Fairhaven, The River

October Books Read

During the month of October I finished:

• The Human side of Post Mortems, by Dave Zweibeck.

This turns out to be about a couple software project postmortems. It is not nearly as useful or informative as I expected.

• Toxic Schools, by Paulle Brown.
An interesting ethnographic study of two high schools, one in the Bronx and one in Amsterdam. Mr Brown spent a couple years teaching in each one. These are each arguably the worst schools in their areas. Brown examines the social structures, lives of students, etc. The similarities are extremely strong despite all the cultural differences. Probably the strongest factor in failure for students is the pervasive fear and danger. Their lives are spend dealing with threats. The strongest indicator for escaping the dead end lives that so many face is having some protective adult continuity. A strong parent or strong relative is the usual source. This is not something that can be offered by a teacher. It needs to be a multi-year experience of having a healthy protective adult that the students need. It needs to have the continuity of a healthy person to person relationship.

• The Incrementalists, Steven Brust
SF. Disappointing.

• Anarchy Unbound, Peter T. Leeson
Interesting analysis of situations which were an anarchy, and how order develops. What were the major factors. What were the results. He argues that the claim "anarchy can't work" is easily disproved. He does not argue the claim that civil government is inferior to anarchy. He shows what anarchy does accomplish.

The major factors in successful anarchies are the patience of the participants and the extent to which they must maintain long term relationships.

• Learning From First Responders, Richard Dylan
Actually about how the IT systems and organizations were structured and tested for the Obama campaign. The contrast between this level of care to organization, goals, testing, and reliability and the complete failure of similar efforts in Obamacare launch are tremendous.

• The Shifts and the Shocks, Martin Wolf
I expected better given the high quality of his lectures and newspaper articles. The information content is very good. The book style and organization was mediocre. Still worth reading.History and commentary on the whole economic situation since 2005.

Shield of Achilles - Book Review

 

Shield of Achilles

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The Shield of Achilles describes a political theory for nations and uses the past 500+ years of European history to justify it. It is a reasonably well written semi-academic work. At 960 pages I doubt many will actually read the whole thing. So I’ll summarize his thesis here. There is a lot of material in the book that explains this in more detail and defends it.

His goal is to answer one important question:

• What is the purpose that makes a state legitimate?

This question is to be answered in the context of the people and cultures of the time, not current opinions. So when considering the France of Napoleon, it is in the context of his time, not current opinion.

Bobbitt is of the opinion that the purpose of the state has evolved through various forms over the past 500 years. He argues that the great wars reflect conflicts between old forms and new forms of legitimacy. Similarly, the great peaces reflect the stabilization of a new consensus. The drivers for change are changes in the sciences, technology, legal structures, and cultural structures.

One example of the great war theory is that the various conflicts that can be lumped together as World War II reflect a conflict between an emerging fascist state model and the then dominant nation state model. The war, and subsequent United Nations peace, established that the nation state model was the winner and the legitimate structure for states.

1. Phases of State Structure

His different phases of state legitimacy are:

Princely State (1494-1572)

The state confers legitimacy on the dynasty.

Kingly State (1567-1651)

The dynasty confers legitimacy on the state.

Territorial State (1649-1789)

The state will manage the country efficiently.

State Nation (1776-1870)

The state will forge the identity of the nation.

Nation State (1861-1991)

The state will better the welfare of the nation.

Market State (1989-)

The state will maximize the opportunity of its citizens.

Using these concepts of state legitimacy helps understand some aspects of history. The history of 17th-18th century Germany makes much more sense when you use these models. The people involved did not attach statehood to their concept of being German.

This also explains a lot of the historical mess in the Balkans. Nothing makes sense when you try to apply today’s nation state viewpoint the old structures of the Ottoman Balkans. When you think in terms of these transitions, the conflicts and behaviors make more sense. Instead of thinking "why were these people so crazy?" you see the issue of "how could they escape the conflicts left by the failing models of statehood?"

2. Predictions

Shield of Achilles was published in 2001 before 9/11, so there are some predictions that can be compared with actual events. I find:

• The emergence of the market state remains plausible. Many places and emerging political groups use this model.
• Bobbitt did not recognize the conflict with the Islamic state as an emerging conflict model. The conflict between the Islamic state model and the market state model is apparent in the Arab Spring and its aftermaths in different countries.
• His assertion that the Cold War and its many skirmishes was the long war that rejected the Marxist-Communist state seems to hold up. Deng, Xi, and others remain careful to preserve a public allegiance to Mao Thought, but the Chinese Communist Party ruling structure is increasingly separated from the details of Marxist state models. Similarly, Russia still has a Communist party, but the national structure is completely changed.
• He did not recognize the question of whether the parliamentary democracy will be the structure of the market state. China is quite clearly presenting public goals that are consistent with the market state model, while clearly not following the parliamentary democracy model.

