Pun Salad

Pity the author, Marc J. Dunkelman! This book, dealing as it does with the perceived difficulty of implementing grand government-driven schemes lumped under the broad category of "progress", seems to cover very similar ground as does another book: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. And Abundance seems to be getting a lot more attention.

For example, I could easily find Dunkelman's book at Portsmouth (NH) Public Library; in contrast, PPL owns three copies of Abundance, and they are all checked out (as I type).

Dunkleman's thesis is pretty simple. He adapts the terminology of the early 20th century Progressive, Herbert Croly, who was famous for his advocacy of using "Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends". (Croly was also one of the leading examples/villains of Jonah Goldberg's classic title Liberal Fascism, but we won't get into that.) Dunkleman is not as hostile toward Jefferson as Croly was, though. His approach is that your standard Progressive harbors both (a) a "Hamiltonian" yen to accomplish Big Projects under the direction of wise and benvolent central planners and bureaucrats; and (b) a "Jeffersonian" impulse that central authorities have too much unchecked power to run roughshod over individuals and communities that don't have as much political pull. Currently, he believes, the Jeffersonian ideal holds sway; it's why we can't have nice things, like high-speed rail, "affordable" housing, and hydro power from Quebec down here in New England.

Dunkleman is a Progressive, and is mostly aiming his argument at other Progressives. He views one Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian oscillation as "the yin turned to yang, the ebb turned to flow, and the teeter-totter crossed its fulcrum." The idea that there might be some fundamental, and essentially insoluble, problems with Progressive central planning is not seriously considered. Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is briefly mentioned along the way, but only as a sign of increasing skepticism of the Progressive project. I kept looking for other serious criticisms: mentions of public choice theory, for example, but if they were there, I missed them. To his credit, Dunkleman does seem to recognize the problem of regulatory capture, especially when he looks at passenger airline deregulation. (Which happened largely thanks to … Progressive Ted Kennedy!)

As noted, one of Dunkleman's examples is a local one: he goes into great detail on the Northern Pass project, meant to string high-voltage power lines down through northern New Hampshire, down to Concord, Deerfield, and (eventually) Massachusetts.

The book is full of tales like that; I confess I found many of them not as interesting. Dunkleman keeps hammering them into his Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian thesis, though, to a somewhat tiresome extent. That gets repetitious.

The book's subtitle promises that Dunkleman will reveal "how to bring [progress] back". This, he finally gets around to telling the reader, is kind of misleading. On page 330 of the 333-page text: "This book was written not to prescribe thee specific changes that should be made in every realm of public policy, but to argue for a shift in narrative." Sigh. Fine.

I'll keep looking for Abundance.

I put this book by Louise Hegarty on my get-at-library list thanks to a positive review from Tom Nolan in the WSJ. I was intrigued by Tom's promise of "a work of metafiction as written by the Marx Brothers." Yeah, OK. I was hoping for Groucho, and I think I got Zeppo.

It starts out as one of those old-style Agatha Christie-like mysteries: a group gathered in a rental mansion to celebrate the birthday of Benjamin and also the new year. The party-giver, Benjamin's sister Abigail, has arranged one of those "murder mystery night" contests for entertainment. But in the morning of January 1, Benjamin turns up dead! Soon enough, the gifted and egotistical consulting detective Auguste Bell appears on the scene, with his friend/assistant Sacker to investigate.

But (as promised) things get weird pretty quickly. Ms. Hegarty inserts "fair play rules", presented by T.S. Eliot, Father Knox, and S.S. Van Dine: guidelines that good mysteries should follow. (Don't have the butler do it, for example.)

You'll also notice a conspicuous lack of basic forensic detail about Benjamin's death. Sure, the door to the "murder scene" was locked. But what about…

As it turns out, that lack of detail matters quite a bit. Details keep shifting out from underneath the reader. Chapters about Bell's investigation are interspersed with descriptions of Abigail's increasingly disheveled mental state. And (slight spoiler here) what puts the meta in this fiction is that Bell seems to know that he's a character in a book.

