Book Reviews

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" rowspan="2" width=210 BGCOLOR="#99CC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0408dfc3.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Me"><U>About Me</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Family"><U>My Family</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Pets"><U>My Pets</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Favorites"><U>My Favorites</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Hobbies"><U>My Hobbies</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Resume"><U>My Resume</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Favorite Links"><U>Favorite Links</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Me"><U>Contact Me</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Autos"><U>Autos</U></A></div> <div> <B>Book Reviews</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id27.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bibliography"><U>Bibliography</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mixed Emotions"><U>Mixed Emotions</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hometown"><U>Hometown</U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=82 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0418dfe1esnpes.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Bob Hamilton</B></FONT><B>     </B><B>|</B><B>     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bob Hamilton"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> back to  <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bob Hamilton"><U><B>Bob Hamilton</B></U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=398 colspan=2 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0418dfc3.jpg"> <div> "Our Final Hour"   <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >by Martin Rees.  This was too good to pass up; you better skim-read it 'cause the world ends 60 minutes from now - not really - but this is an interesting book; when I finish it I'll tell you how it turns out.  Hope for the best and look for the worst, I guess.</FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" >"<I>Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone</I>?"</FONT> by <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF00" FACE="Arial" >Mark Zwonitzer</FONT> <I>et al </I>. This book will be of interest only to those who know what the radio call letters, XERA really stand for; what Bristol, Tennessee was, what the original Title of 'Faded Love' was And who Johnny Cash wanted to marry and who he finally did marry; others can skip it. It is the story of the Canonical Family of American music, the Carter family; no, it's not about the 'miz lillian, billy, peanut-engineer-nuclear-farmer' Carters; it's about the Carter family. Those who describe them as dysfunctional are probably off by half, give or take, but, 'dys-' or 'no-dys' they brought a 'strangeness' to American music that culminated in the fifties with a lad from Tupelo who, like the Carters, took inspiration from the gospel/bluegrass traditions of the South. Their rendition of '<I>Will the Circle be Unbroken...?</I>' probably had far deeper meaning for the Carters than the song's original gospel writer could ever have intended. One record dealer inquired about the 'family' - consisting obviously of two beautiful younger women and an 'older man' - <I>'Is it man and wife and daughter or is one of the girls a sister or what?'</I> The Carters let it slide and, perhaps, so should we as did Tom T. Hall, an in-law, when asked about the relationships - "Note the plural," he is said to have replied. When Sara sang her theme, <I>I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue-eyes</I> those eyes were neither hers nor his but those of her husband's cousin, Coy Bays, and Sara married Coy 'on the radio' - KDRT and it is rumored that the ceremony, which included her theme was cut (the vernacular for recorded , 'cause that's just what the recording needle did) and both Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash have claimed to have heard the recording. I've often wondered what that plastic disc would be worth if it ever surfaced - so-to-speak.</div> <bR> <div> The family thing aside, Maybelle - the guitar in the trio, let's call it - was a work of art in her own right; she and her oldest daughter, Anita, both from time-to-time dated Hank Williams, Sr. and Johnny Cash is still married to Maybelle's daughter, June, who still goes by the name <I><U>June Carter</U></I>. He has told the story of being terrified by Maybelle's driving on the way to their wedding in her V-12 Lincoln Zypher convertible; he and his bride hitched a ride back to town after the ceremony. The authors don't expend a lot of effort or waste much ink on the family entanglements and, in this vein, the less, the better to my way of thinking. </div> <bR> <div>  I'll close with a final note or two: if you're ever in Bagdad on the Long Muddy or the Big Easy and hear a band play <I>Keepin' on the Sunny Side</I> or <I>Just a Closer Walk with Thee</I> you'll be listening to a tradition passed down from The Carter Family and I'll close these notes as they closed their broadcasts: <I>Thanks for lis'nin'.</I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"The Light Crust Doughboys Are On the Air..."