qatsi: (urquhart)
2025-06-08 01:30 pm
Entry tags:

Free Trade

Book Review: River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh
The second book in the Ibis trilogy begins where Sea of Poppies left off. It's not necessary to have read the earlier book, as Ghosh summarises enough at the beginning of this volume, but overall I think it helps.

Again it has the feel of a nineteenth century novel - a cast of thousands, episodic telling, and barely laid morality elements. The book begins in Mauritius, but for the most part, the action has moved to Canton. Many of the characters from the first book are set aside, at least for the time being. Neel finds a berth and works as a secretary for an Indian opium trader; Paulette finds a passage to Hong Kong with a plant trader. It is 1838, and the western opium merchants are finding difficulty with the Chinese emperor. But as before, while the British complain noisily and belligerently with their own internal logic on "Free Trade" (Benjamin Burnham a passable imitation of Rees-Mogg), it is the Asians - both Indian and Chinese - who suffer more. It's quite an irony reading this in times where China is keen to trade with the rest of the world, and the US leadership is inclined to put up barriers to trade.
qatsi: (lurcio)
2025-05-20 08:24 pm
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Botswana Calling

Book Review: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, by Alexander McCall Smith
So, after re-reading the series so far and de-duplicating the second-hand copies I bought by mistake, I returned to the travails of Mma Ramotswe. As usual, the agency's cases are more often puzzles and problem-solving than crimes, but right now seems at least as good a time as any for a bit of light escapism. The ladies are investigating possible match-fixing in one of the local football teams, and they find themselves with little background knowledge to fall back on; meanwhile, one of Mma Makutsi's fellow alumnae from the Botswana Secretarial College (who scored much less than 97%) is up to no good. This is a series that makes most sense from the start, so I imagine the audience has become self-selecting by now.
qatsi: (capaldi)
2025-05-12 09:19 pm
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Garum, and spoilers

Book Review: Pompeii, by Mary Beard
Having visited Pompeii in 2022, I think I would have found this book useful; but it's also true to say that I think I got more from this book because I had visited Pompeii, because I can recall at least some of the places Beard writes about.

This is quite a comprehensive popular survey, covering a bit about the history of excavation, as well as likely looting shortly after the eruption. Beard doesn't shy away from uncertainty - so while she will offer a plausible explanation for something, she will also offer alternatives, with some honesty that we just don't have strong evidence one way or the other for many things. Nonetheless we have much more evidence than from perhaps anywhere else in the Roman world.

From recent BBC documentaries, I was already familiar with the garum manufacturer Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, one of several characters whose properties have been identified (in this case, by the presumption that no-one else would have a mosaic of garum amphora on their floor). From the Cambridge Latin Course, as well as Doctor Who, I was familiar with Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, though Beard presents him as much as an Arthur Daley figure as a banker. But here's a spoiler: his house was identified by all his financial records in the attic - which extend only as far as AD62. Is it just coincidence that this is the year of a major earthquake in Pompeii? Perhaps Caecilius died during that event. Or maybe he archived everything from the before time as a likely write-off.

And then there's the brothel(s). Beard doesn't go on about these as much as you might stereotypically expect. Further, she points out that there's no reason to take the bawdy graffiti seriously - whilst the electoral campaigning messages on the walls are probably genuine, much else could just be the fake news of casting insults. But there's more material on the theatres, the amphitheatre, the baths and the bars and fast food outlets of the time (as well as noting the current on-site cafe is built over some particularly bad bomb damage from World War 2).
qatsi: (sewell)
2025-05-11 08:22 pm
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Hiroshige

Yesterday we went to the British Museum's Hiroshige exhibition. Like pre-Raphaelites, I tend to think that Japanese prints are a money-spinner for museums and galleries. This one was reasonably busy but hardly packed. For the most part, the pictures are enchanting landscapes, townscapes, birds and flowers. There's a fair amount of background and technical information included, such as the reuse of woodblocks with different colourations to produce prints from the same master indicating different times of day or season, or simply to cater for changing tastes. I found the depiction of rain particularly interesting, a heavy diagonal overlay that sometimes almost looks as if it has been scratched into the print. One or two prints of actors or courtesans reminded me of the Edo Pop exhibition from last year, and in the section on Hiroshige's legacy there was also a reference to the Yoshida dynasty.


