Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 110
June 25, 2015
June 19, 2015
The GOP candidates anagrammed
All right, everyone, don’t get your undies in a bunch. This post does not reflect my political views. It’s just in fun. You know how I like wordplay. So I anagrammed the entire GOP presidential candidate field. Not each individual name, the whole thing as one big bunch of 167 letters. The column on the left contains exactly the same set of letters as the one on the right. enjoy.
If some of these don’t make much sense, gimme a break – they sure have a lot of R’s and C’s in the GOP.
June 17, 2015
Think of a Numb3r by John Verdon
Think of a Number by John Verdon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book begins with the main character, a retired homicide detective named Gurney, being contacted by an old college friend who received a mysterious letter asking him to think of a number less than 1000 and then to open the smaller envelope inside. He picks 658, and weirdly, the number in the small envelope is 658. The letter contains vague threats to reveal his deep dark secrets of the past. Great hook to start with.
I was all over the place in deciding where to rate this. The critics who call it trite are correct. The fans who say it is a page turner full of twists are right. In the end, I went with the fact that I raced through it to see what was coming next. That meant it was entertaining enough to hold my interest throughout, despite its flaws, and the point of the book is to entertain. Those flaws are enough to keep it from the 5-star category, but it has more positives than negatives and merits a strong 4.
On the plus side, the author has outstanding descriptive talent. Whatever he describes or characterizes comes to life: facial expressions, weather conditions, the decor of a room. You feel like you’re right there. He has a large and sophisticated vocabulary which he uses almost surreptitiously, without brandishing it like a weapon. Since he was an ad executive, that is perhaps to be expected. He writes dialogue better than most first-time writers, too. The pace is fast and there are plenty of twists. It was also well-edited, with no typos or grammar errors in a long book that I noticed. That’s rare. They even used née and né correctly. Call it a guilty pleasure, but I enjoyed it the whole way despite the problems.
The negatives are many. The characters are all totally hackneyed. The retired detective who neglected his family while becoming the best serial killer hunter in NYPD history. Every boss is a total condescending jerk. Virtually every male in the book is hostile, every remark accompanied by a smirk, a wicked grin, sarcasm, belligerence. Every woman involved in solving the murders is calm and intelligent, and, of course, attractive. The D.A. is a smarmy politician. The serial killer is maniacally brilliant. You get the picture. The plot steals from every thriller ever written: Sherlock Holmes, Psycho, etc.
Another problem is the lack of character development. Gurney is the only one developed at all, and he is such a cliché that you knew how that family life situation was going to resolve itself long before the end. All the others remain cardboard cutouts throughout.
I saw all the blurbs of high praise on the back cover and flyleaf and had an uneasy feeling. They were all from fellow authors. Not one from a critic. Those whores will trade effusion like pederasts trade porn. Okay, so I mentioned plot twists, which are praised no end by those authors. In my view good mysteries fall into two categories. First are those that have you fooled the whole time and when the big reveal comes at the end, you exclaim to yourself “Wow! I didn’t see that coming. That is so clever.” The other is the type that feeds you clues along the way at just the right pace so you solve it just before the detective does in the story. The self-congratulatory pride you feel is a major part of the fun, much like a clever crossword or acrostic puzzle. Like those, the key for the latter type is the Goldilocks rule: not too hard and not too easy. The mystery has to be just right. Here, it wasn’t.
This is going to sound like bragging, but I don’t mean it that way. I mean to point out a major weakness in the story. I figured out all the so-called mysteries and twists almost immediately. How did the sender of that letter know or guess the number 658? Not hard. Then later he predicts the number 19. I got that too. Who was the killer? As soon as the killer was introduced, I knew we had our man. The footprints in the snow that end nowhere? Yup, that one, too. Maybe I’ve just read too many mysteries, or my FBI background helped, but really, I think it’s just that the mysteries aren’t all that clever. Still, maybe it was just because I wanted to get to the end to be proven right in my conclusions, but I found myself pulled inexorably to the denouement and enjoying the ride.
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June 16, 2015
Spoonerisms * – a new crossword
The Reverend William Archibald Spooner is famous (infamous) for that particular flub we’ve all done where the initial sounds of two words are accidentally switched, like “Queer Old Dean” for “Dear Old Queen.” Perhaps the first I ever heard was attributed to the reverend, although I suspect that’s apochryphal. “Mardon, padam, but you’re occupewing the wrong pie. May I sew you to another sheet?” Real or made up, they can be amusing. Look for them in the puzzle below where you see the *. Click on the image to begin.
June 14, 2015
Cyberbully Blues by Rubin Johnson
Cyberbully Blues by Rubin Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This sweet, engaging coming-of-age story follows Dakota “Kodi” Hamilton as she enters high school and through the next few years. The setting is 2037 in a world of housebots, commdots, and holos. She suffers many tribulations, including cyber bullying, physical injuries, unfair school discipline, an unrequited first crush, and a lecherous boss. She also has a fear of math and is as insecure as most freshman girls. She is raised by her mother with no knowledge of who her father is. She perseveres in her studies and overcome obstacles along the way.
At the beginning one gets the impression Kodi must have been raised in a closet. She seems unbelievably naive and ignorant about almost everything – boys, social media, and school activities among them. Even though she has had no experience with sports or computers, as soon as she is introduced to an activity, she almost immediately excels at it: running, soccer, computer coding, triathlons. She grows to love them all. Okay, so this unlikely story isn’t meant so much as a drama as an inspiration. The author is a compulsive teacher and coach who wants to explain everything, especially to young girls who are intimidated by sports, math, and computers. He demonstrates how to overcome fear and insecurity through Kodi’s triumphs.
I wouldn’t recommend this for most adults, but it can be a very inspiring book for girls in the 12 – 14 age range. I gauge it as a fun, quick read for someone in that demographic. It also pushed many of my favorite buttons by touching on hobbies I love, too, like geocaching, running, and multirotors (“drones”).
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June 10, 2015
June 8, 2015
Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell
Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a terrific legal thriller this is. The author is an attorney and writes convincingly of the legal process and strategies. Make no mistake – this is NOT a detective story. It’s all lawyers. If you’re after gunfights, car chases, and the like, don’t look here. But if you’re like me and enjoy the battle of wits in the courtroom (and outside sometimes, too) this is your sirloin steak.
The outcome of the trials is never really in doubt, but the road there is full of so many twists and turns your head will spin. The writing is learned and intelligent. Lawyers write so much better than writers, surprisingly, although usually they don’t tell stories that are as good. Here, the author does both well, but I will admit that I probably enjoyed it more than most people because I am, or at least used to be, a lawyer.
Despite my legal training I must say I’ve never bought the [insert epithet here] about truth and justice being found through the adversary system, or, for that matter, by a jury of one’s peers. My sympathies are entirely with those who ask criminal defense lawyers how they can look themselves in the mirror every morning. In a perfect world everyone in the justice system would be trying to bring out all facts and evidence relevant to a criminal trial, rather than hiding the ones that are harmful to their client. A lawyer with a guilty client should be helping society by working toward conviction and appropriate punishment rather than acquittal, but we all know that’s not how the system works. This is not a perfect world. It’s America. Lawyers, knowing what is in their own financial self-interest, work toward is in the best interest of their client, even if that means making him or her able to resume criminal activities sooner and with greater success. They’re like fences – associates who are part of the service industry making crime pay. Then they convince themselves it’s unethical to do anything else.
But I digress. The narrator in this case is an idealistic young trial lawyer sitting second chair in a spectacular murder trial, his first trial, under the tutelage of Dan Morgan, a legendary defense advocate. Morgan is one of those all-too-familiar antiheroes we see in novels – the hard-drinking, chain smoking, philandering play-by-his-own-set-of-rules kind of guy. Our neophyte gets some hard lessons in ethics, or the lack thereof.
I am curious about one thing, though: what in the heck does the cover art have to do with anything in the book? Nothing that I can see. Anyway, I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll leave it there. Have fun with this one.
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June 7, 2015
Different from, Different to
Lately I’ve been noticing more people say “different to” as in “The way I do it is different to the way other people do it.” Previously the only correct form I’d ever heard was “different from.” Fortunately there’s a handy-dandy tool now available to check to see if I’m just imagining it, or perhaps I was just to dense to notice it before. That tool is Google’s N-gram viewer. Here’s the link if you want to check for yourself: Different from vs. different to
I stand vindicated. The “from” form has always been the much preferred form and remains that way today, but I was not imagining the change. Use of “from” has declined in recent years while “to” has increased. In 1963 “different from” was approximately 55 times more frequent in writings, whereas in 2008 in is only 20 times more frequent. I have no explanation for why this is so, but I do have an opinion on which is correct. It seems to me that “from” is the only correct preposition to use there. The very fact of its vastly more frequent usage makes it the standard to go by and is reason enough in and of itself. In addition, the word “different” implies a separation, a moving away from something, not a joining or moving to something. “Different to” just doesn’t make sense. Call me prejudiced, but yet another reason is that the persons I’ve heard use the “to” form in speech have generally been people whose grammar and usage is sub-par. I consider it a form of logic, not prejudice, to infer that if the only people who say something a certain way are people who are poorly educated or unintelligent, then that form is not correct and should not be encouraged.
June 6, 2015
Silicon Valley housing prices vs. salaries
It’s ridiculous how much housing costs have gone up around where I live. It doesn’t affect me personally, at least not in the normal sense of my own housing costs, although it influences who is moving in around me, and all the nearby construction. If Zillow.com has the value of my house right, it is now worth over eleven times what I paid for it in 1981. Yes, eleven times! Now I think Zillow may be on the high side. My own estimate would put it at “only” ten times. That’s still outlandish.
How does anyone afford to live here? Well, tech salaries have skyrocketed, too, but not everyone is a tech worker. Even Google and Apple have janitors and cafeteria workers. I couldn’t find any statistics for average salaries for this county or region over that period of time, but the U.S. government figures for average wages nationwide show only a threefold increase in average wage between 1981 and today. So housing costs have gone up ten times while wages have gone up three times. That would mean housing, as a percentage of income, has more than tripled for the average worker around here. Even if we assume wages and salaries have gone up more in this area than the nationwide average, it’s probably still true that housing costs, relative to salary, have at least doubled. For renters, the rule of thumb of spending no more than 30% of your salary on rent would have to change to 60% or more around here.
I started to write about the change in the neighborhood, the traffic and other problems from the economic boom around here, and a bunch of personal blather, but then thought better of it. If you’re thinking of moving here because of a good job offer, perhaps you only need to know two statistics: The average new home purchase price in my city is now over two million dollars. You can probably find an older fixer-upper for $1.8 mil. If you plan to rent, the average monthly rent here for a three- or four-bedroom house is about $9,000. Of course, you can live in an apartment or condo in a cheaper city and fight the commute to your new job at Google or wherever. Good luck with that. I recently read that many tech workers are now choosing to live in trailer parks as the only viable housing option. That salary they’re offering you isn’t as high as you think it is. Do me a favor and just stay away.
June 5, 2015
Cliff Knowles #5 – GUT SHOT
Cliff Knowles fans, are you ready for number five? In this one Cliff tells the story in his own words. Here’s the best part for you: the novel will be serialized right here on this blog. Loyal fans of this blog will be able to read it for free. The date of release is not set yet, so keep watching.
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