Q4 Book List

Thoughts on the year to follow next week. But I got my century!

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I love Nassim Taleb, but not nearly as much as he loves himself. Interesting throughout nonetheless, though less so than previous work. And even more self-congratulatory and arrogant, which is hard to believe.

The Cay, Theodore Taylor

Classic shipwreck story, where young boy learns a thing or two about people and prejudice in WW II Caribbean. Easy to read, harder to recommend.

Taft 2012: A Novel, Jason Heller

Very cute idea, capably rendered.

Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, David K. Randall

Sleep is crucial for well being and happiness, yet it remains mysterious to doctors and scientists.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963, Christopher Paul Curtis

Disjointed story with little to say about the titular subject. Disappointing, because I expected to enjoy the Michigan connection.

Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann

Classic about how the media shapes public opinion, rather than reporting the news. Full of insight, but I found the writing hard to digest

The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's,Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, Tracie McMillan

Not as interesting or as insightful as I'd hoped, but I'll never look at supermarket produce or an Applebees menu the same way again.

Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro

Beautiful and engaging writing about ordinary people doing ordinary things. A delightful surprise--and a Canuck to boot!

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, Robert M. Pirsig

It's exhausting, all that passionate searching for fundamental truths and essences. Also for the reader

Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, Ryan Holiday

Pressures to be first and interesting make information online increasingly combative, sensational and unreliable. Plus, the people who provide information care more about money than truth. Not the Internet we were promised. Not hardly.

Death in Venice, Thomas Mann

Somewhat disturbing story of aging and obsession. Not quite sure what to make of it, but I do know that I did not enjoy reading it, but am glad to have read it. And I am still thinking about it.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

Poignantly and generally believable novel about the problems and triumphs of a troubled ninth grader. Read this after seeing the movie, whose faithfulness to the text was to its detriment. I find it difficult to read about this kind of suffering. It hurts.

Rickshaw reporter, George L. Peet

Dreadfully dull and quotidian memoir about life in Singapore between the two world wars. I had thought this might be interesting, but the author provided scant context and color. Very British in its rote chronicling of everyday life.

Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age, Steven Johnson

Not as good as the other book by the author that I read this quarter. Interesting ideas though about the applicability of peer-to-peer networking in government and society.

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

The best of the three classic detective stories I read this year. A little cliched, but the writing is brilliant, and the ending surprised even me. Incredible, but I bought it.

Can You Trust a Tomato in January?, Vince Staten

Tour of the supermarket. circa 1994, blending a little economics, history science and folksy philosophy. A little bit dated, but interesting throughout.

The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in aMultispeed World, Michael Spence

Readable look by a Nobel prize winning economist at the patterns by which markets emerge, and how they are the drivers of future growth. Korea and China follow Japan, but the timing is faster. Is Africa next? Many seem to think so.

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, A. J. Jacobs

Entertaining look at all of the noise and signal in the "wellness" industry. Some science, but more anecdotal than anything. Recommended nonetheless.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Steven Johnson

Key is the “adjacent possible”, the innovations inspired by what is known. Collaboration and serendipity help as well.

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall

Is fiction a drug? A flight simulator? It serves no clear evolutionary purpose, yet we love it. Maybe we love stories and familiar patterns because they economise on mental processing power. That’s what Kahnemann would say, I suspect.

Detroit: (a Biography), Scott Martelle

 Brief history of the city from Cadillac to Dave Bing. Surprisingly, Racial relations seem to have done more than unions to shape the city and its politics.

Rib Roast

Last Sunday we organized a potluck dinner for 28.  I managed the hors d'oeuvres (all prepared in advance) but the star of the production, a 12-pound rib roast was a same day project, to be prepared in the unfamiliar confines of a kitchen away from home.

After a little internet research suggested that I have the butcher trim excess fat (leaving a nice layer on top) and then cut the meat away from the rib bones, almost all the way to what I would call the sternum (but which I now know is the chine bone), and then tie up the roast.