Mount Fuji and Otodome Falls



Cherry Blossoms on a moonless night along the Sumida river



Pheasant and Chrysanthemums



First Shono from Fifty-Three Stages of the Tōkaidō



Portrait of Hiroshige by Kunisada

qatsi: (proms)
2025-04-24 08:09 pm
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Proms 2025

The long list:


It's a long list, but not much of it feels like "must haves"; probably the Reich and Hermann are priority. Although I like Anna Lapwood, I don't think I'm up for an all-night organ prom. The bunching in the second half of August is odd, and I haven't actually listed anything from the final week of the season, though the Last Night programme itself looks like one of the better ones.
qatsi: (baker)
2025-04-23 08:13 pm
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Dystopia

Book Review: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
This was a random discovery in a National Trust second-hand bookshop, although I'd already been aware of it and was mildly curious. Klara is an Artificial Friend - we don't get many details, but enough to confirm a human form - and the story begins in a shop where she is for sale. Eventually she encounters teenager Josie, and her mother buys Klara for her.

Josie is home-schooled and sometimes ill, and Klara spends some time caring for her among other activities. Klara meets the neighbours. Josie's parents are separated, but eventually Klara meets Josie's father.

There are many twists in the story, and the ending was, for me, unexpected. Throughout, there is a combination of humanity and dystopia. It's accidental: no-one is seeking to be evil, but everyone is living through the consequences of their and others' actions.

Spoilers )
qatsi: (baker)
2025-04-14 07:37 pm
Entry tags:

You are here

Book Review: Longitude, by Dava Sobel
Ironically, this was the first book added to my Goodreads account. I say ironically, because of late I have been doing what I can to avoid payments to Mr Bezos, so I have been acquiring second-hand books in other ways.

Anyhow, this is the book that made Sobel famous, and I think she gets the balance about right between science, politics, and personalities. I think it's fair to say not all that much is known about Harrison as a person; Sobel gives only fairly basic personal details, focusing more on his works, and the wider arena of the Longitude problem. With hindsight it seems obvious that he was badly treated due to the influence on the Board of Longitude of various astronomers of the time, who believed their own techniques would inevitably yield the better result. At the time, perhaps it wasn't so clear: the Board had to deal with all manner of cranks and inventions, though most of those were dismissed, whilst Harrison's devices were tested and then the goalposts were moved. The improved accuracy and stability of his timepieces seems astonishing, a real leap forward from an unexpected source.
qatsi: (fat)
2025-04-02 07:56 pm
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Dear Gastronauts

Book Review: Floyd Uncorked - A no-nonsense guide to French wine, by Jonathan Pedley with Keith Floyd
This is a TV tie-in book from a Channel 5 series, published in 1998. Plainly the writing is mostly by Jonathan Pedley, but the serious business of French wine is lightened by Floyd, who adds a handful of recipes. It's an informative book, covering wine regions and grapes, and also the growing and producing processes. The format is a bit uneven, with sidebars on topics appearing at random, and although the chapters are structured geographically, there isn't a clear pattern. The recipes are interesting but I'm not sure all of them are practical, particularly in smaller quantities. But it was good fun to read.
qatsi: (penguin)
2025-03-24 09:16 pm
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Decades in which nothing happens

Book Reviews: Blue Shoes and Happiness, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, and The Miracle at Speedy Motors, by Alexander McCall Smith
Time for another round of revisiting for Mma Ramotswe. By now, we know what to expect: there may be a couple of puzzles whose detection is described, perhaps a few other cases that will be referred to but not filled out, and some domestic developments. I did notice on the re-read that things have become a bit timey-wimey: there's a suggestion we have moved on a few years, which of course seems inevitable, but the foster children haven't done much growing up, and Mr J L B Matekoni's apprentices are still apprentices - there's almost a subversive humour in everyone wondering if they will ever complete their qualifications. A couple of years ago I bought three books from the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series at a National Trust second-hand bookshop; when I came home, I found I already had two of them. It's fair to say they are forgettable, but it would be harsh to view that negatively; they just take life at a gentle pace. Original thoughts here, here, and here.
qatsi: (bach)
2025-03-18 08:27 pm
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A zither, a hurdy-gurdy and a pipa walked into a bar...

