http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 22 Sep 2003 09:35:31 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/22/093531.php tmulqueenWe've been reading novels for so long we forget there had to be a first one, and a leading candidate for this role is Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe": and as a rip-roaring success, it can also claim to the the world's first best-seller. Adventurer and historian Tim Severin adds to an illustrious series of books in which he goes in the footsteps of "real" or "fictional" people (the lines between these categories may blur ...)Like many kids, I would have been happy to fill in the word "Adventurer" under the heading "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You can certainly apply this label to Tim Severin, who can also lay secure claim to descriptors such as historian, geographer, sailor, travel writer, and story teller. His adventures have included going in the wake, or footsteps, of characters such as St. Brendan the Navigator, Sindbad the Sailor, Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses, the Crusaders, Genghis Khan, the explorers of the Spice Islands, Chinese junks across the Pacific, and Moby Dick. Very often the escapade involved reconstructing the craft or method of travel used, covering the ground, and coming out with an excellent read of a book. For example, on the Brendan Voyage, he reconstructued the leather "currach" that the saint would have used, and then followed his voyage from Ireland, to Scotland, to Iceland, and on through the ice floes to Newfoundland. In "Seeking Crusoe", Severin first visits the island Juan Fernandez, where the "inspiration" for Crusoe, Daniel Selkirk, was marooned. Though he winkled out some salty tales of marooning from this location (it was a prime hang-out for the mainly British "privateers" - basically pirates under license - who harried these Spanish Waters off the Pacific coast of South America), he concluded that the real locale had to be elsewhere, on the Spanish Main (Caribbean side), where conditions were closer to the real world of Crusoe's island.Travelling round the narco-haunted backwaters of the Mosquito Coast, he hangs with the virtually amphibious Miskiti Indians (prototypes for Man Friday), and unearths many other story elements and source documents from which Defoe derived his themes.The motif of marooning, and being marooned, even self-marooning, is explored throughout the book. Playing the urge for solitutude, self-definition, self sufficiency against our instinctive urge for comradeship and society, there is much of Crusoe in both author and book - and in all of us. (Personal footnote: as a wanna-be young adventurer, all those clueless years ago, I almost made it onto the crew of the Brendan - as a photographer. They took a guy from the Beeb instead, and he had to be replaced in Scotland after suffering from sea-sickness. After reading the book, I was quick to forgive Tim for not taking me on!). Books8550@blogcritics.org Mon, 22 Sep 2003 09:35:31 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/03/092911.php tmulqueenAgainst the Gods by Peter L. Bernstein (Wiley) is a fascinating history of the development of the scientific and mathematical techniques of risk assessment. This sounds like an economist's bedtime snooze-read but it's a rivetting ride through the history of the entire development of commerce as we moved from believing in "Luck", "the Gods", "the Will of Allah", and other similar fatalistic views of the future to proven techniques that could underpin activities such as trade, banking, investment, insurance, pensions, market surveys, gambling, and many of the financial furniture of the modern world that we take for granted.Bernstein follows the lives and stories (some pretty bizzarre) of the oddballs (back then, you needed to be both rich and daft to be a scientist) who worked out the building blocks of how we assess risk. It all began with analysis of games of chance. A thinker of the day, back in the Age of Reason, put the question to some scientifically minded fellow habitues of the coffee shop. "If a game of chance is abandoned when incomplete, how should the unclaimed winnings be distributed?"This sparked off an investigation of probability analysis. Back then, people were so naive they would give you equal odds on any number from 2 to 12 showing up when two dice are thrown, when a little analysis shows that 2 and 12 can only show up in two possible ways out of the 36 possibilities, whereas much greater numbers of combinations will produce for example, a 6 or a 10. From such humble beginnings grew the vast array of actuarial and statistical analysis, the wonders of the bell curve, the stock market and financial markets, the capitalist system, etc. so much we take for granted as part of "modern life". Overall, the reading is clear and populist, only on one or two occasions does he say "The non-matemathically minded reader can skip the next two pages without missing the thread of the chapter ..." before delving into some of the math. Otherwise it's plain sailing for anyone who's read a financial page, and well worth the reading. Books8055@blogcritics.org Wed, 3 Sep 2003 09:29:11 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/20/063147.php tmulqueenOriginally called Scott and Amundsen, this book by Roland Huntford got the more market-friendly title of "The Last Place on Earth" when it was made into a television series of that name. The book describes the race for the South Pole: unlike most of this genre it is no rattling yarn of derring do, but a piercing analysis of the differences in personality, management style and philosophy of exploration that meant that one side (Amundsen) won the race, and came back safe and well, and the other (Scott) lost the race, and perished on their return. Not only is the tale fascinating, but lessons can be drawn that are applicable to many areas of life and business.Scott dabbled in modern technology (for example, a disastrous attempt at using a diesel-powered sledge), but really felt the noblest way of travel was hauling everything along using man-power. This exhausted and eventually killed the team. Amundsen spent years with the Inuit, knew all about how they used dogs, and brought the best dog handler he could find. With Inuit practicality, he was not too squeamish to kill dogs and feed them to the rest of the pack. As much as possible, traditional materials and techniques were used for the journey. While Amundsen and co were snug inside the best of Inuit clothing, Scott and co shivered in what Victorian Britain was currently able to come up with in the line of extreme weather gear.But a more fundamental difference was in the management approach. Scott ran along Navy lines, with a command and control hierarchy, orders coming down from above. Amundsen ran something more like a Viking raid, where everyone sat around the table and planned their next moves, though the final say was always with the leader. Everyone knew and committed to what was going on. Finally, there was a divergence in goals. Scott never seemed to be clear whether he was on a scientific expedition, trying to be first at the Pole, or, as it most often seemed at the end, engaged in some heroic but doomed demonstration of the physical prowess of the British race. Amundsen was clear: the goal was to get to the Pole fast and light, using traditional Arctic people's proven techniques and food to get fast and safe across the Antarctic. History is not always written by the winners: Scott of the Antarctic became an icon of post-World War 1 Britain, and Amundsen and co were airbrushed out as crafty Nordics who had turned the whole thing into some kind of stunt. This powerful and revisionist book sets the record straight. Books7704@blogcritics.org Wed, 20 Aug 2003 06:31:47 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/18/101208.php tmulqueenIf you haven't read anything by Jonathan Raban, Old Glory is a good place to start. Raban's books fall into that uneasy space between autobiography, travel, history and philosophy that seem to define the late twentieth century travel genre - for example, his "Passage to Juneau" is not only about sailing the Inner Sound between Vancouver Island and the mainlaind, but about being divorced by his wife because he is for ever off sailing and writing books. Old Glory draws its inspiration from a childhood fascination with the image of Huck Finn, on his raft, going down the Mississippi. As a grown man (if self-confessedly not a fully adult one), Raban "lights out for the terrority" in a utilitarian launch with an outboard motor - no raft for him. Sometimes the river is hauntingly empty, sometimes frightenly crowded with massive ferrys. It can be idyllic or life threating, with logs, eddys and boils of turbulent water to avoid. As ever, Raban meets people all along the way, well off, humble, even dirt poor, because while the river flows through America's prosperous heartland, it also flows through an alternative world of bums, bikers and old black guys fishing for catfish. Read this, and Raban and Old Glory will become friends to you, in the end you will dread the inevitable time when the river loses itself in the sea, and Raban turns back to losing himself in the crowd. _______ Jonathan Raban, Old Glory, Picador, ISBN-0-330-29229-3 Books7661@blogcritics.org Mon, 18 Aug 2003 10:12:08 EDT