Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 53
September 13, 2019
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The lives of two neighboring families intertwine in many ways in this well-written story. Two NYPD cops, partners for a brief time as rookies, end up living in the same small town upstate. One has a son the same age as the youngest daughter of the other. Relationships are close … until they’re not. This genre is not in my normal wheelhouse, but I enjoyed it very much. If I could give half stars I’d give it four and half, but I’m rounding it up to five. It’s a love story of sorts. Not a romance, but a love story. There’s no bodice-ripping, no lustful bedroom – or kitchen table – scenes.
The time frame covers 1973 to the current day. You could call it a family saga – or perhaps better, a two-family saga. Some of it is heart-warming, other parts heart-rending. It doesn’t always go where you want it to, but it ends up where it should. My wife doesn’t recommend very many books to me as our tastes are different, but I say to you men, listen to your wife if she recommends this one.
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September 5, 2019
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book can be summarized in three words: get enough sleep. Beyond that, there isn’t much in the book that will surprise you. The author does a thorough (too thorough, in my opinion) job of describing all the ways sleep helps your body and how many ways lack of sleep hurts you. It really comes down to the same thing: get enough sleep. That’s what your mother told you. He describes many experiments, some of them ingenious, sleep researchers have done to prove the benefits of sleep. Sleepy drivers are more likely to die in a car crash. Duh. And so on. The workmanlike prose is very readable and understandable to the lay reader. I doubt reading this will change anyone’s behavior, especially since those who believe they function well on four hours a night aren’t likely to read it and will scoff at it if they do.
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September 4, 2019
Geocache Longevity
I was curious how long the average geocache lasts, so I did a little research.
I examined all of my finds (from GSAK) that have been archived, excluding events, CITOs and other event-type caches. The chart shows the median number of days between placement of the cache and the final log, which was normally the archive log.
I have a theory, several of them in fact, to account for the results. First of all, I think 2001 is a special case. Caches placed back in the very early days achieved a sort of iconic status and have been kept alive by others long after the original owner has left the geocaching world. This is true for the two year 2000 hides I found, both of which are still active. It is also true for many year 2001 caches that are still active, but not shown on the chart. I checked about half of my 2001 archived caches on the chart and three of those had been adopted during their lifetime. The same did not appear to be true (or as true) for the 2002 caches.
For 2002 and 2003, I believe the short duration was due to the learning curve of the flood of new cachers entering the sport. I know my early hides were not well-chosen spots. After a few that were lost to gardeners, thieving muggles, or construction crews I learned what kind of spots worked better. The period 2004 through 2008 shows pretty good consistency, with a median lifespan of about 2200 days (a little over six years). Remember, these are median lifespans. Half of the archived caches lived longer than that, and of course many are still active. For those years after 2008, the apparent shorter lifespan, I believe, is explained by the fact that longer-lasting caches are cut off by the simple fact that it hasn’t been long enough since those were hidden for them to live out a normal span. Put another way, one end of the bell curve of longevity (caches that last 8 years or more) is cut off by insufficient passage of time, causing the median age to be lower. I suspect that if this same exercise were to be done in five years you’d see caches from 2008 to 2013 or so have the same median of around 2200 days.
There could be other explanations. Since these are my finds, maybe I cached differently in the years 2005 – 2008 from later years. Maybe the changing rules from Groundspeak have caused people to hide caches differently. Feel free to posit your own theories in the comments.
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September 2, 2019
Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews
Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I only got about a third of the way through this book, so I may not have given it a fair chance, but it should have hooked me in by that point and it didn’t. Meg is a blacksmith (although there was no evidence of that in the first third) who travels to Yorktown, Virginia to help out (meaning do all the planning work) for not one, but three, weddings, including her mother’s. She’s a total patsy. She meets a sensitive, gorgeous guy who is helping out his mother run the local bridal shop and despite drooling over him she believes her mother when she tells Meg he’s gay. Why? Because he is sensitive and helps his mother run the shop when she’s out of town. So Meg is an idiot and a bigot, too. At least I think so, but I can only assume that at some point later in the book Michael (who follows Meg around like he’s infatuated with her) will be revealed to be straight. Gasp! Who would have thought? Or maybe not. That’s not a spoiler since I haven’t read that far. Maybe I’m wrong. The murder (if it is a murder, since it still hasn’t been ruled a homicide at the time I quit) only takes place almost a third of the way in. The rest is reading about wedding stuff – themes, dresses, fittings, flowers, venues, etc. I had my fill of that and just had to stop.
I only picked up this book because the library recommended list described it as witty and the first of a long series (26 books according to Wikipedia). It won a bunch of awards, although I have no idea how as it was not very witty or funny. Maybe the mystery part was interesting, but it was too slow to develop for me. When you find that you can’t read more than 15 minutes of a book at a time, you know it’s time to move on to something else. In its defense, it was inoffensive and very much like every other cozy mystery I’ve read, so if you like cozies, go ahead and pick it up and ignore my review.
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August 30, 2019
August 29, 2019
#Safe70
I run regularly at a local county park with a lot of trails in the foothills. I’ve noticed something about running there that changed in the last few years. When I was in my 20’s I was in good shape and when I passed an unaccompanied girl on the trails (okay, feminists, a “young woman”) she would sometimes make eye contact and smile at me or return mine. Sometimes she would initiate it, sometimes I would. I suppose I was a potential boyfriend candidate in their minds. By my 30’s, and lasting through my 60’s, they seldom made eye contact or acknowledged a wave, nod, or smile. I remained in good shape through those years, and I’m still very fit for someone in his 70’s. But that didn’t seem to matter. I’ve noticed that now that I’m there, pretty girls (I’m including quite a few 40- and 50-year old “girls” in that term, since one’s perspective does change with age) will once again often smile at me or at least acknowledge a wave or nod. They usually are passing me nowadays, but whatever.
Recently a very good-looking young woman named Elisha (phonetic) caught up to me from behind and started chatting when she drew alongside. She ran with me for almost a mile before splitting off a different direction. I could take this as a compliment since she was obviously a serious runner preparing for a race and probably took me for the same, since I was wearing my half-marathon T-shirt, but I could also take it as an unintended insult. I think she and other young women are now willing to make eye contact and smile because they no longer see me as a potential threat. I just look too old. My hair is almost totally white, and despite being slim and fit, my age is evident. I don’t blame them for ignoring me all those other times; there are a number of creeps out there and all the experts say to avoid eye contact with men, etc. I was just as harmless then as now, but they had no way to know that. Now I appear to be a #safe70. It makes me a bit rueful to be perceived that way, but on the other hand, I enjoy having a run and chat with a pretty girl from time to time, so I should consider myself fortunate, I suppose, because it can now happen again.
August 20, 2019
Fall or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
Fall, or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Stephenson’s latest novel is both highly imaginative and somewhat creepy. Lurking somewhere between plausible sci-fi and total fantasy, he posits a world where the human population is slowly diminishing and being replaced by robots, but at the same time cryogenics and quantum computers are giving people the option upon death of having their brains scanned and being uploaded into digiworld to achieve a sort of immortality. The action switches back and forth from the real world (meatspace) to what’s going on in the computing miasma, a world incorporating the Earth’s entire computing power. In turns out there’s quite a lot going on there as two computing giants, i.e. people who in life had been tech billionaires (imagine Gates and Bezos, or Jobs and Musk if you prefer), are fighting it out for dominance. At the same time, their families and loyalists back in meatspace are at odds over computing resources.
Once again the author has needlessly subjected readers to a massive tome (over 800 pages) that could have been better written in 250 pages. It’s very readable and contains some satire worth reading, but it can be a slog. The last third or so of the book focuses too much on the digital world which becomes increasingly like a video game or even the board game Quest, populated by giants and fanciful shape-shifting creatures with lots of world-building and slaying going on. The author rather boldly, or perhaps grossly, goes into how the digital beings discover sex, described clinically always as copulation. This ground has been well-trod already in movies and books (Wall-e, Tron, Wreck-it Ralph, Ready Player One). All in all it filled some hours with entertainment. That’s about the highest praise I can give it, but perhaps that’s all it was shooting for.
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August 19, 2019
Google Trends
Here are some recent Google Trends results I found interesting. The maps show which search terms are the most popular in which states over the last five years.
The scuba/snowboard one was mostly a test and the north-south split was much as expected, but I was a bit surprised by a few states. California has some great snowboarding, I’m sure, but I would have thought there would be more interest in scuba. In fact, depending on the season, the popularities switched. But really, it’s Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas that fooled me the most. Sure, you can scuba in lakes, and they may be too flat for much snowboarding, but Minnesota and Colorado are close and it’s awfully cold there.
The middle one, falafel/grits is rather interesting and surpising to me, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from it. I’m not sure why the distribution on the three mainstream TV channels, but it’s probably unfair. The term ABC is common for other uses while the others are not, so the overwhelming red may be misleading. In fact if you add the term “network” after each, you get very different results. See below. Then there’s issue as to whether you’re thinking of news, sports, or regular programming,
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August 17, 2019
Recursion by Blake Crouch
Recursion by Blake Crouch
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
In this time shifting novel the two main characters, Helena and Barry, meet and re-meet under varying and mostly frightening circumstances in different timelines. Deaths happen and then unhappen. It took quite a while for the premise to become fully obvious and the book went downhill at that point. The plot became so preposterous and irritatingly repetitive that I skimmed and skipped liberally through the second half. So much of sci-fi literature is really just fantasy or pseudo-science and this book, unfortunately, falls into that category.
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August 16, 2019
Another Cryptic Crossword
Here’s another cryptic crossword for you. Just click on the image of the grid to work it online, or click on the link to download the PDF file.
Cryptic Crossword 5PDF file
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