More Books: Galápagos, Love, Enzo, Joy

1. Galapagos (Kurt Vonnegut)

A Vonnegut-meander through one way humans might evolve via natural selection.

2. A General Theory of Love (Michael Lewis, PhD)

A general theory of how we form attachments to people from childhood through adulthood. How our emotional architecture built via neural connections and limbic resonance influences our identity and the identities of those around us.

From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily rhythms, and changing the structure of our brains. The body's physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become. In these pages, we explain how and why this is so. 

During the long centuries when science slumbered, humanity relied on the arts to chronicle the heart's mysterious ways. That accumulated wisdom is not to be disdained. This book, while traveling deep into the realm of science, keeps close at hand the humanism that renders such a journey meaningful. The thoughts of researchers and empiricists join those of poets, philosophers, and kings. Their respective starting points may be disparate in space, time, and temperament, but the voices in this volume rise and converge toward a common goal.

3. [Re-Read] The Art of Racing in the Rain (Garth Stein)

As expected, I cried. And sobbed. This time around, I noticed a lot more about cars than I had before.

4. [Currently Reading] The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up (Marie Kondo)

Start by tidying by category. Just doing clothes and bike stuff has already made a huge difference in my life! Kondo purports three main types of people: "can't put it back", "can't throw it away", and the combination of "can't put it back"+"can't throw it away." Start with clothes. I donated a bag of clothes that didn't bring me joy (even after I thought I had minimized five months ago!). And now I find myself enjoying putting clothes away now!

[Want to Read] Borne (Jeff Vandimere)

[Want to Read] The City & The City (China Mieville)

[unifinished, save for later] Timequake (Kurt Vonnegut)

Constipation

blabbering:

mindfulness has become a very hailed topic in this transforming society - where consumerism and information overload is rampant. several years ago, i read "mindfulness in plain english" and it was very eye opening but i don't think i ever put it into practice. though i was mindful that i needed to be mindful. and i knew how to take an emotion, chew on it, then let it go. over the years, however, i've been learning that this process can and should be applied to other aspects of life (other than dealing with emotions which used to have such a strong control and influence over me).

one such area is in my struggle for productivity.

let's take "writer's block," for example. what is it?

it's when ideas can't find a way out. or ideas can't find a way in. or something in the neural pipeworks is broken and all that comes out is jumbled mess of god knows what. you end up paralyzed and frustrated and fixated on things that don't help you get "out" of the writer's block. something is stopping you from being creative or writing down something or being productive, in the way that you want to be. you either have to let new ideas in, fix the pipeworks (e.g. refine your writing skills), or open the clogged faucet somehow.

it's sad to think that despite all of the information we are consuming in this day and age - current events, ideas floating around, television, and so much media - there is such a lack of outflow from those consuming. i find this true of myself. i have yet to ask if others experience this as well.

in short, i could say that one of the main reasons i often find myself paralyzed in life is that i'm mentally constipated, not paralyzed... in my little fairytale land of analogies, this makes so much sense. there's so much to take in, so much to let go of, and so so much to digest and spit out.

sometimes i want to collect and absorb, and that's great. but other times i have to let things out.

but hopefully it's not explosive diarrhea....

Childhood's End: The Human Spectacle

Another scifi classic first published in 1953, Childhood's End, traverses concepts like alien invasion, destiny, the supernatural, humanity's purpose, and free will. Clarke's premise begins with the invasion of the Overlords, who are technologically advanced, benevolent and seek to supervise the world in the name of bringing peace and prosperity. They are successful and bring about the golden age for man but their true purpose and appearance remains shrouded in mystery for a handful of generations. Childhood's End examines the result of their invasion and the eventual culmination of their arrival.

I found myself compelled by many of the twists and turns of the plot and the philosophical ruminations on the peaks of technological and social progress. What is religion, what is science, what is art, what is the purpose of struggle and strife? What if we removed war and tribulation and fulfill the base needs of all humanity (by and large eliminating crime, poverty, and hunger)? Then we see humans flourish on earth. With a premise like this, Clarke inevitably probes into humanity's ultimate purpose....

“No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.” 