Yesterday we had a quick post-work dinner at Erebuni (which I'd previously visited in 2017) - this time I had the Armenian dolmas - before heading over to the Barbican for a concert given by Jordi Savall (whom I'd previously seen in 2014) and Hespèrion XXI. The programme was inspired by the travels of Ibn Battuta, and as such ranged from Morocco across the Mediterranean, north and east Africa, the Near and Middle East, the Black Sea, India and China. Loosely following his travel writing, with a narration given by Assaad Bouab, the programme also included references to contemporary historical events such as the outbreak of the Hundred Years War and the coronation of Pope Benedict XII. I'm not a great fan of the amplification used but in a large venue, it is a practical necessity for a band such as this. Savall's recordings always feel eclectic and well-researched, and though the geographic spread of these works meant that some of the concert arrangements featured unlikely combinations of instruments, there was an essential sense of authenticity.
qatsi: (baker)
2025-03-06 09:16 pm
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Permanent impermanence

Book Review: In Search of Berlin, by John Kampfner
Unlike many European cities, Berlin doesn't extend back to ancient times: the first records of a settlement are from the 12th century. Kampfner's journey is mostly chronological, with modern perspectives on historical events. Berlin has a hard time deciding what to memorialise and when. Like many capitals, Berlin is not representative of the wider country. Frederick the Great was a gay icon in 1920s Berlin, but his portrait also hung on the wall of the Führerbunker. As a journalist, Kampfner was able to experience both sides of the divided Berlin in the 1980s. There's no Ostalgie here, but it does seem that there hasn't been enough moving on. Berlin's population is still smaller than before the war, yet it also has a permanent housing crisis. Local government stumbles through one financial crisis after another. Kampfner visits various smaller museums and sites, a mixed bunch, run or maintained precariously by volunteers. Infrastructure projects, such as the Humboldt Forum or Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, take forever and spark controversy. In some ways, it sounds just like places closer to home.
qatsi: (capaldi)
2025-02-24 01:54 pm
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Strange Loops

Book Review: The Primacy of Doubt, by Tim Palmer
Poor Michael Fish. He will be forever remembered as the forecaster who dismissed the possibility of a hurricane hitting the UK in 1987. He features prominently in this book, but not alone. Ironically, the Met Office was developing its own ensemble forecasting at the time, and running the data with hindsight through those models, the forecast was unusually chaotic and unpredictable.

Palmer's career has weaved between quantum physics and meteorology, and I suppose it's therefore natural that he finds the connections between those two topics. "Sensitive dependence on initial conditions" - the unpredictability popularly known as the butterfly effect - features large, and is well explained. The solution - at least as far as understanding the potential for error in a forecast - can often be to run an ensemble model, with a range of close but not identical initial conditions, and consciously to throw in a bit of noise, to discover whether the predictions lie on a smooth part of the phase space, with little variation, or in a more chaotic realm.

Palmer stretches out into other areas more or less connected to the above, such as climate change, the Covid pandemic, and economics. In the first two areas, scientists find this approach useful: it indicates the degree of uncertainty in predictions, as well as showing plausible worst cases. There's an amount of separation here between science and policy: "Following the science" is a bit rubbish, as well as mendacious, because the science only offers projections on likely outcomes if a particular path is followed. On economics he finds tougher ground: although some theorists have found the ensemble approach useful, it is not in vogue and hard to get such research published. The implication is of faddishness or denial in some academic circles. It's certainly true that Mandelbrot considered himself an irritant to the economic establishment.