</I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Arial" ><I> </I></FONT><I>by </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF00" FACE="Arial" ><I>John Mark Dempsey</I></FONT><I>; This is a torrent of names, dates, places, people and incidents comprising the 70 odd year existence of the Doughboys Band. The list of musicians, artists and bands spawned by the Doughboys is incredible; Bob Wills and Patsy Cline are two of my favorites of the dozens mentioned. You will also be surprised at the people associated with them that you will recognize: Dallas streets named after some and Walter Kronkite was once a part time announcer for the radio shows. The group started as a band to advertise flour by the Burrus Mill; this mill was managed and partly owned by "Pappy" Lee O'Daniel - a character in his own right, who became Governor no doubt through the popularity of the DoughBoys. Bob Wills was among the first members; the earliest years are buried in a deep mist of time and fading memories of those who experienced the beginnings. Also, part of the history is clouded by the passing of many of the originals; a poignant appendix lists many of the original members, their where-abouts or deaths. The author has taken great pains to document sources of information and to cross-check differing recollections. For example, there are three views of the source of the falling-out of Pappy and Bob Wills: Pappy's, Bob's and everyong else's. Oh, well, 'Boys will be 'Boys, I guess. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I> The list of songs the Light Crust DoughBoys made famous is almost as long as the number of places they've played; many of their hits were later redone by more than one successive generation of entertainer. Also, muddying the picture are the many incarnations of the DoughBoys. One of these is my favorite: Hank Thompson - whose band, the 'Brazos Valley Boys' was popular when I was in high-school; Hank, for several years in the early 1950s was leader of the band that made recordings to be played later on the Light Crust DoughBoys radio broadcasts. During this same time a 'touring' version of the band was playing for grocery store audiences throughout the Southwest promoting the Lighcrust flour mill. Must have kept everybody confused; actually no one noticed. . . .   </I></div> <bR> <div> <I> I've never seen a book of this genre so intricately researched; the author mentions in several places the 'Radio Log' from 30's and 40's by date and time of day. He does however fall frequently into one faux pas: He quotes conversations between two persons, neither of whom are alive nor for which conversations, there are any witnesses. The shenanigans involving O'Daniel presage those committed during his terms as Governor and as a U.S. Senator. On 12 April 1938 Pappy set out on the campaign trail and moved demogoguery to a new plateau; his platform: The Ten Commandments, "pure and simple" he is quoted to have said. There can be no doubt that his election victory in the Democrat primary that summer - which in those Republican-less times was tantamount to election - was gained from his radio shows and Light Crust Doughboys gigs throughout the state during the 30s. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>In the last few decades the band has branched out into other venues; they've played with Ochrestras, Ballet, College Bands -- at SMU and TCU, both -- and also continue to produce musicians. One of my favorite is Delbert McClinton who just cannot make a bad record.  The author relates a time when the band met a group from Liverpool, England who were playing in the basement of a local tavern. They were fascinated by Delbert's recordings but he had left his Jew's Harp in a taxi; a producer had a new harp flown over from the US. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>I'll leave you with the first verse of their theme:</I></div> <bR> <div>                                                            </div> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="786" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 30 WIDTH="236"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="30" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="236" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <B>Now listen everybody from near and far,</B></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 30 WIDTH="236"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="30" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="236" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="539"><div> <B>If you want to know who we are </B></div> </tD> </tR> <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 30 WIDTH="236"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="30" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="236" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <B>We're the Light Crust Doughboys, </B></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 30 WIDTH="236"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="30" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="236" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="539"><div> <B>From BURRUS MILL. . . </B></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <div> <I>  It just doesn't get any better than that; Hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.  </I></div> <bR> <div> <I> </I></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#008080" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Rare Earth "</I></FONT><I> by </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF00" FACE="Arial" ><I>Ward & Brownlee</I></FONT><I>; This is a good discussion and examination of the probabilities that 'Life' is very rare in the Universe; I have always been skeptical of SETI and some of its proponents who have conjured up an equation to calculate that the number of planets in the galaxy with life is enormous. I see no harm in SETI nor with such outlandish conjectures, but would have some reservations about replying to any messages we receive. With the trouble Homo sapiens has in communicating among themselves, it seems unlikely that dealing with entirely alien beings would be more fruitful. In fact,we have been sending signals to other creatures since the late 1930s when higher frequency radio emanations --radar, FM et al. -- could escape through the earth's upper atmosphere and the rotating earth became the center of a growing, 'glowing' bubble of such radiation. The radius of this bubble is presently -- 2002-- about ***$$** error *$$*****light-years in radius which is growing at 300,000,000 meters per second - literally the speed of light; the last time I made the calculation the outer edge of this bubble was passing through a dozen or more star systems each year. Uncle Milty, Lucy and 3-D Danny are permeating an unsuspecting galaxy at the speed of light - definitely an unsettling thought. On the other hand, what kind of creature could comprehend such nonsense even if they should manage to decode it? </I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#008000" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Dot.Con; The greatest story ever Sold"</I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Arial" ><I> </I></FONT><I>by </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF00" FACE="Arial" ><I>John Cassidy;</I></FONT><I> </I>This is a detailed, con-by-con account of the e-bubble; all the scum-bags, faux heroes, criminals, victims, believers & sceptics are treated with a Tom Wolfe-ish disdain: The author likens the e-mania of the 90s to the end of a wedding party; the band leader thinks his music is the reason people are jumping up and down, yelling and waving their arms when actually it's because the free bar has been open all afternoon and evening. Some of the most incredible features of the era are noted and commented on; who would believe that a company consisting of a few dozens employees selling airline tickets over the internet would have a capitalization -- = shares*$/share -- greater than the combined, analogous capitalizations of American + Delta + United airlines which employ thousands, own and maintain hundreds of airplanes and build and operate enormous information networks . The thought boggles the senses.</div> <div> The criminality of 'Slick Willie' Gates is described by Cassidy far better than the Federal Grand Jury's indictment for, and a judge's conviction on, his violations of the Sherman anti-trust Act. The arrogance of M$ was quite beyond description, but Cassidy gives it a good go. He points out a fact about 'Sherman' not generally recognized; any person in the least harmed by Gates can collect in court; proof is not necessary any longer. Several huge pension funds which were clobbered by Gates' tactics are gathering and planning the largest lawsuit ever -- estimated to be in the 5-10 trillion $ range.</div> <div> Cassidy spends a lot of ink on the tactics used in IPOs, Initial Public Offerings, which 'offerings' technically are neither offers to sell nor solicitations of offers to buy, the fancy printed paper called stocks. As Mackay -- see below -- points out the term 'stocks' to describe the paper was an apt description also of the place to put the scoundrels perpetrating the fraud. The crowd or herd psychology that gathers steam and fosters acts of extreme irrationality is fomented by the thought among participants, every body's doing it; I better get mine while I can. The herd instinct was never more on display than when some college or even highschool sophomore comes to a bank with a spreadsheet and a 'business plan' which plan generally boils down to: 'Do cool and neat stuff', and sells that bank a million or so shares at $20+ per. </div> <div> One startling, tragic adjunct of the e-thing was -- is, maybe -- Day Trading; his story about one loser in Atlanta shooting up the Day trading offices and beating his wife and children to death - a dozen dead all-told - was repeated to some extent several times when the e-bubble impoverished many participants in the Day Trading scam. Cassidy's book went to press before the e-NRON scandal broke, more's the pity, and with luck he will treat the coming debacles throughout the next year or so as many ENRON-type scams blossom and crater.</div> <bR> <div> <I>"</I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Arial" ><I>Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds</I></FONT><I>" Mackay; As the dot-con thing was drifting into dot-done territory, I dug out one copy and dusted it off and when E-NRON and WorldCOM blossomed I recently re-read EPD... for the umpteenth time. In a preface to his account of the Mississippi Scheme , Mackay quotes Defoe: </I></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Some in Clandestine companies combine; </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>Erect new Stocks to trade beyond the line;</B></I></div> <div> <I><B>With air and empty names beguile the town,</B></I></div> <div> <I><B>And raise new Credits first, Then cry 'em down;</B></I></div> <div> <I><B>Divide the empty nothing into shares,</B></I></div> <div> <I><B>And set the Crowd together by th' arse. </B></I></div> <bR> <div> <I>I'm not sure what the phrases mean but even if we have to lip-sync "beyond the line" and "cry 'em down" a more apt description of the dot-com thing would be hard to come by. More modern editions of Mackay's book have changed the last line to read ...together by th' ears but my 1856 edition of Mackay very definitely has: "...by th' arse." (I wonder if shares did rhyme with arse in those days or was there some 'poetic license' there.) </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>With the enron/worldcom things making headlines it's not difficult to see some of the similarities with the scams that Mackay describes. The Mississippi Scheme, as it became known, was a concoction of John Law who, when he had exhausted both his inheritance and his welcome in his native England, fled to the continent and settled in France which country was barely surviving the reign of Louis the XIV.