On my read-through, the book feels disjointed and not as fleshed out as I would have liked it. However,  Childhood's End successfully stretched the dimensions of my mind, even just a little. The final pages of the book, in particular, leave me with an internal struggle (possible spoilers ahead?):

What is humanity and are we irrelevant in the vast expanse of the universe? Sometimes I read books like these and it's hard, as an individual soul (or am I?), to get on-board with the idea presented here --- that we are meant to merge with a higher power. Yes, something innate within us longs to be part of a collective, a community, and that somehow provides meaning and purpose. At the same time, we are individual and existential... and that somehow allows self-determination and free will. That's a simplistic summary of what I view to be the human paradox, to be sure. Grandiose religion, science, and art all seem to dance around this. As I am, I am stuck in an in-between.

Thought-provoking, imaginative, full of high-concepts, and plot-driven, reading Childhood's End is an embrace of science fiction's roots. Clarke is one of the "big three" of classic science fiction (among Asimov and Heinlein) so it stands to reason that it is a "must read." It is definitely still relevant more than half a century later.

P.S. I should really start my own Goodreads.... but I don't feel very confident in my book reviews because I normally don't put a lot of time or thought into it. Though I will admit I've gotten somewhat better over time, I mostly just spew out a bunch of random thoughts (and spoilers) and leave it as is.

Currently Listening: Kina Grannis - For Now
Currently Reading: Circe (Madeline Miller), The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Character, Love, and Achievement (David Brooks)

sunset peak

under the lens i lend to you,
 i invite you to the landscape of my mind.

but how vexing this feeling is --
  feeling seen and examined --
though i long for it.
i want to be seen.
i want to be understood.
 (it's not an uncommon feeling, is it?)

after years of loaning --
 i am used to returns.
maybe my stories never mattered,
 but i'll tell them anyway,
 if you'll listen.
 we can trade.

but then you asked for the prequels --
 watched the trailers reel --
longed for something too.
could i even dare,
with your stories,
 to co-imagine the sequels?

someone asked for more.
 how unfamiliar.
long ago, a naive self felt this before,
 blinded by my own hopefulness,
 and now: caution.
 skepticism.

too many times i've fallen off the deep end,
 wanting so badly to feel something real.

so let me sit here for a moment..
 and maybe i'll yield
 maybe i'll
 drift.

mokelumne wilderness

when we were together,

you were the salience of a stable calm
in the chaotic winds of change -
moments that made me better.
moments that made you love -
i was the essence of warm sunlight
scattered in an achromatic meadow.

we climbed mountains,
i pushed you further,
you drew me inward.
home was always within.
and we saw that through the leaves
from the forest floor.

we laughed, hugged, joked, loved..
i learned and you learned and we learned.

but it didn't last like we said it would.
we theorized - said forever in passing.
but did we truly believe it?

when i find an old memory, i might feel homesick
and i'm fraught with questions:

could i have tried harder?
could i have yielded more?
could i have loved better?
could i have been more patient?

pointless recursions -
the answer is always the same
(maybe / not enough / we grew apart)
the night changes
and we're only human - only human.
i let the rain fall
and then i look inward
and i touch the newness of a clear sky
from the mountain of my own soul.

we were only almost forever
but we loved, and that was certain.
there was so much good -
so much to remember -
but most of all,
you changed me for good.

because of that
i can look back and say
"that was wonderful.
thank you, old soul,
old friend."

i know that will last.

The Three-Body Problem: tyranny, physics, and humanity's place in the universe

As a Star Trek enthusiast (fledgling though I may be), I like space. Naturally, this erupts from a love of science fiction, particularly how our imaginations can be evoked through the fantastic possibilities

of science. After all, "there is no science without fancy and no art without fact" (Vladimir Nabokov).

I've finally finished the 2015 Hugo Award winning novel "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu), and it was totally worth the read! I have so much to say... but I'm not the best at book reviews without being spoilery... so as is my usual M.O., I'll just throw out some spaghetti:

Flat Characters but Science- and Plot-Focused 

I will say that character development was not a particular strength of this book. Told in third person, the characters are mainly used as a medium for the alternate realities imagined in this book. However, now that I think about it, this commonly happens in many science-fiction novels. I find a lot of thrill in complex character development but when it comes to sci-fi, if I'm too engaged in the imaginative science, I think that's a win. But it's certainly not for everyone. The Three-Body Problem definitely captured me in many ways: (a) it appealed to my budding interest in history, (b) its science fiction had a strong basis in physics, and in particularly astronomy, and (c) it was a deep dive into what "first contact" with extraterrestrial life would really mean for the fate of humanity.