I strode confidently (okay a trifle nervously) up to the meat counter at Harris Teeter, where Angus Rib Roast was on sale for $7.99 a pound, a full six bucks cheaper than Whole Foods. "I need a twelve pound rib roast." I told the butcher. He told me that he had one, and that if I continued shopping, he's have it ready for me in a half-hour. "You'll cut it and tie it?" I asked, hoping that I had the terminology right. "You bet." he told me. "That sucker will slide right off the bone."

A half hour later, I had my roast, and, after transporting it to Potomac on ice, I set out to prepare it on Sunday morning for our afternoon dinner. I made a paste out of water and ice cream salt, and used some of it to line the bottom of a large roast pan. I then rubbed the roast with Worcestershire sauce and covered it with more salt. I attached a thermometer to the roast and slid it into the oven, budgeting about 4 1/2 hours to cook. When the temperature hit 130, I pulled the roast out of the oven and went to fetch a hammer to bust the crust.

After the roast had rested for thirty minutes, I pried off the salt crust (it came loose easily), transferred the meat to a cutting board, and began slicing it with my electric knife. All worries about failure vanished, as I tasted the meat: it was perfectly cooked, and mouth-wateringly juicy.

I packed up the leftovers and, when we got home, I made some stock from the rib bones, reserving the meat for later use. Last night, after the Long Island City Crew had left, I made a sort of beef bourguignon by making a roux from bacon fat and whole wheat flour (we had run out of all purpose flour, and nobody noticed the difference), sauteeing some onion and garlic and adding a glass of red wine, which I cooked until I could no longer smell alcohol in the fumes. I added the stock, along with two potatoes and a couple of handfuls of baby carrots, all diced into one inch or so pieces. When the potatoes and carrots were nearly cooked, I added the beef, and then I finished the stew by thickening it with a paste of cornstarch and water. The result was delicious; not as good as the roast, but a good use of what might otherwise have been tossed.

Anyway, here's the recipe. It's just the thing for a big crowd.

Rib Roast with a Salt Crust
In a bowl stir together 6 cups salt and 1 cup water until the mixture forms a slightly stiff paste. Rub a 12 pound roast with 1/2 cup of worcestershire sauce and arrange the roast, fat side up, in a roasting pan. Coat it completely with the salt mixture, patting the mixture on about 1/4 inch thick.Roast the beef in the middle of a preheated oven 325°F. oven for 2 hours (about 22 minutes per pound), or until it registers 130°F. on a meat thermometer for medium-rare meat. Transfer the beef to a cutting board and let it stand for 30 minutes. Remove the crust with a hammer and carve the meat.

I served two sauces with the meat. The first was a mixture of sour cream, horseradish, chives and lemon juice. The second was a jus, made by reducing 8 ounces of red wine and a sprig of rosemary and 2 cloves of garlic by half and then adding an equal amount of beef stock, reducing the mixture again by half. When I finished it didn't taste right, so I added a couple of teaspoons of sugar and that seemed to make it palatable. I still wasn't happy, but Worldwide said it was good, so I guess it worked out ok. I used the last of the horseradish cream sauce to make twice-baked potatoes the other night, which garnered an enthusiastic response from the BG.

Top 100 Lists of All Time

Excellent compilation, courtesy of the New Yorker. #16 was key to my gaming success over the holiday season.

Sugar Hill to Compton

When we returned from England in 1981, I discovered Prince through some of the older guys on the basketball team. This led me to the local R&B station in Detroit, WJLB, which, in addition to funk, had the Sugar Hill Gang's Apache and The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, in heavy rotation. These were soon followed by, among others, Run DMC and the Def Jam records family, and my love for hip hop was born. I loved the rhymes, the boasting, the beats, and everything about the culture.