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I> As the incredible extravagance of the despised monarch was coming to bear on the tax-payer, Law introduced the country to a scheme to print paper backed by the Gold and Silver laying about the surface of the vast region beyond the Mississippi River - an area later to be known as the Louisianna Purchase. The scam is simple: money from today's idiots will be partly used to pay off some of yesterday's and the balance used to re-supply the public treasury. Its popularity forced Law to remove to the out-back of France to avoid the crowds clammering for some more of the paper; you've got to buy today because tomorrow it will be beyond reach; and so it went. I won't bother with the results; you can pick up the story on the business pages of most any newspaper today. Barnum had it partly right; but, methinks there isn't a fresh supply of idiots every minute - just re-incarnations of old ones. It is, it seems to me, human nature to hastily commit the most heinous crimes, fall head-over-heels for the biggest scams and tolerate the most ridiculous public shenanigans as an unruly mob, but come slowly, if ever, to our senses one person at a time. </I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Technology Lost; Hype and Reality in the Digital Age" </I></FONT><I> </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF00" FACE="Arial" ><I>Ron Schneiderman;  </I></FONT>This book came to hand just as the Dot-Con thing was going to dot fizzle.  It is a chronology of the harangues, hysteria, hype and lies of the past few years in the e-thing; Ron rounds up the usual suspects: Banks, VCs, bureaucrats, Legislatures and other bottom feeders are included in his indictment of one 'New, New Thing' after another.  In asides - Labeled <B>'TRUE STORY'</B>  as the author's way of saying: 'I'm not making this up' - he gleefully describes many of the more ludicrous sideshows in the venue.  There's plenty of blame to go around and the author takes some broad-brush swipes at many.  Some are hilarious; Wicker TV sets - no lie - HDTV, DSL, voice recognition to name a few.  DSL is one of my favorites; birthed at Bell Labs at the high point of the Copper phone cable era, it was not compatible with Fiber Optic cable which by the time DSL got to market, was being plowed into dirt at thousands on cable-miles per year.  Dear old SBC is still spending millions hyping the DSL thing knowing that anyone living on my street or part of town could never get the service.  I sometimes think the rest of the world doesn't hate us; they feel sorry for us and want to put us out of our - and their - misery.  I also wonder which of today's 'cannot miss' new, new stuff will fill a future edition of 'Technology Lost...'; Stay Tuned...</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I>"</I><I>Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle . . . </I><I>"</I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I> </I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF00" FACE="Arial" ><I>David Ewing Duncan</I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I>; An interesting look at the Calendar and some of its history. I've been interested in calendars ever since a High School Latin teacher, as punishment for an earlier transgression involving dates, assigned me to translate and describe the definition of the Calendar we know as the Gregorian Calendar. This calendar was established by a Papal bull in February 1582 which bull dictated that the 4th of October 1582 -- a Thursday -- would be followed by Friday, 15th October. Skipping 10 days would realign religious feasts and sacrifices with the Seasons of the year, which alignment had been decreed at the founding of christianity 1250± years earlier at Nicea, Turkey. The description of the Gregorian calendar is contained in 'Inter Gravissimas...' as by tradition, bullae are referred to by their first two words, and 'Among the weighty matters...' certainly describes the work that the council of TRENT had left to be</I></FONT><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I>done. In it Gregory XIII - he has never been sainted, a pity beyond belief - defined the length of the year as 365.2425 days, or - if you do the arithmetic -146097 days each 400 year period which period is the complete cycle of the Gregorian calendar. In the current epoch, this compares with the actual length of year of 365.242199 days --plus/minus a few milliseconds-- a difference of only 8 or so hours each 1000 years! My New Year's libations always include a toast to Ugo Buoncompagni in lieu of his Birthday -- which date in the Old Style, Julian calendar was 07 Jan 1502 and would have been 19 Jan 1502 in the Gregorian calendar if it had been in use. And, what was a great disappointment to me, both the 480th anniversary of Msgr. Ugo's birth and the 400th of the Papal bull, Inter Gravissimas... passed without note in 1982. But, my admiration for the man must always be tempered by the fact that it was he who established the infamous 'Index' of banned books which index still lists, incredibly, Copernicus's De revolutionibus . </I></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <I>Several things about that Papal bull have always intrigued me: First, note that the 10 days dropped between 04 October and 15 October did not interrupt the weekly seven day cycle. Thursday the 4th was followed by Friday the 15th; not even the bishop of Rome, with the temerity to expunge forever ten whole days from a year, would drop a day from a week. Also, the pontiff - an accountant/lawyer in real life -was earthly enough to recognize one hitch in his reform -- and, as evidence that GMAC did not invent time payments, he ordained in section viii of Inter Gravissimas ...