Cute, but I found myself not caring very much. Without looking, I'm thinking the Goodreads ratings will have a bimodal loved it/hated it distribution.

The author, Julian Baggini, is (I think it's fair to say) a pop philosopher. A serious thinker combined with a considerable amount of self-promotion. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that," said the blogger.) I became aware of this book when I looked back at his WSJ review of Science and the Good, which dealt tangentially with the issue of "free will." I've been a longtime fan of that topic.

I was very impressed with Baggini's approach to "free will": he's not so much arguing for a position for or against, but outlining his earnest search for the truth behind the topic. Perhaps unique for a book of this type, Baggini goes out and interviews other philosophers and researchers. Also artists and addicts. He fairly presents their views and insights. For a relatively short book, it's a real tour de force. His writing style is clear and mostly accessible to even a philosophical dilettante like me.

Baggini urges the reader to avoid the trap of thinking of "free will" as a binary, all-or-nothing deal, where we are either (a) completely deterministic bags of molecules, perhaps with some quantum coin-flipping going on; or (b) completely in control of our actions with the ability to choose any future path at any moment.

The truth, argues Baggini, is somewhere in between, depends on our situations, values, and past histories. Which makes things a little messy, but manageable. For this (very bad) Lutheran, his deployment of Martin Luther's famous quote "Here I stand, I can do no other" was very on-target.

Baggini's exploration takes him to various free will-related topics, some surprising: artistic expression, legal responsibility, addiction, mental illness, and more.

Not that I'm in total agreement. Almost as an aside, Baggini claims "Freedom merely as absence of constraint and presence of consumer choice is a very thin value indeed". Whereas I think, given its relative rarity and fragility, it's actually a pretty good deal, and not a "very thin value" at all.

Baggini's also read Free Will, by anti-free willer Sam Harris. Interestingly, he quotes the same bit of the text that I did back in 2015, where Harris is musing about Joshua Komisarjevsky, participant in a 2007 Connecticut rape-murder. Harris makes the (to me) sloppy, albeit astounding, claim:

If I had truly been in Komisarjevsky's shoes on July 23, 2007—that is, if I had his genes and life experience and an identical brain (or soul) in an identical state—I would have acted exactly as he did.

Baggini lets this go largely unremarked, but I thought back then (and still do) that there's a real problem with "I" in Harris's sentence. Given Komisarjevsky's brain, genes, experience, etc.: there's no room for Harris's "I" to squeeze in.

At the end, Baggini comes close to making a fully-libertarian argument. But then backs off considerably with (to me) weak hand-waving about the justified role of the state in providing health care, education, transportation infrastructure. Ah well.

I realize that I'm coming close to complaining that Baggini didn't write the book the way I would have. So don't get me wrong: if you're interested in "free will", this is a very good book to check out.

It took me awhile, but I eventually got taken in by the Slow Horses series on Apple TV. And, after getting caught up with that, I decided to check out this first book in Mick Herron's series. (On which the first season of the TV show is based.)

As it turns out, the TV show is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the book. It's a mixture of very dark humor, violence, cynicism, betrayal, and suspense. Mick Herron is a skillful, stylish writer; I found myself smiling every few pages at some deftly executed sentences.

Summary: Jackson Lamb is in charge of "Slough House", an island of misfit MI5 spies. It's where agents who have screwed up badly get sent, a dead-end posting designed to get them to resign. Lamb helps in that effort by being abusive to his charges, reminding them at every opportunity of their worthlessness. The newest arrival, River Cartwright, was set up to fail by a rival spy… or was there something else going on? In any case, he's now relegated to sorting through mounds of disgusting garbage, retrieved from the bins of a disgraced right-wing journalist. And (of course) finding nothing.

Ah, but could there be a connection with a fanatical, even more right-wing, group who have abducted a Pakistani student/stand-up comic, promising to decapitate him on video in a couple days? (Spoiler: yes.) And will the Slow Horses be involved in all this. (Also yes.)

There are some changes; for example, book-Lamb does not lip-sync to the Proclaimers' "500 Miles". You'll have to watch the show for that. And you should, it's hilarious.