1984-87 was a bit of a gap for me, as no-one at U of T liked that music and there was no radio station playing it. At Notre Dame, MTV's Yo MTV Raps helped to fill in some of the gaps, and introduced me to the Native Tongues Family, most notably De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, whose erudite rhymes and adventurous sampling ushered in another new era for the genre.

In the period of 1990-95, I finally bought a cd player and began to put together a collection, a practice made easier by the appearance of lots of "old school" compilations. Hip Hop is a format dominated by singles and many of the now classic songs appear on hastily assembled bad albums. It was also the heyday of West Coast rap and the various feuds were played out on the Video Jukebox Network, a 900 number service that allowed you to select a video from their library and put into the station's queue for play on their cable channel. My collection was later enhanced by the magic of peer-to-peer file sharing and the Internet, and my knowledge was similarly augmented by the rise of podcasting.

All of this led me to put together a compilation for my 21 year-old niece as part of our Secret Santa exchange last Sunday. I tried to organize it roughly chronologically, along the following lines: Old School; Def Jam/New York; Native Tongues; Early 90s; Gangsta. There aren't too many deep cuts or obscure numbers, but if you wanted to introduce someone to the rise of rap and its cultural high points from the beginning up until 1995, this, I think, would do the job pretty decently:

Sugar Hill to Compton: The Ancient History of Hip Hop, According to Big D

The Sugar Hill Gang,Rapper's Delight

The Sugar Hill Gang, Apache

Afrika Bambaataa And Soul Sonic Force, Renegades Of Funk

Afrika Bambaataa, Zulu Nation Throwdown

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Superappin

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, The Message

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, New York, New York

Kurtis Blow, The Breaks

Kurtis Blow, Christmas Rappin'

Kurtis Blow. Basketball

Slick Rick, Children's Story

Newcleus, Jam on It

Egyptian Lover. Egypt, Egypt--Egyptian Lover

King Tee, Payback's A Mutha

U.T.F.O, Roxanne Roxanne

Chubb Rock, Treat 'Em Right

MC Breed, Ain't No Future In Yo' Frontin'

Lady B, To the beat y'all

Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three, Request Line

Funky Four Plus One, That's the Joint

Run-D.M.C., King Of Rock

Run-D.M.C., Sucker M.C.'s (Krush-Groove 1)

Run-D.M.C., It's Tricky

Fat Boys, Fat Boys

The Beastie Boys, No Sleep Till Brooklyn

The Beastie Boys, Shake Your Rump

LL Cool J, I Can't Live Without My Radio

LL Cool J, Mama Said Knock You Out

3rd Bass, Wordz Of Wizdom

Biz Markie, Turn Tha Party Out

MC Lyte, Cold Rock A Party (Bad Boy Remix)

Eric B. & Rakim, Paid In Full

EPMD, I`m Housing

Rob Base, It Takes Two

Roxaanne Shante, Have A Nice Day

Pete Rock & CL Smooth, They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y)

Big Daddy Kane, Warm It Up, Kane

Heavy D & The Boyz, Don't Curse

Kid 'N Play, Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody

De La Soul, Eye Know

De La Soul, Me Myself And I

De La Soul, A Roller Skating Jam Named ''Saturdays''

Jungle Brothers, Feelin' Alright

Jungle Brothers, Doin' Our Own Dang

A Tribe Called Quest, Check The Rhime

A Tribe Called Quest, Electric Relaxation

A Tribe Called Quest, Can I Kick It?

Brand Nubian, All For One

Black Sheep, The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)

Black Sheep, Flavor Of The Month

Monie Love, Monie In The Middle

Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dr. Bombay

Digital Underground, Doowutchyalike

KMD, Nitty Gritty (Remix)

The Pharcyde, Ya Mama

Arrested Development, People Everyday

Stetsasonic, Talkin' All That Jazz

Guru, Loungin'

The Fugees, Nappy Head

Naughty By Nature, O.P.P.