Historical Setting

The backdrop of the 3BP story begins during the Cultural Revolution in China. I learned quite a lot about the Cultural Revolution in China; it had quite a rounded collection of perspectives, ranging from reactionaries, the Red Guard, and the political elite. A great portion of the book is spent setting up the world and exploring the condition of humanity during this time. After a slow start to reading through the set-up, things (finally) started to get weird: the "fiction" part is an imaginative (and yet tenable) spin on China's race for the search of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) at Red Coast Base. Here, the main character, discovers a method of amplifying outgoing and inbound signals and secretly sends the first successful "first contact" message out into the universe.

Human history is indeed filled with horrors and wars and atrocities, and the characters of the book are products of those. Their actions are motivated by formative experiences. The characters are subjected to the tyranny of humanity and it feels outside of their control. It's hard to agree that this is a world where positive experiences greatly outweigh negative ones in the human psyche. In the current political sphere and historically, humans have paid forward fear (the basis of hate and anger and self-preservation) in seemingly limitless amounts. Despite the ideals and smaller experiences of kindnesses experienced by the characters, often the educated elite, they hang on to a cold and cynical ideal. Maybe we don't pay forward kindness or love enough. Maybe ideals are simply not enough (if it were true, communism would actually work.) Just something to think about...

Physics

Having not taken a physics class for several years, I found the physics topics largely educational. Besides the obvious staging of SETI technology, The Three-Body Problem explores in-depth the classical three body problem in physics, with which there currently is no known computational solution. This problem is crucial to world-building for the alien civilization (my favorite visualization is on page 238 of the Tor translated publication) of the closest triple star system to our solar system (Alpha Centauri AB and Proxima Centauri). Imagine a civilization's (the Trisolarans) planet whose orbit was affected by THREE suns -- now that's a thought exercise! -- and Liu Cixin brazenly dives deep into what that might look like.

Other scientific concepts touched on in this book:

• astronomy (obviously)
• special vs general relativity
• artificial intelligence
• computing technology
• dimensional folding

The Fermi Paradox

Ah, a basic tenant of SETI -- the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox has four main premises:

• there are billions of stars in the galaxy and many are billions of years older than our solar system
• it is highly probably that some of these stars have Earth-like planets that support intelligent life
• some of these civilizations have developed interstellar travel
• even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way could easily be traversed in a few million years

... so why have we not heard from anyone yet?

Many theories try to answer this question. But the upstanding theory that 3BP alludes to is the dark forest theory. In this theory, we know so little of the civilizations out there and the potential technologies they may possess that it is dangerous to communicate with them. Any contact would risk revealing our location in the galaxy and thus leave us vulnerable to destruction.

3BP also explores, with Asimov-like echoes, the general progression of science and technology towards interstellar exploration. And do we really want that? What does society look like once we've established mastery over subatomic particles or antimatter? We might just blow each other up and there might be nothing left. Indeed, an overwhelming motif of 3BP is that the human civilization is self-destructive and "undeserving" of continuation. Judgment day is coming for Earth - in what form? Alien invasion or our own demise? 3BP asks the question: what do we really mean in the grand scheme of the universe? Can we, as a whole civilization, really be redeemed? Do our actions really matter? Who - are - we?

Conclusions

Ultimately, since the book is the first of a trilogy, it is largely world development. We don't meet the Trisolarans in person but we have communicated with them. 3BP asks us to look up at the sky and imagine the possibility of extraterrestrial life and how it would ultimately change the face of the Earth and how we understand the universe should we make contact with them. It asks us to think about our political climate and how poorly we treat one another, both individually, as larger organizations or countries, and even within the groups we identify with. What ideals are you driven by, if any?

My next question is... should I read the next two books of the trilogy?

I think I've racked my brain enough in this space (hah!)... I've still got a long queue of other books to get through but I'm putting The Dark Forest somewhere on there. :)

Other Interesting Reads:

What Happens if China Makes First Contact?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/what-happens-if-china-makes-first-contact/544131/

Next Reads: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Timothy Snyder), A General Theory of Love (Thomas Lewis, M.D. Fair Amini, M.D., Richard Lannon, M.D.)