A science-fiction mystery! I heard good things! Specifically, from Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason.

The setup is intriguing: humanity has been wiped out by "the fog", which has (um, allegedly) enveloped the entire planet except for one small island, with about 125 inhabitants, including three "scientists", the remainder being "villagers". All is idyllic, although you'll note some early-on strangeness. There's a first-person narrator, "Abi", who can talk to everyone, but doesn't seem to be actually present. And when a new villager arrives, it means an older villager must die. Tsk!

So, it's bizarre. Gradually, details, hidden secrets, and lies are revealed about the nature of the villagers, the scientists, and Abi. And that titular murder happens, which also happens to turn off the island's defense against that deadly fog, which starts its inexorable creep forward. And tech has wiped everyone's memory of what happened during the murder window. One villager, Emory, is tasked with solving the mystery; she's an Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle fan, so it could work out.

There are a lot of characters. A lot of red herrings and investigative dead ends. The reviews are laudatory, but it mostly wasn't my cup of tea. Like that guy who wrote "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd", I found it difficult to care about identifying the perp here.

A checkout from Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. Appropriate, because Portsmouth is the only New Hampshire town with a Whole Foods Market. I picked it up based on the recent mini-review from Katherine Mangu-Ward in Reason.

As KMW notes, this is a mashup of "a business book, a spiritual journey, and a personal journal." John tells his story of starting his first "natural food" store with his then-girlfriend out of a Victorian house in Austin, Texas. (Dubbed "Safer Way", get it?) And, oh so gradually, developing the chain of Whole Foods Markets that grew and thrived under his leadership. His personality is an interesting mix of far-out hippie and button-down no-nonsense libertarian capitalist.

He discusses his admiration for Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman early on, and touches on his attitude toward free markets and voluntary exchange throughout. (He says "win-win-win" a lot.) Occasionally this led to conflict. For example, he refers to his 2009 WSJ op-ed on healthcare policy, on which the editors attached a headline more partisan than he would have preferred: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare. It also featured Margaret Thatcher's classic quote: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." (Back in 2009, I blogged about the op-ed and the resulting controversy quite a bit, for example here, here, here, and here.)

John also writes of his opposition to unionization efforts, another thorn in the side of his largely-progressive customer base. He was largely successful in denying the unions. ( The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union was successful in unionizing one (1) store in Philadelphia earlier this year, long after John left the company.) And there were conflicts with regulators, pretty bogus in his telling: the SEC, the FTC, even local "weights and measures" bureaucrats.

There's also a lot of discussion of John's efforts to keep Whole Foods aligned with his vision, navigating the stormy waters of the biz: venture capitalists, IPOs, activist investors, fractious board members, and so on. It all culminates with Whole Foods selling out to Amazon in 2017, which eventually leads to John's decision to part ways with his baby.

There are a lot of good yarns along the way. One early-days supplier of hand-wrapped baked goods to the first Whole Foods store was quite popular, until one new employee declares during a taste test: "This is a Sara Lee muffin!" And a surprise visit to the supplier's "bakery" discovers, yup, a "pile of empty Sara Lee boxes".

The hippie side is well-represented too. John's pretty fond of psychedelics: MDMA, psilocybin, LSD. (Although he says there was a 25-year period where he didn't take them in a "significant" amount.) He's into meditation and breathing, etc. Hey, whatever gets you through, man.

A final interesting (to me) note: John notes the dichotomy between "foodies" (his term) and "health nuts" (my term). He's the latter, and at some point he goes full vegan, but he's aware that Whole Foods had appeal to both factions. So Whole Foods sold "animal products" (meat, dairy), although John did not buy them.

So other than John's paean to his favorite smoothie recipe, there's not a lot here about really enjoying food.

Some mystery authors who have established a well-known franchise protagonist will branch out to start new a new series, with a different hero. Michael Connelly is today's example; in the past, he's introduced Mickey Haller and Renée Ballard into his Harry Bosch universe. And now this new book brings in Stillwell. (I don't think his first name is disclosed.)

