Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 75
September 15, 2017
The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives by Theresa Brown
The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives by Theresa Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brown captures the drama and tension of high-stakes medicine in this non-fiction description of a single 12-hour shift as a nurse on a cancer ward. It is very reminiscent of the Boston Med or New York Med TV series. It is a short read and fast not only because of its shortness but also because it is riveting. Brown is a Ph.D. in English who taught at Tufts University before giving up teaching for nursing. As one might expect, her writing is polished and clear, mixing the human interest elements with clinical detail. If the grim reality of cancer is not something you can stomach, then pass on this one, but I found it fascinating.
As a word maven, or grammar Nazi if you prefer, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of errors. On page 170 she says “I … peak under the bed.” I smiled when I read that, thinking most women would brag about peaking in the bed, but whatever floats your boat. She also got the punch line to a joke wrong. The correct line is “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you.” These peccadillos notwithstanding, I highly recommend this book.
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September 13, 2017
New crossword – Death Metal
I’m not a fan of death metal, but I know some people are. Let’s see how much you know about death metal. Work this crossword.
DEATH METAL
Click on the picture to be taken to the interactive website or you can download the PDF file here: Death Metal.PDF
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September 8, 2017
Voynich Manuscript decoded?
This explanation looks pretty credible, but it will need to be verified by other scholars familiar with medicine and the referenced documents that were said to be copied.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/the-mysterious-voynich-manuscript-has-finally-been-decoded/
Voymich manuscript
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Picture Perfect Murder by Jenna St. James
Picture Perfect Murder by Jenna St. James
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Ryli is a photographer working part time for both the local newspaper and the police, or so she is described. I don’t think she did any photographing – or work, for that matter – throughout the story. When the town’s school superintendent is brutally murdered, Ryli goes around with her friend and her aunt asking everyone where they were when it happened. Meanwhile she lusts after the hunky police chief. There is no explanation for why she chooses to do this “investigating” and she fails miserably at it, putting herself in danger not once but twice in quick succession by failing to see the obvious attempts the murderer is making on her life. The cover bills it as a “daring and hilarious cozy mystery.” It was nowhere close to daring or hilarious, although I think I smiled once or twice while reading it. It was, however, a cozy mystery with the usual elements: female non-professional protagonist, lots of talk about the women’s outfits (and I mean lots), cooking, and interior decorating, a cute pet, and zero knowledge of police procedure. The one difference from the usual cozy, however, is that here Ryli does not turn out to be the strong, confident woman who solves the mystery; she turns out to be a blubbering incompetent who has to be rescued by the hunky chief.
The best I can say about this is that it was inoffensive and worth the 99 cents I paid for it. It got me through a dull day when my electric service was off for maintenance. Lovers of good writing are warned to stay away. The writing is ham-handed, cliche-ridden, and in need of a good proofreading.
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September 6, 2017
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This 419-page tome (318 if you skip the Acknowledgements and Footnotes) is an academic’s look at morals and how people determine or judge right and wrong. Its overarching goal seems to be to make people understand that those with opposing views are not evil or stupid but think the way they do because there are valuable principles on the “other” side that have served communities and individuals well throughout human evolution. As he says in the final sentence of the text: “We’re all stuck here for a while, so let’s try to work it out.”
That sounds like little more than Rodney King’s famous line, but the book is really quite intellectual and academic in tone and backed by solid research. I hated the social science classes in college and this reads very much like a textbook in a Psych or even Poli Sci class. It does have descriptions of a lot of academic research in this field, however, including many cleverly designed experiments. Most of them proved the same principle which put simply is that people believe what they want to believe. When people argue they don’t use logic to try to understand who is right but instead use it to try to develop counterarguments to rebut their opponent. This may seem unsurprising, but it was rather startling to me how researchers have proven that people will absolutely ignore compelling evidence that proves their view about something wrong even very simple demonstrable things. In short, people are not persuaded by facts.
Some insights were surprising, however. Until reading the book I did not realize how large a role genetics played in forming an individual’s position on the basic conservative-liberal scale. Conservative in Haidt’s sense is the desire to preserve the status quo and resist change, while liberal is the opposite – the desire to change, to experience new things. Experiments have proven that this dynamic is largely fixed and observable in toddlers. That doesn’t always translate into political conservatism or liberalism, but they appear to be somewhat related.
I can’t say the book was enjoyable reading per se; rather, it was informative and valuable, which makes it enjoyable in a different way.
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September 5, 2017
North Korea
I try not to get too political here, but this North Korea thing is getting to me. Why all the fuss? How many nuclear (i.e. weapons) countries are there now – a dozen? US, UK, France, Israel, S. Africa, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, N. Korea, probably Iran. OK, not quite. Keeping new weapon technology from adversaries has always been impossible from the slingshot to the longbow, to the catapult, to the rifle, to the nuclear bomb. Kim has had the technology for years now and could have used it on the US at any time. He doesn’t need an ICBM to nuke the US. He could have slipped an atomic bomb, a dirty one at that, onto a tramp freighter or a whole fleet of them and chugged into every major harbor in the US and shot them up one or two hundred feet and detonated them if he’d wanted to long before now. But he doesn’t want to. He has no reason to. Even if he did want to, he is deterred by the simple fact that he knows the US would retaliate massively and obliterate him and his entire country from the face of the earth, just as every other country is.
So why all the hype? It’s a battle of egos by two insane egomaniacs. Kim feels disrespected by the world in general and the US in particular. The same with Trump. It’s a couple of schoolboys yelling “Yo mama” at each other. I wish everyone would just shut up before one of these two idiots gets angry enough to nuke the other. That could lead to some horrible consequences. Just ignore each other, guys, and go back to running your countries.
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August 25, 2017
Venona Returns
There may be a few readers of this blog who are puzzle mavens but who are not Bay Area geocachers. If so, you may want to look in on a thread in the Geocachers of the Bay Area (GBA) forum. It’s a bit hard to explain, but a mysterious Russian figure calling himself Venona has emerged from his cold war socialist crypt to pose challenges to us stupid American capitalist morons. You may have to join the GBA, but it’s open to everyone and it’s free. Even if you don’t actively participate, it’s fun just to read through the thread and check back from time to time to see if the American morons have defeated Venona’s evil schemes. the link to the thread is below.
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August 19, 2017
The Cryptic Crossword Caper
It’s here and it’s only $2.99. The price will never be lower.
Mags, recently widowed, has retired to tiny Buck’s Gap off the Big Sur coast, content to work her crosswords and discuss mysteries with her book club. Then she discovers the body of a murder victim, a professional puzzle-maker, and is drawn into the investigation. Soon a glamorous FBI agent arrives in town trying to find some stolen diamonds from a long-ago heist that she thinks may be connected. Mags is happy to help the police chief, but she may have bitten off more than she can chew. Fortunately, she has the Buck’s Gap Women’s Auxiliary by her side.
There are several puzzles in the book which can be worked by the reader, including a hybrid cryptic crossword, a Sudoku, and two cryptograms. These provide clues to the murder. The crossword and Sudoku are available online where they can be worked interactively or downloaded and printed out to be worked on paper. Details on how to do so are available in the Appendix.
A cozy mystery
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August 15, 2017
New Crosswords – Plans, Professor
I have posted some new crosswords on my crossword site recently. If you want to give them a whirl, here’s the link: Crosswords.
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Total eclipse – why bother?
I totally don’t get this obsession with the upcoming eclipse. Sure, it’s rare, but so what? You can get the exact same experience every night by walking outside. You are in a total eclipse every moonless night between sunset and sunrise. It’s just the Earth that is blocking the sunlight, not the moon.
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