan for him, or whether he actually modified the plan.

• "Everything Rising, Everything Starting Again" by Sarah Brooks: a meandering story set in a time when people are mysteriously transforming into butterflies. People try to go about their lives normally, hoping not to see the signs that their loved ones or themselves are about to change form.

• "'Scapes Made Diamond" by Shauna O'Meara: an emotional story about two people called back to comfort an alien creature who is dying. The alien has the ability to share thoughts, making it valuable to the company that keeps it locked up. But its ability is harvested brutally by the company. As the dying creature replays their past history, including the instances of forbidden love between them, it gradually reveals the reason why it called them back and what they have to sacrifice to help it protect the future of its species.