Book Reviews: Who Owns the Future, and Roots of Radicalism

I read two oddly related books this past month:

• Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements, by Craig Calhoun, a very academic history of the origins of the radical movements.  It primarily covers US and UK radicalism, emphasizing that the traditional left/right political analysis approach is misleading and obscures some important aspects of the origins.  Only a history nerd will wade through the dense academic prose, so I've pulled the highlights out below.
• Who owns the Future, by Jaron Lanier, a current commentary book.  It's much more readable by the ordinary techie.  It's a grab bag of ideas.  I found myself alternatively reacting "yes, I've seen that effect" and "interesting idea, but what about this and this?".  It's worth reading primarily because it includes useful observations that are much too often ignored by the techno-enthusiasts.

Roots of Radicalism

Much of recent historical work has attempted to force fit 19th century radicalism into the left-right mold of modern politics.  This has misleading results.

Radicalism originated in the early 19th century social movements in Europe and the US.  These were a response to the social disruption from the industrial revolution.

The primary participants were the artisans and craftsmen, not wage slaves.  Prior to the industrial revolution artisans made things.  Black smiths made metal things, potters made pottery, shoes and clothes were made by hand, and so forth.  The industrial revolution destroyed careers that were safe and predictable. The  whole artisanal segment of society was destroyed.

• These people were not poor.  They had reliable food, clothing, and housing.  They had reliable work.  They had an education.
• The radical groups were at least as much conservative as progressive.  They did not want change.  They wanted to preserve their place in an artisanal society. 

The radical movements included groups that espoused nativism and other conservative solutions.  These later morphed into nationalism and fascism. Some radical attempts to preserve a craftsman oriented social structure evolved into syndicalism, which has since faded from the political landscape.  Syndicalism never fit within the left-right paradigm.

The Tea Party and Occupy movements have a great deal in commmon with these early radicals.

The cultural evolution into wage slavery and the need for labor unions took place later.  The completion of the industrial revolution and emergence of organizational dominance took place after the destruction of the first wave of radical organizations during the 1848 revolutions (Europe) and the Civil War (US).

The role of religion was mixed.  The Second Great Awakening in the US was a powerful force that created communities with a goal of eliminating corruption and improving society.  Their goals included abolition of slavery and temperance.  It was split between the transcendentalist and evangelicals, who had profoundly different views of God and man's relationship with god.

The transcendentalist and evangelical branches in the US diverged and they became political enemies in the later 19th century.  They agreed on abolition, but after the Civil War ended slavery, other issues like temperance, women's suffrage, social structures, etc. were areas of great dispute.  This split never fit within a left-right paradigm.  This religious component was just as important as the worker-owner split emphasized by the left-right paradigm.

The education level and financial status of the early radicals was much better than the traditional left-right paradigm indicates.  This is apparent in some of the ways that the establishment in the UK worked to suppress the radicals.

• The stamp tax and other measures increased the cost of paper and printing.  It became too expensive for the radicals to reach their audience, but remainded affordable for the upper classes.  This indicates two things.  The radical audience could read, because pamphlets and papers were effective at reaching them.  The radical audience had some spare cash, to cover publishing and distribution costs.  The stamp tax was designed to make this communication path too expensive.

In the UK the merchants, lawyers, etc. were split away from the radicals by changes in the 1830 reform act.  Prior to that, voting was based on real estate ownership.  You needed to own significant real estate (land and buildings) to qualify to vote.  The 1830 Act expanded this to include financial resources.  The result was that middle class occupations got the vote.  Prior to this, the emerging middle class had been supporting the radicals. Once they got the vote, they opposed to many of the other radical goals like de-industrialization.

In the US voting and political participation had always included the merchants, lawyers, etc.  The US did not have a similar splitting prior to the bloodbaths of the religious conflicts and civil war that shattered early radical structures.

None of these groups were unitary or isolated.  There was a strong web of overlapping group memberships within affinity groups.  This is apparent in both the 19th century and the NSM.

The New Social Movements (NSM) of the 1960's and 70's were not that new.  The radicals of the early 19th century had a lot in common with them.  The 60's hippies and the 19th century Transcendentalists are close companions.  Both periods had extensive social ferment with a multiplicity of rapidly evolving groups.  The NSM activism and direct action efforts have direct parallels with 19th century radical activism and direct action (e.g., Luddites, John Brown, Underground Railway).

Who Owns Network

Much of what Lanier is observing reminds me of the changes that drove the Radical movements. His examples of the network destroying ways of working are similar to the destruction of the artisanal culture in the early nineteenth century.  The computer and network are destroying a way of life for many people.  You see reactions to this in the Occupy movement and Tea Party movement.

Lanier's response suggestions are interesting.  They are very incomplete.

I liked his term "siren servers".  The analogy to the Greek Sirens is apt.  It's a better metaphor than the walled garden.  Whether it's Facebook, Google, or some other niche area, the siren server pulls in its victims who are blind to the negative effects until they are already on the rocks.

Anti-fragility, a book review

Nassim Taleb's book Antifragility suffers badly from his writing style, but there are some important ideas here.  One way to get the highlights is from his lecture as part of the book tour.  His troublesome speaking style will prepare you for the writing style.

The core concept is the importance of a new concept in system design or description.  Anti-fragility is the opposite of fragility.  The conventional thinking is that robustness or resilience are the opposite of fragility.  But, fragility means damaged by external shocks.  The opposite is a system that is improved by external shocks.  So an anti-fragile device would be labelled, "Please handle roughly".  Robustness and resilience are forms of lower fragility, not anti-fragility.

Anti-fragile systems occur in nature in many ways.  Muscle and bone tissue need external shocks.  A complete absence of loads or shocks leads to wasting away.  It's a major problem for long term space dwellers.  You strengthen muscle and bone by pushing them close to their limits at appropriate intervals.  The muscle and bone respond by growing stronger.  That's anti-fragility.  There are limits to how hard you can shock an anti-fragile system, but anti-fragile systems are superior to robust or resilient systems.

The book is many snippets and comments around that theme.  It's not well organized for taking the concept to the next level of discussing how to create anti-fragile systems.  There is a lot there, but it suffers from Nassim's presentation style.  As one reviewer put it, "He's a notorious jerk."

At least he's also introduced me to the word flâneur.  That's a fine goal for the enjoyable life.

 

Book Review: The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went to War in 1914

 Sleepwalkers is a very dense history but very well written.  The text is scholarly and does not explain the contextual history for the reader.  The reader is expected to be familiar with the basics of the period.  A novice will become lost and confused.

This time period was very different structurally from the post WWII period.  It was a truly multi-polar world.  Most people have only experienced bi-polar worlds (e.g., West vs Nazi/Communist) and uni-polar worlds (US Hegemony).  It's really very different to have genuine multi-polar situations without a simple structure.  It can lead to some dangerous instabilities and requires much more work to understand.  I now understand the authors lecture comments about his fears for the world and East Asia in particular.

Interesting insights for me include:

• The significant of the 1911 Italian invasion of the Ottoman territories that became Libya.
• The extent to which the Balkans drove politics and the war.  The impact of the various Balkan conflicts is huge, and now mostly overlooked.  The Balkans vanished from world consciousness when the war reached Germany and France.
• The irrelevance of the US, a very isolationist neutral country at the time.
• That in 1905 war between England and France was considered much more likely than between England and Germany.

It's also an illustration of how far and how diversely the collapse of an empire can ripple.  The Ottoman collapse spans centuries.  World War I was part of its final collapse.  The present Middle Eastern conflicts are a continuation of the problems left behind by its collapse.  World War I gave us the Nazis, Communism, World War II and the Cold War.  It shattered the Hapsburg empire, which contributed to the problems in Eastern Europe.

If you know the basics of the time period and can juggle a couple dozen major and minor players working at cross purposes all at one time, this is a very informative read.

Two book reviews

First, Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum.  This is a very good history of how the Soviet Union took over Eastern Europe in the years 1944 to 1956.  It really only covers East Germany, Poland, and Hungary in any detail.  The other countries get just brief mentions. The steady imposition of a police state, destruction of any alternative civil society, and transition to a totalitarian state is detailed.  The public reactions and adaptations are covered.  It's not a catalog of dates and events.  It's a catalog of techniques and results.  It's a depressing book because the historical result is depressing.  It's also a good history of material that is often not covered.

Second, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, by Caitlyn Kiernan.  This is a Nebula 2012 nominee, and in my opinion should be the winner.  It's hard to categorize this book.  It could be called a horror/fantasy ghost story.  It could be called a character study.  It's not for someone who wants a story with a plot and several interesting characters that moves from a straightforward start to a finish.