Queen Latifah, Latifah's Had It Up To Here

Public Enemy, Fight The Power

95 South, Whoot, There It Is

Duice, Dazzey Duks

The Beastie Boys, Root Down

Coolio, Fantastic Voyage

Us3, Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)

Wreckx-N-Effect, Rump Shaker

Tag Team, Whoomp There It Is

Young MC, Bust A Move

Outkast, Rosa Parks

Das EFX, They Want EFX

Patra, Queen Of The Pack

Salt-n-Pepa, Shoop

M.C. Luscious, Boom! I Got Your Boyfriend

Digable Planets, Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)

Naughty By Nature, Hang Out And Hustle

George Clinton, Bop Gun (One Nation)

N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton

N.W.A., Fuck Tha Police

N.W.A., Express Yourself

Dr. Dre, Nuthin' But A "G" Thang

Eazy-E, Real Muthaphuckkin G's

Eazy-E, We Want Eazy

Snoop Dogg, Gin And Juice

Cypress Hill, Insane In The Brain

Too $hort, Money In The Ghetto

Ice-T, New Jack Hustler

The Notorious B.I.G., Big Poppa

The Notorious B.I.G., Juicy

2Pac, California Love

2Pac, Changes

Potluck Menu Planning

I bought the rib roast for Sunday's Secret Santa Potluck yesterday; it's cut and tied and ready for roasting, which I'll do under a salt crust. Twelve beautiful pounds! I'll also decide tomorrow what sauces to make--I'm leaning toward a red wine jus and something with a horseradish base.

To supplement the promised offerings thus far (salad, bread, polenta, beer, squash casserole, sweet potatoes. fresh fruit), I've been working on hors d'oeuvres and desserts over the last two days. Here's what I've got so far:

• Whipped feta with roasted red pepper;
• Celery stuffed with blue cheese dip and walnuts;
• Cheese ball;
• Vegetable potstickers with 2 dipping sauces;
• Baba Ghanoush
• Tzatziki with crudites;
• Peanut butter cookies;
• Mint chocolate chip cookies;

Both cookie recipes use 1/2 whole wheat flour. I'll make one more dessert item tomorrow, and possibly purchase another vegetable for the dinner. We are also planning, in the BG's honor (and G Hel's I suppose) a pickle plate. The other dishes are all from the Joy, except for one of the dipping sauces, which is from my girl, Nigella.

My Secret Santa gift is nearly complete. I just need to buy yet another cartridge for our printer. This time it's cyan. I have decided to start buying them in twos, so that we are never off-colour. We always seem to be one short of a full spectrum.

Antifragile

Although I am midway through Nassim Taleb's new book Antifragile, about the benefits of disorder on life, the universe and everything, I have already settled on my one sentence review of the book:
"I love Nassim Taleb, but not nearly as much as he loves himself."

The New York Times piles on, with a review in Sunday's paper:

At his best he serves up provocative theories that encourage us to look at the world anew. He reminds us of the limits of Enlightenment reason, goads us into thinking about why small might be less fragile than big (a rule, he implies, that applies to animals and corporations alike) and gives us a renewed appreciation of practical knowledge (of the sort possessed by engineers and entrepreneurs) as opposed to the sort of academic knowledge acquired in school.

Unfortunately he delivers such lessons with bullying grandiosity and off-putting, self-dramatizing asides.

The review goes on to assert that the book would have benefited from "judicious editing" but I can't imagine Taleb allowing anyone to meddle with his genius. Nevertheless, I think the book would have worked better as a Kindle Single: the concept is very interesting, but the tangential asides and endless self-congratulation get old fast.

I would recommend instead of reading the book, that if you're interested in the concept you listen to his discussion of the book with my boy, Russ Roberts.

What We Talk About When the Family Visits

My parents and brother, Young Jeezy were here this week, the former for the weekend, the latter for an entire week of board games and non-stop lightning round of entertainment and historical trivia. I made a very successful spatchcocked turkey on the grill, using the Mark Bittman recipe, augmented by a morning of brining. The bird turned out unusually moist, although it took more like 2 hours for me to get the temperature of the breast up to 165 degrees. Whether this was because of the size of my turkey (big) or the heat of the fire, I don't know, although I suspect the former. Nevertheless is was among the finest I've eaten.

This morning as Jeezy was checking his Ipad he commented on the desultory quality of his recent Internet searches. I married his with mine to give a flavor of our visit. The Internet is so much better than our former dispute resolution source--an out-of-date set of encyclopedias in the living room cabinet:

• Was Jenga a traditional game somwhere? (No. invented in 1978)
• What was in Uncle Jim's famous tomato butter? (Not sure, but we suspect brown sugar and vinegar or lemon juice).
• Where did Robert Graves end up living out his days? (Majorca)
• What was Cato's deal? (Staunch republican, Caesar opponent, played by Christopher Walken in a 2002 miniseries).
• Where is Easter Island and to whom does it belong? (South Pacific. Chile)
• Is skint really a word? (Yep. It means broke; busted tapped out).
• "Half hazardly," "upmost" and other eggcorns

Master Cookie Recipe

For Thanksgiving in Wisconsin, the theme was local and sustainable food, so we brought some artisan bourbon from Asheville, and I made peanut brittle with local groundnuts. It was my first time, and it went pretty well, although cutting it up did yield a small container of bits and pieces too small for serving, I saved them, thinking that they would mix well with vanilla ice cream (they did), but last week I had the idea of making peanut butter cookies with brittle chips.

I've never made a peanut butter cookie with any "wow" factor--they have always been solid but unspectacular. In leafing through my beloved Joy, I came across their "Master Cookie Recipe," which included a peanut butter variety, so I decided to try it, replacing half of the flour with whole wheat product from Lonesome Stone.

As I was stirring in the brittle, I realized that I had overlooked any baking powder or soda. I went back to the recipe, and to my great surprise, neither was called for. This made me nervous, but I decided to trust the Beckers and proceed as directed.

The results were incredible; a a chewiness from the wheat flour balanced against a peanutty taste and a nice crunch from the brittle. Even the OG--nigh impossible to impress--weighed in positively.

I made the version with chocolate and cinnamon this week, and after Worldwide tasted the first batch, her faint praise spurred me to stir in some chocolate chips, which produced the cookie I'd hoped for.

I'm not sure about the other versions (marble, lemon butter, lemon poppy seed, orange butter, orange-nut, coconut, ginger, butterscotch, spice and raisin)). but I think I may try the peanut version with chopped up peanut butter cups, which we usually have on hand. But try it. You'll be amazed at the toothsome result.

Master Cookie Recipe
Beat on medium speed until well blended: 2 sticks butter, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 cup of superfine sugar (or regular sugar processed for 30 seconds in a food processor). Add and beat until blended 1 egg yolk; then 1 whole egg and 2 tsp. vanilla. Add  1 1/4 cups all purpose flour and 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour and beat on low until just combined.

Refrigerate dough for an hour, then roll tablespoonfuls into balls and press onto parchment lined sheets into 1/4 inch thick disks with the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in flour. Bake 6-8 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

Note: The peanut butter version includes 2/3 cup of peanut butter with the butter, sugar and salt, and I stirred in about a cup of brittle bits at the very end. The Chocolate cinnamon variation adds 1 ounce of melted unsweetened chocolate to the butter and 1/4 tsp of ground cinnamon to the flour. I then stirred about a cup of chocolate chips in at the end.

Predictions

From Popular Mechanics, via the Browser. 110 predictions for the next 110 years:

WITHIN 20 YEARS...Self-driving cars will hit the mainstream market.
Battles will be waged without direct human participation (think robots or unmanned aerial vehicles).
The first fully functional brain-controlled bionic limb will arrive.

WITHIN 30 YEARS...
All-purpose robots Battles will be waged without direct human participation (think robots or unmanned aerial vehicles).The first fully functional brain-controlled bionic limb will arrive. 