The fundamental problem with models in various areas is that of agency, so that the predictions or projections of a particular model influence behaviour, providing feedback into the model - it's exactly this non-linearity that gives rise to chaos. Chaos, in the sense that our mathematical frameworks aren't very good at handling this. The three-body problem is an early example - chaotic and ultimately unpredictable motion, yet somehow nature does its sums and finds a path. In the third section of the book, which Palmer marks as "more speculative", he investigates quantum uncertainty and free will. There are some interesting ideas about chaotic attractors and fractals, which earlier parts of the book have explained well. The Cantor set somehow fills a space, yet it is empty (insofar as picking a random point in that space almost certainly does not lie in the set). Synthesising these ideas as an explanation of quantum uncertainty, giving rise to probabilistic observations, is clever, as is the idea of quantum noise as a source of inspiration and free will. We are in the same zone as Hofstadter's strange loops. Some of the most speculative ideas in the final chapter seem off, but credit for trying.
qatsi: (Default)
2025-02-16 08:56 pm
Entry tags:

Bleak

Book Review: Air Bridge, by Hammond Innes
I had already added this to my to-read list when I found a copy in a National Trust second-hand bookshop. My interest was in the idea of a story set in the Berlin Airlift. Whilst that event is, in some ways, central to the plot, it was also a side-show. There were some good sections to the story, which give rise to questions about morality and ambition, amongst others, but they are stitched together in a way that hasn't dated well. None of the characters seem particularly sympathetic. The idea of stealing a plane from Germany, and flying it back to Britain undetected, seems fanciful to say the least. Bill Saeton has an engine design he believes will revolutionise flying, but it's unclear how much, if any of it, is his own work; he's run out of funding but he's prepared to do everything and blackmail or sacrifice anyone to get it into operation. It's the old story that the ends justify the means, and it's not hard to imagine a similar plot for our times involving tech bros.
qatsi: (sewell)
2025-02-09 06:26 pm
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Beyond Ravilious

Yesterday we headed off to Dulwich Picture Gallery for the Tirzah Garwood exhibition. As usual, there's quite a lot packed into a relatively small space. As well as works by Garwood, there were a few by her more famous husband Eric Ravilious, and portraits of both by other artists. I think I perhaps found Ravilious more consistently to my taste, but Garwood offers more variety. The works on display included woodcuts, pencil drawings, oil paintings, marbled papers, and collages, often of children's toys or houses and shops - including one with a Meccano mechanism apparently intended to circulate ducks on a stream. The subject matter varied from drawings of her children to almost surrealist renditions with curious relative sizing and perspectives, almost reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland or James and the Giant Peach.


The Vicarage, by Eric Ravilious



Portraits of Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood, by Phyllis Dodd



Etna, by Tirzah Garwood



Brick House Kitchen, by Tirzah Garwood



A Crane Fly and Spider, by Tirzah Garwood



Erskine returning at dawn, by Tirzah Garwood

qatsi: (bach)
2025-02-07 09:02 pm
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Sinfonia, Symposium, Symphony

Browsing the Barbican's concert listings, I'd spotted Walton's First Symphony in their "Half Six Fix" series, but on closer inspection, there was a full concert in the same week with that work as the second half with some interesting other works, and I decided I'd give the full concert a try. I noticed the hall was hardly packed; despite this, I was sandwiched between people who were forever fidgeting with their phones, which did make me question why they'd spent money on coming to the concert.

The London Symphony Orchestra were conducted by Sir Antoni Pappano, and after a brief introduction, the concert began with George Walker's Sinfonia No. 5, "Visions". I was curious after hearing his Lyric for Strings a few years ago. This piece was a response to yet another mass shooting in the US, and it carried a lot of emotion. I wouldn't rush to hear it again, but at the same time it wouldn't deter me from seeking out his other works.