The Drowning Girl is a memoir by a schizophrenic author, told first person.  Something happened, perhaps involving a ghost or perhaps a siren, or perhaps it was all delusions.  The author struggles with the events, writing, rewriting, exploring, getting distracted, and even at the end of the book the conclusion is

"You know now that you'll never be sure what happened?"

"Yeah, I know now.  I know that."

The viewpoint of insanity is well presented and human.  The few characters are complex and real.  The events and how people reacted unfolds piecemeal as it's told, retold, gaps filled, lies corrected, lies added, and eventually you guess at possible explanations.  Perhaps there was a ghost.  I think not.  Perhaps there was a siren.  That mythology fits better for me.  Perhaps it was the insanity.  That's possibly the case.  The goal of the book is not to resolve that mystery.

Insanity is not a happy story, and this is not a happy story.  But there is a character exposition and a character arc, and the telling is very well done.

I suggest watching the video short (its just a couple minutes).  If your reaction is "that was odd, I would like to know more." it's a book to read.  If your reaction is "that was wierd, what a waste of time." don't read the book.

Book Review: A Brilliant Invention: Inventing the American Constitution

"A Brilliant Invention: Inventing the American Constitution" is an interesting perspective on the creation of the US Constitution.  It concentrates on the people and process of creation, rather than provide historical analysis of causes and effects.  It's a fairly brief book at 210 pages.

It starts by setting the stage of the political context.  This is not a historical analysis with explanations and reasons.  It's a statement of what was happening politically and why the constitutional convention was called.  It covers the political context of why some people favored or opposed, attended or avoided the convention.  It also covers the technological limitations of the period, e.g., the need to organize your business affairs for being out of touch for several months because there is no telephone, telegraph, or fast post.  News and post took a few weeks to travel between cities.

Next, it covers the organization and process of the convention.  This is unusual, because it is an explanation of the organizational dynamics, not a discussion of how the convention affected history.  It explains how the documents were created, how the committees are structured, how the meetings are structured, and how this is affected by the personalities involved.  I was especially amused by the name of "Committee for Postponed Items", which reminds me a lot of DICOM's Working Group 6 in terms of it's internal structure.  You don't need to be an organizational dynamics expert to read this section.  It's at a level that the novice can understand. 

Finally, it covers the conclusion and publication, without too much extrapolation into reasons for subsequent historical events.

I noticed one interesting difference between the political structure of the American Revolution and the current structure of world governments.  They had no great leader.  Today's governments are all structured around a single leader. 

The American Revolution and the creation of the constitution were driven by experienced politicians with strong legal expertise and decades of experience, but nobody was the leader.  There were always multiple leaders with their own specialties.  All of the leaders also had major weaknesses, there were powerful arguments and disagreements, and they worked out an acceptable compromise because the alternative was defeat and destruction.  The closest to a single leader was George Washington, but he resolutely stayed out of the political process.  For the rest you have names like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, etc. 

They expected the country to be led by a similar structure in Congress, with multiple powerful politicians but no single leader.  They expected an efficient but subservient executive similar to George Washington, who expressed his opinions but carried out the policies decided by Congress.

They would probably have been very surprised by how long it took for this structure to collapse in the US.  It was not until the 20th century that the US shifted to it's current process of selecting a single leader to make all important decisions.   They were wondering whether the Constitution would survive for more than a few decades.

Book Review: Makers, by Cory Doctorow

This book is worth reading.  It will appeal to adult engineers and others.  It is a more adult form of SF than his earlier books.  There is of course a plot and various cute ideas, but they are not the core of the book.  This book is about the lives of some adults, and secondarily about the other aspects of plot and the images of a similar but different society.  It could have been one of the common "how would society be different if ...."  Instead, this is about some adults.  They have ideas, make mistakes, learn some things, don't learn others, change in some ways, don't change in others.

I found it very interesting to follow the characters evolve, the society change, and watch how other aspects of humanity remained the same.   The tech is OK.  There are plenty of inside jokes and allusions; and I'm sure that I missed a great many.  I caught some of those relating to silicon valley players and locations.  I'm sure I missed others related to Disney and elsewhere.  These can be entertaining as you catch them.

I did read the whole thing in one burst, which meant dinner was late today.  That indicates that the story and characters are sufficiently gripping that I preferred to keep reading rather than cook dinner.

Throughput Accounting

Throughput Accounting, Thomas Corbett, ISBN-13: 978-0884271581, is a book worth reading.   People who are concerned with making good management decisions are the target audience, not only accountants.  I found the underlying concept to be very interesting.  It's clear that this approach to accounting should be superior to traditional cost accounting for manufacturing and transport businesses.  With some adaptation it is probably better for other industries.