WITHIN 30 YEARS...All-purpose robots will help us with household chores. Space travel will become as affordable as a round-the-world plane ticket. Soldiers will use exoskeletons to enhance battlefield performance. 

WITHIN 40 YEARS...Nanobots will perform medical procedures inside our bodies. 

WITHIN 50 YEARS...We will have a colony on Mars. Doctors will successfully transplant a lab-grown human heart.We will fly the friendly skies without pilots onboard.And renewable energy sources will surpass fossil fuels in electricity generation. 

WITHIN 60 YEARS... Digital data (texts, songs, etc.) will be zapped directly into our brains. We will activate the first fusion power plant. And we will wage the first battle in space. 

WITHIN 100 YEARS...The last gasoline-powered car will come off the assembly line.

Lunch Special

I've written before about the BG's lunch of a lifetime. Last week, she asked me if we could celebrate the numerical symmetry of today (12/12/12) with a special lunch. She presented me with her order a few days ago, so I had plenty of time to prepare. She also arranged to trade lunch boxes with her friend for the day, to add even more to the occasion.

I told the OG what we were doing and asked if she had any special requests. "No thanks." she said. "The usual is fine."

These are my girls. Here is what's in the BG's backpack:

• Chips
• Milk
• Apple slices in lemon juice
• Pasta with red sauce
• Leftover cupcake
• Fruit Snacks

Hidden Costs

Part of the preparation for the BG's birthday party Saturday at a local trampoline place was making sure that all the guests' parents had signed a waiver absolving the hosts of all liability and turning over a bunch of personal information to boot. I don't worry too much about such waivers, partly because I support assumption of risk, and partly because I believe that they will not do much to shield the establishment from liability for actual negligence. Still, it's a waste of time, and the project manager in me is annoyed at the need for this bit of political theatre every time I or my daughter want to do anything. Yesterday's Times had a slightly more apocalyptic take on the practice, but what I found most interesting was the fact that several countries have actually outlawed the practice, which seems to me to be the proper direction. I just can't believe that such an action would make this country any more litigious than it already is.

On the privacy side, I didn't like that they asked for a host of personal information, including my drivers license number. The aforementioned Sunday Paper fans the flames of my uneasiness with an article about how app downloaders are giving away access to all kinds of personal information when they accept the user agreement prior to installation. As the Gs load up their phones with "free" games and the like, I wonder what and who exactly we are allowing to share our network. Yuck.

Update
It gets worse. As I suspected, children are often targeted, and data is being sold to marketers. An FTC report issued today has the details.

Too Short

Listening to Saturday's WeFunk, a guest DJ played Too Short's Money in the Ghetto, a song that was in Heavy Rotation when we were watching the Box on Independence Avenue Southeast in 1993. Some of the lyrics came in handy later, when I was teaching a young OG who those faces on the bills were. She can still recite the rhyme:

On the one dollar bill if you look on the front
You'll find the face of George Washington.
Make money baby, that's all I do,
That's why I know Thomas Jefferson is on the two.
Abraham Lincoln got shot and died,
Freed the slaves, so they put him on the five;
And Hamilton, my old time friend,
They put his face on the front of the ten.

Not as historically informative as you might like, but memorable nonetheless.

Seignorage Saves the Day

My boy Matt Yglesias advocates a novel plan for evading the debt ceiling, inspired by FDR's not-illegal-but-not-clearly-legal-either abandoning of the gold standard in 1933:

Section (k) of 31 USC § 5112, "Denominations, specifications, and design of coins" plainly states that the Treasury Secretary can create arbitrary quantities of new legal tender as long as it's made out of platinum:

(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

Why did Congress draft a statute that doesn't specify what denominations the platinum coin may be? I have no idea. But it's a gaping loophole in the basic monetary framework of the United States, and pretty clearly allows Secretary Geithner to at least temporarily evade the debt ceiling by financing the government through seigniorage.

