Failures to communicate

Connor and Sarah just had this conversation. This is all we could reconstruct----wish we had a transcript b/c it was far funnier in real life...

Connor: Mommy, help me figure it out.

Sarah: What do want me to help you figure out?

Connor: Help me figure it out!

Sarah: What are you confused about?

Connor: What you were talking about.

Sarah: I'm a little confused, Connor. What would you like me to help you understand? Can you explain to me what you're confused about?

Connor: You just keep talking and talking and I can't hear what you were saying when you are talking.

Sarah: Connor, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Connor: Tell me what it is.

Sarah: What's "it," Connor?

Connor: You keep saying that! You help me figure it out! I don't know what you mean.

Sarah: I don't know what you mean.

Connor: What you were telling me about it. You keep talking and talking and I lost track and you figure it out.

Freakonomics (Levitt, Steven D., Dubner, Stephen J) 2005

I was a little worried by the explanatory note which included the following clip from the original NYT article: "Unlike most academics, he [Levitt] is unafraid of using personal observations and curiosities; he is also unafraid of anecdote and storytelling (although he is afraid of calculus). He is an intuitionist." Using anecdote and personal observation to motivate an analysis is one thing, but without good numerical evidence to back it up, anecdote is worse than useless because it can lead to the wrong result, rather than no result at all. The above is immediately followed by "He sifts through a pile of data to find a story that no one else has found. He figures a way to measure an effect that veteran economists had declared unmeasurable." That's better, but let's read the rest of the book to find out whether that's actually true.

Danger in the Introduction! The very first story concerns why crime rates in the US fell in the mid-late 90's after many were predicting an ever-increasing surge. After dismissing some of the popular theories (booming 90's economy, gun control, better policing), Levitt offers his own theory: Roe v. Wade prevented the birth of the very type of children (those of poor, unmarried, teenage mothers) who had been the cause of rising crime rates in the 80's. This is a good theory; better than the popular theories referenced in the book, but unfortunately he offers no real data to back it up.

The body of the book itself is much better. Lots of good "stuff", all well supported by data. Ah, and he even goes further into the data supporting the problematic argument in the Introduction. Patience is a virtue.

Upon completion, I have to admit that I don't understand the "freaky" part of freakonomics. What Levitt is doing is looking at a problem and hand-crafting his statistical models to solve the problem, rather than mashing it into an existing solution in the econometric toolbox. This is what any statistician or econometrician worth their spit does (at least among the ones I know) so Levitt's approach would be refreshing and revolutionary... but only if it actually were. That doesn't change the fact that it's still an entertaining read.

Moliere (2007)

Laurent Tirard saw Shakespeare in Love and decided to do the same for the beloved French playwright, only this film might be even more beautifully constructed. It's amazing that they were able to reproduce the exact qualities that made Shakespeare in Love a pleasure to watch without it being simply another insufferable remake.

Definitely worth watching.

Marooned in Realtime (Vinge, Vernor) 1986

Another pleasure of reading books 22 years after they were published: page 162 of the paperback (2003 printing?) states:

He glanced at his mail. [...] The other items were from Yelen: megabytes of analysis on the party.

Oooh, really? Whole *megabytes* of analysis? Vinge is otherwise fairly careful to make his references to technology vague or fantastic/magical enough so that this particular slip jumps out and demands to be kindly giggled at from our terabyte-desktop-hard drive world. The novel is an interesting extrapolation of events from the Peace War, with references to some of our favorite characters (mention of Paul Hoehler/Naismith is notably absent) and a full *three* of them make appearances, and it's the last one that's a little weak, but sadly crucial to Vinge's construction of the novel. Also, while structured as a murder investigation, the novel unfortunately fails as a mystery because there simply aren't enough clues revealed to the reader for us to have anything more than vague guesses as to what's going on. There's nothing more frustrating than important information being hidden from us by the "Wil found what he was looking for, and I'm not gonna say what it was" technique. Overall it's still a good read, with some very well written passages when Vinge is making an effort to write his characters as if they're from a potential earth future, and not from the mid-80's.

The Peace War (Vinge, Vernor) 1984

One of the pleasures of reading books 24 years after they were published is coming across references to "Lucas' Lord of the Rings" films and being thoroughly confused for a second before remembering that the book was written post-Return of the Jedi and pre-Howard the Duck (though Willow might be a fairer insertion here). Speaking of which, why the heck hasn't the Peace War been made into a movie? The book is well-paced with cool gadgets and begs for creative visuals and special effects and has a fair amount of action, and wouldn't really suffer in translation.

At any rate, here's my primary gripe: For reference, page 180 of the December 2003 printing says: '

"Everything seems consistent. There are a lot of things that were barred under you old theory, that are still impossible: It's still impossible to burst a bobble before its time. It's impossible to generate a bobble around an existing one..."

and then

Simply carrying a small bobble was a kind of defense against bobble attack--a very risky defense, once noticed: It would force the attacker to project smaller bobbles, or off-center ones, trying to find a volume that wasn't "banned."

All right, bobbles can't be created around other bobbles. So why wouldn't the Peace Authority simply create a small bobble underground next to their own bobble generator? Boom, now their generator is much more secure against enemy bobbles ("trying to find a volume that wasn't banned" would be too time and energy expensive for any Tinkers trying to embobble the PA generator in the middle of combat) and most of their fretting goes away. This was my first thought as soon as I read that first passage. Isn't this the sort of thought Della Lu would have while scanning the land for firing lanes in her interview with Avery?