A last minute change due to illness gave Carolin Widmann the opportunity as the soloist in Bernstein's Serenade (after Plato's "Symposium"). I'm not a huge Bernstein fan; West Side Story is justifiably popular, but I can't think of any other works that really caught my attention. Similarly with this one, I was mostly indifferent, although I did enjoy the fourth movement ("Agathon").

Fortunately, the performance of Walton's Symphony No. 1 had energy in all the right places. It struck me in particular that the dry acoustic of the hall quickly silenced the orchestral sound whenever the players stopped. Although my response to the other pieces might have been one of indifference, I felt the experiment had been worthwhile, and this final piece reassured me that the concert was worth going to see.
qatsi: (baker)
2025-02-05 02:20 pm
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All in the mind

Book Review: Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
This has been a popular book for several years, and I received a copy at Christmas. The first few chapters reminded me a bit of The Ascent of Man, with a little (probably improved) of The Selfish Gene thrown in for good measure. Epic in scope, the author shows us that, since the beginning of our species, we have been destructive; although he notes it as depressing, it is in some ways reassuring, that it is not a particularly new trait. What is new is that we're at least somewhat aware of, and concerned about, the extent of our own destructive powers.

So we begin with other Homo species, some of whom went extinct long before us, and others with which we coexisted for a while. It may be of some disappointment, particularly to those intent on a paleo diet, to discover that our ancestors were much more gatherers than hunters. The cognitive revolution allowed us to imagine things, and since then, almost everything has been to a greater or lesser extent imaginary. We thought the agricultural revolution would make us happier, but it tied us to the land and made even more work for ourselves.

It's not all ultra-nostalgia. Although the book does imply why we so often hark for a simpler era, it also highlights what may loosely be called progress. Lifting the lid on various religions is quite interesting. Later sections deal with commerce and the scientific revolution. There are some choppy waters on fact-checking: I had to look up St Brigid, and I have doubts she would come top in a vox pop to name an Irish saint. The author seems to reckon hydroelectric power is a source all of its own, independent of the sun. (But how did the water get there? From the weather, driven by the sun. It's the same energy source, with a rather longer process, for fossil fuels. The only ultimately non-solar energy source on the planet is from naturally occurring radioisotopes.) On the whole, though, the writing is thought-provoking and entertaining enough.

Written in 2011 with the English language translation dating from 2014, the book is weakest on its optimistic futurology. The sense of progress in the book is inevitable; it hasn't feel that way for some time now. The author focused on the potentials of genetics and cybernetics, but missed out on AI. The difficulty with the future is that it's hard to predict.
qatsi: (penguin)
2025-01-22 08:51 pm
Entry tags:

James Bond will return

Book Review: The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman
Continuing The Thursday Murder Club series, this time the gang are investigating tax fraud and the murder of an investigative journalist who had been on the case. But they get caught up in a money laundering operation, via the consequences of their previous actions. These books are best read in sequence.

As usual, the humour is clever, wry, and comes thick-and-fast. Of course, Bogdan will be available with the right tools for the job. Of course, Stephen will snap out of his Alzheimer's to make some lucid and very pertinent observation. Nevertheless, there's a lot of now how will they get out of that? and some multi-layered conclusions.

I'm anticipating the film adaptation of the first book, which I believe will air in cinemas this year, as well as on Netflix. In my head, Elizabeth is played by Celia Imrie and Joyce by Thelma Barlow, but that is the continuation of Dinnerladies by other means, and as the latter is now 95, well, I suppose we have moved on a generation, and perhaps it's for the best that Celia Imrie has been cast as Joyce.
qatsi: (penguin)
2025-01-15 08:26 pm
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The Noh Mask Murder

Book Review: The Noh Mask Murder, by Akimitsu Takagi
A surprise Christmas present, this comes from the same publisher as The Honjin Murders and others, but it's a different author, translator, and detective. Nonetheless, the writing shares some elements of style and there are commonalities in the period (just post-war Japan) and the self-referential framing to Western "Golden Age" crime fiction (this time perhaps more Agatha Christie than Arthur Conan Doyle).