I love this plan! It would certainly staunch criticism that the President is not a man of action, and I've been struggling for some time with the question of why we don't print more money when the world sees us as far and away the safest place for investment. A nice trillion dollar coin would be crossing the streams in a very exciting way.

Who Needs a Doctor When You Have an IPhone?

Technology pioneer Vinod Khosla has a great article about increasing the use of technology in the medical profession. He asserts that doctors are not all that good at diagnosis--there is too much information, and the knowledge base is constantly increasing:

Today's diagnoses are partially informed by patients' medical histories and partially by symptoms (but patients are bad at communicating what's really going on). They are mostly informed by advertising and the doctor's half-remembered and potentially obsolete lessons from medical school (which are laden with cognitive biases, recency biases, and other human errors). Many times, if you ask three doctors to look at the same problem, you'll get three different diagnoses and three different treatment plans. ...

Healthcare should become more about data-driven deduction and less about trial-and-error. That's hard to pull off without technology, because of the increasing amount of data and research available. Next-generation medicine will utilize more complex models of physiology, and more sensor data than a human MD could comprehend, to suggest personalized diagnosis. Thousands of baseline and multi-omic data points, more integrative history, and demeanor will inform each diagnosis. Ever-improving dialog manager systems will help make data capture and exploration from patients more accurate and comprehensive. Data science will be key to this. In the end, it will reduce costs, reduce physician workloads, and improve patient care. 

I am looking forward to a daily snapshot of my health, courtesy of my phone. That day is clearly at hand.

The House By the Creek

About a year ago, the judge I was working for asked me for a favor. He had written a children's book long ago, inspired by a family story from North Carolina during the American Revolution, and asked for my thoughts.  I read it, offered some editorial suggestions, and identified a local publisher in Greensboro that looked like it might be a good candidate for the work.

Six months later, I got an email from the judge asking for advice on a response that he had gotten from the company: basically, they were asking for a capital investment  to defray some of the costs of publication. I ran the message by my book trade brother, the former librarian known as Young Jeezy, and he was sceptical, asserting, that, although the company would probably do the formatting and publishing work, the extent of their support of the book would likely end there, meaning that it would likely not have a future as a Disney movie, or inspire a theme park in Orlando, let alone recoup the initial investment.

Still, the president of the company had written books about the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina, so I suggested to the judge that he at least talk to him. He did, and, impressed by the editor's knowledge of the industry and his connections to school libraries in the state (the most likely purchasers), he decided to go forward. He enlisted an artist friend to design the cover, and when I went to visit him at the court in September, he showed me the final draft, which looked beautiful.

Buoyed by a nice review in the Raleigh newspaper, the first printing sold out:

Leonard, a federal bankruptcy judge by profession, is the author of 95 of the most charming pages you or your kids will read in this or any other year. “The House by the Creek” is a truth-based tale of his great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, German immigrants named Valentine and Elizabeth Leonhardt.

The story opens, in 1781, with Valentine Leonhardt, a hard-working and prosperous farmer who had made his way in America after immigrating from Germany, showing his 10-year-old son, Jacob, a secret. He had Jacob pull a log out of the wall in the family home in Davidson County, and revealed to him some hidden gold inside a hollowed log. His instructions were specific. Jacob was to protect the secret hiding place no matter what, because the Tories might be coming, after Leonhardt and his three sons left within hours for what would be known as the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

You can order the book through your local bookstore at http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780936389370, although it's not clear when the next edition will be ready (the judge says it's in second printing, but my local bookstore didn't know when it would be available).  I've ordered one for my bookshelf, and one more, which I'll donate to the Carrboro Elementary School Library. It makes a nice gift, and if you want an autographed copy, I can definitely arrange that for you.

Back to the Hoodie

Fascinating Slate article by my boy Farhad Manjoo about an American company making sweatshirts locally, using innovation and direct sales to put out a higher quality product (he calls it "the greatest hoodie ever made") at a competitive price, somewhere between the  low and high ends of the casual wear continuum:

Among other things, he was able to hire a former industrial designer from Apple to rethink every aspect of the sweatshirt, from the way the fabric is woven to the color of the drawstrings around your neck. ...When you wear this hoodie, you’ll wonder why all other clothes aren’t made this well. And when you hear about how American Giant produced it, it’s hard not to conclude that one day, they all may be.

I can't say if the sweatshirt is as awesome as he says it is, but I do think that this business model is a harbinger of the future--quality goods designed and manufactured locally using automation and innovation to produce competitive products that are marketed directly to consumers. File this under the end of retail/race against the machine/return of manufacturing to the U.S. I think it's a win for consumers and the economy, even if the actual number of jobs produced is scant, and maybe even a net loss globally.

Nathan Brown on MoMo

When judicial independence in Egypt was a developing issue in 2005, I had just arrived in Cairo, and was trying to understand the intricacies of working on a US government-funded project to improve court operations that would go nowhere near judicial independence. I read Nathan Brown's Book, The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf, and Professor Brown was kind enough to respond to a couple of emails I sent him asking for further information.

He's got an article in the New Republic trying to make sense out of the current imbroglio involving the president, the judiciary and the constitution. He thinks, and this is consistent with what I saw time and again in Egypt, that the President and the Brotherhood did not accurately predict the consequences of their actions, and that the resulting chaos is ever deepening:

The problems do not lie so much in the content of the constitution, which is filled more with missed opportunities than egregious authoritarianism. But that document, if it passes, will have to operate in a very difficult atmosphere. Rival camps have now formed and are preparing to face off in every arena: not merely at the polls but in the press, the courts, and and the streets. Only a continued aversion to violence and a fear that civil disorder could drag the army back are preventing more violent struggle.

Whatever togetherness that existed in the rush to oust Mubarak seems gone, and, were I inclined toward prediction, I would venture to say that things will not be settling down in Egypt anytime soon. But, as Yogi Berra is reputed to have said: "I never make predictions about the future, and I never will."

Blogged Down

G Lo (and Worldwide, in the comments) call me out for my post about life with older girls not being as interesting as it once was:

I continue and appreciate each blog entry. But I question your observation that life with an eleven and thirteen year old is less of interest than life with a four and six year old -- I'm thinking that these are almost the most interesting years!

I think, in retrospect, that I was saying that it's harder than I thought to say something interesting on a regular basis. But maybe I'm just not thinking about it enough. so the perspective is welcome.

On an unrelated note, she also recommends a John Irving nook:

i know that most novels don't interest you, but I've just finished this John Irving book, the first that I've read. Among other attractions, it has a couple of settings familiar to you, although they are far into this very long book. My book list entry:

Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel by John Irving (A 2011 Post Notable Work) – Forty years in the life of a cook and his son, who is twelve as the story begins in a logging camp in northern New Hampshire and who, later as a writer, uses their peripatetic life on-the-run as gist for his novels.

Cynical/sarcastic/ironic me read a Prayer for Owen Meany in 1991 and  vowed never to read anything else by John Irving. It may be time to revisit that judgment.

Head Scratch of the Day

Worldwide lost the library's copy of Flannery O'Connor.s Everything That Rises Must Converge, and I went to make amends this afternoon, debating whether I should identify her as the culprit--"My Wife lost the book."

I decided not to implicate her, and the librarian reported that there were two ways to proceed: I could order a copy through the library, or place my own order and simply offer it as a substitute. The library could get it for me for $30, $5 more than the new Amazon price and $25 more that a used copy in good condition.

Don't libraries buy lots of books? How can it be that I can get a better price than they can? It doesn't make a lot of sense. And when I asked the librarian if they had considered printing their own copies of material available through Project Gutenberg, she looked at me like I had asked her if she knew when the Mongols ruled China.