</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>But so that this ten days removal does not cause any injury [to] whomever must carry out monthly or annual</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>payments, it will fall to the judges, in any litigation which could result from it, to take account of the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>aforementioned removal by deferring ten days the expiration of any [such] payment. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>and so gave an 'out' to those so plagued. Further, it appears that Ugo was not concerned about any imminent 'Second Coming' as he specified that the 400 year cycle of his calendar should</I></div> <div> <I>...be repeated in perpetuity</I></div> <div> <I>That is, forever! This has been a source of concern by nit-pickers and was actually used as an excuse to ignore the new calendar by the bible thumpers of the day. Oh, well. One other note: in spite of his obvious intelligence, Ugo still referred to the sun's motion around the earth; and it would be another 300 years before the Roman Church quit denying the obvious in this regard; even to this, the ***$$** error *$$***** day of the Gregorian calendar, Galileo has not been exonerated. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>Duncan's book is my favorite when people ask me about calendars and date keeping schemes. It includes much of the detail background of why we need and keep calendars around; his emphasis is on religion in this regard and he doesn't expend a lot ink and paper on the commercial, agricultural and other uses of calendars. He does present a good account of the problem with calendars with respect to the 'seasons' of the year. The Romans used what we call a Julian calendar; it assumed that the earth makes 365.25 revolutions about its axis in one circuit of the sun. Problem is, ol' Mother Earth does not rotate quite that rapidly; in the current epoch the earth makes 365.242199 (± a few micro-seconds of arc) revolutions about its axis in one circuit round our star. If the rotational speed were exactly 365.25 revolutions per year then we could add one day every 4 years -- 0.25 times four is 1 -- and the calendar would stay synchronized with the seasons. That is, the vernal equinox would occur within 3 days of March 21 and religous festivals and such would stay synchronized with the seasons. In christianity, the year 'revolves' around a spring ceremony - Easter - and Duncan explains how this discrepancy between the Julian calendar's assumed rate of rotation and the actual rate had drifted the 21st of March ahead of the vernal equinox. This drift is, per year, simply 365.25 minus 365.242199 which amounts to 0.007801 days per year which is equivalent to one day every 128.18869 years. By 1580 CE this had amounted to roughly 10 days over the period of time since the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and these are the ten days elided from the Calendar by Inter Gravisimass ... </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>Two aspects of the Gregorian calendar are glossed over by Duncan and I wish he had spent more time with them. Gregory's calendar changed the beginning of the year to January 1st from the Roman practice of starting the next year number at March 21st so that 1583 started 2 months and 20 days early. The other is the beginning of the day; Many cultures in antiquity -- and some today -- consider quite rationally that if sun-down is the end of the 'day' then it must be the start of the next 'day'. Others, with equal logic, said the day begins at sun up. Some, particulary the Roman world, have used noon. This was changed to mid-night by assumption to agree with practice in the Christian world. I know of no publications that deal with this aspect of day numbering in detail or of the historical aspect of such a practice. </I></div> <div> <I>Month numbering in place of Month names is also ignored by Duncan; we now number the months from January - Nbr 1 - to December which is incongruously Nbr 12, and not nbr 10 as its Latin numeric root implies. Oh, well. </I></div> <div> <I>Changing the beginning of the year raises some interesting issues. The predesessor - the Julian calendar - incremented the year number on March 25 - its New Year, which practice was followed in the 'Protestant' world including England and its 'new' world colonies. For example, 1582 started on March 25, 1582 but ended only 292 days later on December 31, 1582. The following day, January 1, 1583 started a new year - 1583. I have often wondered about this short year. Let's say some one leased a home on March 25, 1580 for a period of 4 years; He would expect to have the house for 4*365.25 or 1461 days. In acutality, he would miss the 73 days from January 1, 1583 to March 24, 1583. I wonder how such situations were handled; as we said earlier the wise old Pope, née Lawyer/Accountant, specifically ordered that the ten days elided in October of 1582 be taken into account for payments due on one of those ten dates. Would the dude with the 4 year lease get his 1461 days occupancy? If the Gregorian calendar, in fact, settled no religious arguments and did not create a universally recognized date for the spring sacrifices and what-not, it did at least afford eventually a universally recognized - and used - day and year numbering scheme.