Passacaglia and Fugue

Book Review: Within the Walls, by Giorgio Bassani
This short story collection set in Ferrara from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century is described as "haunting" in the blurb on the back, and it's true. One could politely describe them as atmospheric, but also as fatalistic. Perhaps inevitably, Bassani's characters are often Jewish or engage with the Jewish community at a difficult, and later impossible, time; the author eventually left Italy for America before it became too late. From small fragments Bassani conjures entire lives, generally unhappy ones, whether from birth or changed through circumstance. I liked best, perhaps, the story motivated by a found nineteenth century photograph. They are, perhaps, more like moving portraits than stories, as although not snapshots, they come to an end rather than a conclusion.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Fiction - The Assassin of Verona, by Benet Brandreth


• Non-fiction - You're Him, Aren't You?, by Paul Darrow


• Music - Henry Wood's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition at the Proms


• Film, TV and Theatre - Ludwig (unblogged)


• Museums, Exhibitions and Visits - Yoshida at Dulwich Picture Gallery


• Food and Drink - Kinnie Spritz at Aaron's Kitchen in Valetta

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).

Book Review: Amazon DynamoDB - The Definitive Guide, by Aman Dhingra and Mike Mackay
Over the years I've preferred to find out about new tools and techniques by reading a book about them. For quite a while, I'd been looking for a book on DynamoDB, but none worth taking seriously seemed to show up, as if this mode of learning had gone out of fashion (despite books on other NoSQL databases being readily available). I came across this recent release rather randomly, by searching without much expectation.

This covers the necessary ground, and it does so competently. To me, DynamoDB is difficult to classify among the varieties of NoSQL - is it a key-value store or a document store? It leans more toward the former, but with some features of the latter. The book gives various examples of the operations that can be performed, including through the use of the AWS console and the NoSQL Workbench tool, with a good description of the billing models available.

A fair amount of the book is dedicated to database design, with contrasts drawn from the more conventional normalization of RDBMS schemas. Secondary indexes are explained, with the pros and cons of the local and global options. There's some material on the internal architecture of DynamoDB, which is interesting but perhaps not directly relevant. More advanced topics include backup and restore, change data capture (CDC) streams, caching and multi-region operations. The final chapter on migrations is particularly practical, including some cases where DynamoDB may not be a good option. This book feels like it fills a gap in the market, and gives a pretty good grounding on the database.