I read accounting theory books because accounting is a critical part of any information management and decision making system.  The accounting theories specify how to summarize the millions of little bits of information from individual transactions and activities into forms used for decision making.  Accounting is a crucial part of the information flow and feedback system.  As illustrated in some of the examples in this book, inappropriate accounting theories lead to bad decisions.  (This use is quite different from the regulatory demands that particular accounting methods be used for tax and other regulatory reasons.  It's one reason that most companies have multiple sets of accounting books.  An accounting system designed to compute taxes is rarely good for decision making.)

In throughput accounting the information gathering views the process flow of a business focusing in particular on choke points.  This is in sharp contrast to the focus on cost allocation methods found in traditional accounting.  Throughput accounting treats costs as a secondary rather than a primary factor.  The production flow is primary, and one core element of analysis is understanding the impact that changes will have on production.

The simple example used to illustrate the difference between cost accounting is a simple factory with five stages.  The product flow is simple, being stage 1 to stage 2 onward to stage 5.  Stages 1, 2, 4, and 5 have capacities of 10, and stage 3 has a capacity of 1.  Suppose you have two options available:

1. Invest 500 to reduce the cost of production of stage 1 by 10%, or
2. Invest 500 to increase the capacity of stage 3 by 100%, with no cost savings.

Traditional cost accounting shows option 1 to be worthwhile, and option 2 a bad investment.  Throughput accounting shows option 1 to be a bad investment, and option 2 to be an excellent investment.  The difference is that option 2 doubles capacity, allowing a doubling of production, thus doubling sales, thus increasing profits substantially.  Option 1 does not change production and does not change possible sales.  There is some possible savings even with static sales, but abandoning growth is usually part of an exit strategy.  From an overall business point of view, throughput accounting makes better recommendations.

The book works through a variety of simple examples to illustrate commonplace issues.  In real world systems the production systems will be much more complex but the same issues arise.  The fundamental concept is to understand the process flows, identify the bottlenecks, and consider the impact of decisions on the production capacity of the system rather than allocate costs.   You may choose to adjust product mixes, increase production, shift production when markets are saturated, etc.  There is a lot here to think about.

The book does suffer from editorial problems.  There are some serious typos in the examples, for example.  Despite these, the basic concepts are made clear.  This book is a slim inexpensive paperback that conveys the basic concepts.  There are other much larger and more expensive books that look appropriate for accountants and managers who actually want to put this kind of system in place.

The Wikipedia article on Throughput Accounting is a decent enough summary, but the examples and discussion of the book help understanding a lot.

Book Reviews (Tempting Faith, Mao, and Vachss)

Tempting Faith by David Kuo.

This is a fast easy read.  The book is mis-represented by most of the reviews that I have read.  They greatly over-emphasize the fact that politicians exploit the religious.  The reviewers use this as more proof of the evil of Bush.  The sense of the book is more that this is inherent in all politicians (both left and right) and that both the Democrats and the Republicans have exploited their religious supporters (the religious right and the black churches respectively).  There is not a sense of outrage.  There is a sense that this is the inevitable nature of politicians, and that the religious should understand this and not fall into the politicians traps.

Kuo points to the "Screwtape Letters" as a prime example of how this exploitation was clearly visible to CS Lewis as well.  It is the stronger message of Kuo and Lewis that the religious should not look to politics as the path to build a better world.  They should build a better world through their own efforts, using politics as a secondary or defensive mechanism.  He looks at the many politically oriented messages and finds very little of the Christian virtues that he loves.

Mao, the untold story
This is a massive tome.  The tone is very hostile towards Mao, who is uniformly a narcistic, evil man. His life seems to be that of the successful psychopath, leaving misery in his wake.  He has even less personal appeal than Hitler or Stalin.

It does make clear the extreme obsession with "secret communist sympathizers" found in the 1950's cold war.  A great deal of Mao's final success in seizing China rested on having fully penetrated the Chinese Nationalists with sleeper agents who were activated after many years of secrecy.  The origin of the success was the chaos after the collapse of the Chinese empire into a mass of competing warlords.  The creation of the Chinese republic out of this chaos left many openings for the planting of sleeper agents.  I had earlier thought this as irrational behavior.  It now seems just to be an over-reaction to the Chinese experiences.

It is well written, easy to read, and a good overview of Chinese history during the Mao period.

Mask Market, Vachss

Another Burke book.  This is a lesser effort.  It's worth reading as a continuation of the Burke series, but it is not as powerful or involving as most of the earlier books.  It is not a good introduction to either Vachss or the Burke series.