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>As I mentioned above, the Gregorian Calendar is 'off' only 8 hours every 1000 years but other calendars have been proposed to represent more accurately the length of the year. The problems are two-fold: get a calendar whose average year comes as close as possible to 365.242199; Gregory's calendar assumes 365.2425; AND, just as important, keep the seven day weekly cycle unbroken. Notice that the Gregorian 400 year cycle contains 146097 days which is divisible by 7 so that there are 20871 weeks in the 400 years. Others have been proposed; Edmund -the Comet guy - Halley wanted to use a calendar whose average year would be 365 & 969/4000 days but this gives a cycle with 1460969 days which is not evenly divisible by 7 so that the cycle would not have an integer number of weeks. </I></div> <div> <I>Another interesting attempt at getting a year close to 365.242199 days is attributed to the guy we know as Omar Khayyam. He is famous today as a poet; but in his time he worked as an astronomer and mathematician and is generally considered the "father of Algebra". As an astronomer he measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days, a value accurate to 5 - possibly 6 - decimal places! Just what does such accuracy mean? </I></div> <div> <I>One of my favorite sources of information about Easter can be found at www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html . Claus has studied the calendar in all its details for many years and has a more cogent explanation of the calendric ramifications of the definition of Easter and I recommend his paper to those inclined to get better acquainted with the Calendar and questions about 'easter'. </I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Calendrical Calculations"  </I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" ><I>Dershowitz and Reingold;</I></FONT><I> I constantly consult this book on all matters of calendars -- Gregorian,</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>Hebrew, Islamic, Chinese et al. and it is highly recommended for those with questions about the arithmetical, technical details of</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><I>the calendar especially on computational algorithms and routines to convert dates from one calendar to dates in another. The</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>algorithms are presented in UGHHH -- LISP but can be found in C on the authors' www. The bibliography alone is worth the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>very steep price and the book has been published in a second edition with many of the typos of the first corrected. Also, the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>second ed. is available in paperback at a nominal price. </I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"The Seven Day Circle "</I></FONT><I>   </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" ><I>Zerubavel;</I></FONT><I> The story And mystery of the 'week'. An absorbing, short narrative about the week; how and why we divide time up into 7-day periods, what other cultures have done and curiosities are discussed. A hundred and ten pages is just not enough time to cover the seven day circle and several pertinent features of the week are not even discussed. Even the 'why' and 'when' receive little attention; The question of whether it is a way to divide the lunar cycle into a period of days is covered in a paragraph; and why do some cultures use other numbers of days for their week is dismissed in a sentence. Oh, well. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>"The Visible Past "  </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><I>by</I></FONT><I> </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" ><I>Michael Grant;</I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I> An interesting look at what we can actually see of the past today. 'History' would be far</I></FONT><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><I>more relevant and interesting if presented in such a way; what a pity. </I></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Perpetual Calendar and General Reference Manual"  </I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><I>by </I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" ><I>Jasper Goodykoontz.</I></FONT><I> Well, of course I haven't read the entire volume,</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>but I did locate and obtain the 1897 edition which had disappeared from my collection. In the late 19th century "no one of any</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>import should be without a copy," at least in the opinion of Mr Goodykoontz in the preface to one edition. If you can find one,</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>you will be amazed! </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>"Trial by Jury"  Burnett; reviewed recently in New York Times. While I was reading this book, I got a Jury Summons; talk</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>about serendipity! I recommend it. </I></div> <div> <I> </I></div> <div> <I>"Slack"; Tom deMarco; Should have been named 'Slap Shot'; This is an off the cuff series of remarks by Tom with an</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>occasional insight into the foibles of Software creation.