Bad Blood, a story of the tell-tale start-up

Back in 2014 while studying for my master's degree, I remember touring Silicon Valley for the first time. It was a brand new world to me and I was, for lack of a better term, starry-eyed. Everything about the Bay Area told us to look for new ways to innovate and to make money out of technology or some big idea. It's what got me out of the idea that I wanted to do anything drug-related or something where the impact timeline would be 10+ years down the line.

Four years later, a Wall Street Journal investigative journalist publishes a book titled "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup." All there is to be said about the book has already been said. In my opinion, it's worth the read if you're in biotech, basic sciences, or even just interested in a startup in the healthcare landscape.

There are so many facets to the story of Theranos. First, it's valuable to understand that the vision of Theranos was one of wanting to change the world and revolutionizing the healthcare industry. The mission was noble. The difference it could make to healthcare and medicine was profound (along the lines of preventative healthcare, drug reaction monitoring, etc.). There was a lot of money to be made. If the technology challenges had actually been overcome in the time that Ms. Holmes led Theranos (it called for advances and innovations in chemistry, microfluidics, scale-up, etc.), it would have truly been the next step to the tricorders of Star Trek. Combine this with the Silicon Valley hype train that the starry-eyed VCs rode in the 2000s and early 2010s. Combine that with Ms. Holmes' captivation with Steve Jobs and the idea of changing the world from a young age.

It's a very cautionary tale. Many profess that Ms. Holmes' was genuine in her desire to make a great technology that would help the world, but that she surrounded herself with the wrong people who encouraged her to cross too many lines, tell too many lies, and cut too many corners. It could have been her youth and the naivety that comes with it. It could have been she was a pathological liar.

In other industry spaces, (software, specifically), you might be able to get away with vaporware. But to continue on without conscience for the souls you affect when your technology affects medical decisions for patients -- it's naive to allow yourself to fall into a reality-distortion bubble. Whatever judgement you want to make on her, she's apparently paid her dues in a settlement (no shares for Theranos, 10 year ban on chairing or directing public companies, and $500,000 penalty) and it's interesting to note that she's now trying to start yet another company [Vanity Fair]. I'm not sure how she didn't get jail time for fraud and endangering the lives of patients...

Some interesting items explored in this book:

• Elizabeth Holmes surrounded herself with higher ups who championed her cause and gave her start-up credence in the eyes of the more naive.
• Elizabeth Holmes had a romantic relationship with her "second in command" Sunny Balwani (20 years her senior).
• The company lied to the military and several federal agencies, including the FDA, CLMS (Clinical Laboratory Management Systems).
• There is an interesting saga of how she suckered Walgreens into partnering with Theranos and spending millions of dollars on renovating their own stores to make wellness centers that accommodated the Theranos devices.
• An oppressive atmosphere was cultivated within Theranos, surrounded by secrecy, paranoia, and constant surveillance of employees.
• Theranos' persistence and bullying in silencing employees and former employees resulted in the SUICIDE of Ian Gibbons.
• John Carreyou (the journalist and author of the book) details his experiences in trying to gather sources for the story. Once news broke to Theranos that The Wall Street Journal was working on the story, Theranos began threatening and bullying those who they believed were Carreyou's sources, both public and confidential. Scary effing stuff.

A slew of other things but some food for thought:

"Hyping your product to get funding while concealing your true progress and hoping that realtiy will eventually catch up to the hype continues to be tolerated in the tech industry. But it's crucial to bear in mind that Theranos wasn't a tech company in the traditional sense. It was first and foremost a health-care company. Its product wasn't software but a medical device that analyzed peoples' blood. As Holms herself liked to point out in media interviews and public appearances at the height of her fame, doctors base 70 percent of their treatment decisions on lab results. They rely on lab equipment to work as advertised. Otherwise, patient health is jeapordized."

"This book, which flowed from my work exposing the Theranos scandal in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, would not have been possible without the help of the confidential sources who spoke to me at great personal peril throughout 2015 and 2016. [...] All were moved to talk to me, despite the legal and career risks they faced, by one overriding concern: protecting the patients who stood to suffer harm from Theranos' faulty blood tests. I will forever be grateful to them for their integrity and their courage. They are the true heroes of this story."

If you're in the healthcare industry and want to make a difference in the space, the industry, or your community, don't forget the reasons you are in it.

Another good read: http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/why-silicon-valley-keeps-getting-biotechnology-wrong.html

Currently Reading: The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu)