[(5 - 3) + 6] -2 = 6, and Now -1 More Nonfiction Book... So There Are 5 Left

I'm trying to post some short fluffy stuff between the posts about these books, but I'm pretty carried away by all I've flushed out of my bookshelves and baskets.

5. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

I would have read this book if only for the intriguing title and the wicked cool photo on the cover. (Another good one to carry around!) I bet Tenner being the author didn't hurt the sales of it either.

I thought this book was going to cover things like how we have this sh-tload of software on the computers in our offices, but no one who knows how to use it to the full capacity programmed
into it. 

But Tenner addresses other "advancements" that have turned around and attacked us:  

• football padding that has made the game much more dangerous 

• ATMs with people lined up to use them while four tellers stand idle

• breakthroughs in antibiotics that create resistant strains of the bacteria we're battling

• military body armor that drastically reduces mortal combat wounds, only to leave soldiers without any limbs, or with severe head wounds they never recover from

• the "paperless office" with recycling bins overflowing and substantial orders of file folders and labels never abating

Ha, that last one reminds me of something I noticed in an office once. We were always going on about turning it into a paperless operation and I thought, Could we start, maybe, by teaching everyone how to suppress the blank page at the end of a document? There must be a million blank pages "printed" and routinely dumped in recycling every day in US businesses. Easily—yet never—addressed.

There is a grave unintended consequence this book can have: It can make one paranoid and even fatalistic.

First, one begins to appreciate the reality and gravity of unintended consequences.
 
Then one realizes that unintended consequences are a necessary by-product of everything we do.

Then one frets over what good or bad unintended consequences might arise out of our decisions. Or won't arise because we didn't make the decision or made the wrong one or...

Then one curls up on the floor in the dark and wishes it all were over. 

But maybe that's just me.

More Amusing Myself Again Also de Nuevo

Well,CAN you???

You'll recall my earlier Amusing Myself posts about things I've done where.... Wait a minute. I guess you can't recall them if you haven't read them, now can you?

Fine, here's a new one: Sometimes I'll insert or substitute a related but basically incorrect word in a sentence. Just to make people goggle a bit and feel uncertain about what they heard, or in doubt about my mental balance.(And I'm okay with that.)

For example, for The airline was extremely gracious about the layover, I say instead, The airline was extremely gratuitous about the layover. 

Many are oblivious (not dumb—just... well, who really listens in that context?)If they work for the airline they might even thank me. Others take pause and squint and puzzle silently over whether or not they ever really knew that word. 

Here's another example: Thank you so much for recusing the situation. People are like, ... recusing?? Is that right? Shouldn't it be... something else? (I am of course substituting recuse for rectify.)

To expand this little dido, I'll throw in a few words I've made up. (I "coin" a lot.) My objective is to make people think it's a word they don't know but had better be looking up. Or, a word I made up because I am mentally unbalanced. (Again, fine with that...)

In context then: He frinked over the new dress code. And what I mean for frink to mean:

 

   Fr-rink!!

Frink??

Mass frinking,or
"public frinking"
as it's called.

How about, We can always take it along in a porsel. Let me illustrate:

Not sure yet...
Porsel = food?

 

Still food, but food
boxed up?

This guy is, I feel, a bit
 too into his porsel. Mm-hmm!

Porsel to go.

This porsel indicates that
your server is on coke. 
But seriously, do they really think
someone wants to walk around 
town after dinner with 
this under their arm??

And then the last one, I promise: He was just taking his time, shouping along. Say it in pictures:

Shouping Off to Buffalo!

Jus' shoupin' around in
the snow, thinkin'.

These are your slippers
on shouping.

*****
Man, spell-check had a complete
nervous breakdown over this post.

Asa, age 12 (Go Giants!!)

 

We're watching a Giants game. One of those pharmaceutical commercials comes on, where they don't say exactly what the stuff is for.  

ASA: So is that for erectile dysfunction?

Umm. Yes, it must be.

[(5 - 3) + 6] -2 = 6 Nonfiction Books I Now Want to Write About; Anyway, Here Are the Two for This Post

I knew what could happen if I looked around the bookshelves here for the other three nonfiction books I planned to present. I ended up with 6 more books so now we're down for 9 total. Wait, no. Something like that. Perhaps this should just become an endless series so I don't have to hold it to a specific count.

3. Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization

Hodding Carter wrote this. Nice name, Hodding. (Not really.) There's not much more to say about it in relation to the book, but if his name sounds familiar it's because he had a role in the Carter administration.

Now this is not a great piece of reportage, but it's a great topic and a good enough book. It covers plumbing's long and colorful history; for example, the story of the aqueducts, which has always been a crowd-pleaser among even the most indifferent toward plumbing.

I myself have always been into plumbing. At first I didn't notice I was, but then I realized I had—somewhen, somewhere—learned how to replace a ball cock with a float cup. And when once asked what I'd wish for, for everyone, I said, "sanitary plumbing for all." There have been additional incidents that led to this self-discovery.

Something I wish this book went into is what life is like without plumbing, but I suppose that is beyond its intent. Nonetheless, billions of people in the world have "nowhere to go"—no sanitation facilities whatsoever, not even a bucket or a box or a plastic bag. My dog has that. If you're interested in the state of sanitation today, and what can be done to vastly improve the lives and dignity of half the world's population, you might hit up Rotary International online. They once ran a wicked good piece on world sanitation in their magazine, The Rotarian.

Yes, I read The Rotarian. Shaddup.

4. Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf

Omigod, this is hands-down one of the best books I've ever read. I hear a lot of people say they're into Sacks and they mention The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, or Awakenings, and these are fine books. But sometimes an author transcends himself with one book. For Sacks, it's this one.

Want to see into a subculture that is all around you, but you don't usually notice? When you get into this book, you'll be introduced to the Deaf community. Not the deaf community, the Deaf one. Sacks explains the distinction between capital Deaf and lowercase deaf. It's fascinating.

I came at this book from a more informed place than most will. As a grad student in Linguistics at UCSD in the 80s, some of my work was in ASL. The Salk Institute there is the heart of research into sign languages and I had the opportunity to work with Bellugi, Klima (my advisor), and Padden. Hm. These names are unlikely to be familiar unless you have a connection with Deaf people or ASL Linguistics. Anyway, there's a lot about all this in Sack's book.

I'll move onto the exploration of sign languages that Sacks presents. There will (may) come a point in reading this book when you suddenly "get" what signers are doing. It's so much like spoken language in so many ways—for example, propositional length (how long it takes you to get an idea out there) is equal to propositional length in a spoken language. Think about that. We can sign as fast as we talk.

Great shot of a conversation. They're not standing face to face,
looking at each other's hands. This is much more like it is in real life.

Yet, obviously, it's different in that it utilizes another dimension to replace sound: the visio-spatial aspect within our sensory repertoire. In learning about signing, when the break-through comes, you suddenly see how a movement of one finger (already defined as a certain person) toward another finger (already defined as another certain person) can carry all the meaning of "She came toward him"—and can be adjusted to carry different or ameliorated meanings such as "came down to him," "up to him," "ran over to him," "left him," etc., etc., etc. Sign does not rely only on "pictures"; movement and direction are crucial parameters.

Focusing on the subjective experience, this language is beautiful. Like to listen to someone speak Italian? All right, this is like that. No, it really is like that. It is gratifying and enchanting to learn ASL. When you know it to even some level, it is mesmerizing to "listen to."

I can't recommend this book enough. And carry it around with you when you read it. All your Deaf friends will think you're really in-the-know.<wink>