</I></div> <div> <I>"Net Future" Chuck Martin. Written in 1998, this book opens with the sentence: 'The deepening and maturing roots of the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>Internet are about to grab, shake, and take hold of businesses and individuals like never before'. Chuck was probably never so</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>right. Or maybe he knew about the dot com calamity; in any case, it's interesting to read e-hype in retrospect.</I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Creature"</I></FONT><I> by </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" ><I>Steve Grand.</I></FONT><I> This book takes a somewhat new approach to the subject that can</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>best be described as 'Artificial Intelligence'. There is something for practically everyone, from ardent,</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>rabid 'believers' to frothing at the mouth sceptics on the subject. He points out some things that you seldom see in print on the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>subject and among these are some of my favorites. There is scant definite knowledge about how the human brain works in the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>first place, and nothing but questions about what consciousness or memory is. It's my opinion that the AI thing got started by</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>misuse of nomenclature used to describe functions of computers; we speak of memory, addition and other operations of</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>computers in terms we have used forever to describe mental functions and so we began to believe that human memory was just</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>a bunch of switches just like those in a computer memory. Grand points out the fallacy in this line of thought. We</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>must remember that computer memory is a state or condition; human memory is probably a process; and this difference is</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>important. Furthermore, when we called it 'core storage', loaded it from paste-board cards with a GET macro and punched stuff</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><I>out with PUT and PUNCH macros, not one of us ever thought the thing could think. </I></div> <bR> <div> <I>I don't recall who it was, but a chemist several hundred years ago pointed out that smell of something is not a property of that</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>something; it is a result of an electrochemical process in our noses. I recalled this when I was grinding up some cumin seeds the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>other day and a granddaughter said they had a funny smell. She was puzzled when I told her the smell was not a property of the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>seeds but instead was a result of an electrochemical process in our noses. Grand emphasizes that emulation of the brain will</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>involve processes rather than states and that computers very definitely involve states. A computer works by comparing the state</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>of two switches and depending on the results, changes the state of two other switches. I don't care whether you hate IBM and</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>think "Slick Willie" Gates is the messiah or the other way around, that is the way a computer works. Also, as Grand points out,</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>it doesn't make any difference how many thousand computers you use, each one of them works just so. Nonetheless the author</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><I>offers a sketchy plan for AI much of which gets the concept of 'vapor ware' to a new plateau. Basically, he concedes that,</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>straight-out, a digital computer per se will not emulate consciousness or intelligence; instead we should look for a higher level</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>paradigm to emulate a brain, the description of which is on the beyond side of fuzzy.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>The AI crowd has, from the beginning, said "wait 'til we get a bigger, faster more powerful computer--then it will think". I</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>wonder if Robert Fulton of Newburg, New York, ploughing the Hudson River in his 3 HorsePower boat would have thought the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>Titanic with 70,000 HP could think; would the Wright brothers ever have thought that something like a Boeing 747 could think?.</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>Of course not! Then why is it that mechanical conscience and intelligence waits only on a bigger, faster electro-mechanical</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>device? I'm not quite benevolent enough to avoid the word: SCAM! But I think in many cases that is the applicable, descriptive</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>term. Another problem I would have with AI if I were a Theist: could it be that 'god' has no more imagination than Bill Gates or IBM. </I></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#339933" FACE="Arial" ><I>"Greatest Inventions of the last 2000 Years" </I></FONT><I>- by </I><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" ><I>JohnBrockman</I></FONT><I>, where-in Leading Scientists and Thinkers choose the most</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>important inventions of the past 2000 years. First of all, I don't know if these were thinkers and I did not recognize many</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>of them as scientists; some of the answers were amusing and frivolous and some quite off the mark. In general it was easy</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>to tell the field for the respondent by the invention proffered as the Greatest; it was generally in his field of endeavor.