The storytelling mostly takes the form of a journal, written by Koich Yanagi, a chemist staying and working in the Chizui family mansion, whose friend, Akimitsu Takagi, happens to be staying locally and is called upon as a private detective by the present head of the family in fear of his life. The Noh Mask of the title is a family heirloom, but supposedly cursed.

As the bodies pile up, Takagi, Yanagi, prosecutor Hiroyuki Ishikari, and the local police proceed with their investigations, among a family overflowing with motives and issues. Although there are strong suggestions as to the identity of the killer, there's no clear evidence, and the novel uses the persona of Ishikari to probe this quandarous stalemate. The conclusions require some suspension of belief, but it's a neat and cumulatively original ending, and overall it's quite a page-turner.
qatsi: (meades)
2025-01-06 09:19 pm
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Your Mileage May Vary

Book Review: Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, by Ian Stewart
Skimming through reviews on Goodreads, this book seems to have disappointed a few people, and I can see why. It is not quite the book I had hoped for, although quite a lot of it is. I wanted some interesting randomness, I suspected I would already know a few things but there would be some discoveries. And that is what I got. But I wasn't looking for brain-teasers, and there were quite a few of those too; I found them irritating because I didn't want to get out pen and paper whilst reading, and in any case, many of them either required a trick of lateral thinking, or else just a brute force method (or at least, no other method was explained). Some readers had the opposite problem, that they wanted the brain-teasers but not the more descriptive, exploratory stuff. I suppose it's difficult to know what to include in such a book, it's not a history or a focus on a specific topic, but it is an accumulation of curious knowledge acquired over the years. I found particularly interesting topics such as Legislating (in Indiana) the value of pi; Space-Filling Curves and Fractals; Benford's Law; the Poincaré Conjecture; the shape and sound of drums; P=NP?; and somewhere, unnamed, there was a description of an ordering problem that was reminiscent of Arrow's Theorem.
qatsi: (Default)
2024-12-31 04:26 pm

The qatsi awards

It's time for an end-of-the-year post. Lots of things happened in 2024.

At last we got rid of the Tories, although Starmer seems almost as tone-deaf as his predecessor (in either government or party dimensions). It's true, of course, that things can't be fixed overnight, but he doesn't seem to do "hope" particularly well. Locally, the Tories lost the seat to Labour, with a disappointing Lib Dem result, although recently I reflected that perhaps we had taken some votes from the Tories, which would have been important in the final result. I suspect there are quite a few places where the margin of victory wasn't particularly high, and as a result the parliamentary landslide is shallow. Reform are emboldened by Trump's victory in the US and the Tories seem determined to track them rather than attract voters by returning to more central ground. I have the feeling this won't end well.

Given my post from last year, I should observe that since November we've been connected with full fibre. So far, so good. It turns out, in a repeat performance of digging up the roads, Virgin Media is also an option now. It seems everyone apart from BT/Openreach think it's worth laying fibre here. There might be regulatory reasons for that.

A friend, who is a few years older, retired early from their job, precipitated by changes to USS. It was bound to start happening at some point, but nonetheless it was a psychological jolt. For me, work has been a mixed bag and there are definitely some things I don't like about it. Over the holiday period I have been researching, planning and playing what-ifs with spreadsheets. I can't quite access my SIPP yet, but it's getting close enough that I think it's worth contacting Pension Wise in the new year, probably following up with real financial advice. Things would be a lot easier if I thought there were benign economic waters ahead in the next four years.

Anyway, here are some highlights from my year:


Honourable mentions for
The Devil's Flute Murders (fiction); The Subterranean Railway (non-fiction); The Britten Sinfonia and the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble at the Barbican, and Jonathan Scott's Organ Recital and two Kanneh-Masons at the Proms (music); One Life and Moonflower Murders (film, TV and theatre); MUZA in Valetta, the Tarxien Temples and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum (exhibitions and visits).