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>The internet gave the following blurb about the author:</I></div> <bR> <div> John Brockman is the author/editor of 19 books, including the<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> recently published The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> Revolution and The Greatest Inventions in the Past Two<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> Thousand Years. A computer and Internet entrepreneur and<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> visionary, he is the president of Edge Foundation, Inc., and<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> publisher and editor of Edge, a website presenting the third<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> culture in action, John is also the founder of Brockman, Inc., a<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> literary and software agency, the cofounder and chairman of<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> Content.Com, Inc., a Web-based digital publishing company. He<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> lives in New York City. </div> <bR> <div> <I>My choice for the greatest invention of all time would have to be along the lines of that proposed several hundred years</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>ago by Galileo: viz. The Alphabet. We use it to communicate across the earth and around the solar system as well as</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>across the centuries from the past and into the future. We translate our thoughts, desires, creeds and beliefs and record</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>our successes, failures, humor , crimes and transgressions into a few dozen simple, squiggly symbols which can then be</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>'read' and enjoyed, agreed with or argued with, understood or mis-understood by anyone. There can be no doubt that</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>this system of translation - the alphabet - is mainly responsible for man's existence today. And to that system of writing, I</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>would add the idea of encoding the alphabet - in turn - into a simple string of ones and zeros that can be sent</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>electrically at the speed of light and decoded by the recipient, just as the reader -- i.e. the browser -- of this www has</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>done. With TV, this encoding has been extended beyond alphabetic information to include the digitization of pictures and</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>sounds. The idea of a phonetic alphabet is much more than 2000 years old, and so I would have to nominate the idea of</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>binary coded data as the second greatest invention of the previous 2 millenia.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>I got into this in helping a granddaughter with a school assignment; she was to interview people and get their opinions of</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><I>the 'greatest invention of the past 2000 years'. It seems to me that 'inventions' can be broken down into gimmicks on the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>one hand and concepts on the other - and further, gimmicks come in two flavors: new and add-ons. The first dude that</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>gathered up a bunch of straw and swept out his cave had something new; the person who tied the bundle to a stick had an</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>add-on. Another example; anyone raised on a river in Arkansas would recognize a boat paddle as a pretty slick</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>invention, but tying one to the back end of a boat and using it to steer with would not be an invention; it would be an</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>add-on, at least in function. One contributor to the book had suggested the Rudder of a ship as the greatest invention and</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>I maintain it was just an obvious add-on; besides the Rudder is far older than 2000 years as, incidentally, were most of</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>the suggestions in the book. This was one of many mistakes that fed my suspicion about the historical knowledge of those participating in the forum.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>The term 'discoveries' tied to the vocation, 'inventers' is, in United States jurisprudence, spelled out in the</I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> <I>constitution of 1789 wherein congress is given the responsibility:</I></div> <bR> <div> To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; </div> <bR> <div> <I>But has been expanded to include stuff that is neither Science nor Useful Arts by Congress and now the whole idea is thoroughly perverted and essentially ignores the </I><U>'limited times'</U><I> stricture.</I></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>