Stillwell is the lead representative of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on the offshore island of Catalina. Catalina is seen as the "Island of Misfit Toys" as far as the department's concerned; a place where cops who are considered to have blundered on the mainland, but not badly enough to be fired, are exiled. But, as it develops, Stillwell's only mistake was being too diligent and honest.

As the book opens, Stillwell is investigating a gory crime: someone has decapitated one of the island's beloved bison population. (Which, reader, is an actual thing.) And soon an even more heinous crime is uncovered: a bloated body has been discovered in the island's yacht harbor. It's a woman with a purple (specifically "nightshade") streak in her hair. She's linked to the island's exclusive "Black Marlin Club", which (coincidentally?) has just reported the theft of a jade sculpture of (what else?) a marlin jumping out of the sea.

It's the stuff dreams are made of.

As mentioned, Stillwell is a diligent detective, but he has a lot to deal with. The animosity that relegated him to Catalina is still festering on the mainland. He's got a girlfriend, but their relationship is fragile. Some of his staff are less than competent, and one is laid up with a concussion incurred in a bar brawl. And, unfortunately, the closer he gets to the culprits in these crimes, the more perilous his situation becomes.

Connelly does his usual excellent job of getting me to flip Kindle pages.

Coming up to the last few books on my Bond/Fleming reading project. Kind of a lackluster title. Another title might have been Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but I suppose that was taken.

As the book opens, Bond has composed his resignation letter from the spy game. The architect of the "Thunderball" caper, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, escaped at the end of that book. Bond and the entire British intelligence apparatus have tried to track him down to no avail. So 007 is down in the dumps, until (Chitty Chitty!) his Bentley gets passed by a gorgeous girl in a hot car (specifically, a "Lancia Flaminia Zagato Spyder"). The race is on! The girl is Tracy, troubled daughter of a Corsican crime lord. Bond falls hard for her.

But in the meantime, there's a lead to Blofeld's current location, a remote ski resort in the Swiss Alps. Bond goes undercover to confirm his identity, and to suss out his current nefarious scheme. Which involves a bevy of different beautiful women, a harrowing, narrow escape, and an off-the-books paramilitary operation with plenty of gunplay, explosions, and another harrowing chase.

And finally the ending (Bang Bang!). No spoilers, even for a 62-year-old book. But I remember reading this as a young 'un (my mother hadn't issued her 007 book ban yet), being very shocked at the conclusion, and having my appetite seriously whetted for the next book in the series.

Inspired by a WSJ review, I put this on my "Things to Check Out" list. (That review is from January 2019, which should give you some indication of the slow churn of my TtCO list. Fortunately the topic is timeless.)

As you can tell from the book's subtitle, the authors believe that the effort to use scientific insights and objective facts to illuminate and discover a solid foundation for human morality has been, and will continue to be, an utter failure. Not for lack of trying; the book describes efforts going back centuries by very smart people: Grotius, Mill, Herbie Spencer, Hume, and many more.

Speaking of Hume, there have been attempts to refute or evade his classic "Is–ought problem", essentially the linguistic observation that you can't proceed from statements about what reality "is" to deduce what people "ought" to do.

But people try. The authors note, usefully, different "levels" of possible scientific explication. The gold standard is "Level One": science settling longstanding moral questions unambiguously. Somewhat weaker is "Level Two": science providing solid evidence of some outstanding moral claim or theory. Finally, there's "Level Three": science indicating the origins of some aspect of our moral sense in the raw facts of evolution, neurochemistry, etc.

Scholars in the field are so far stuck on Level Three, although there are aspirations and claims otherwise. For example, the evolutionary explanation for "altruistic" behavior, where individuals self-sacrifice for the betterment of their community gene pool. Fair enough.

It would seem that, from a 100% "science" view, the "moral nihilists" have the high ground in this discussion. When you consider the fundamentals, it's all just interactions of mindless particles and fields, physics and chemistry. The authors helpfully list some concepts that (from a "disenchanted" viewpoint) are, at best, illusory: purposiveness, consciousness, the self, free will, intentionality, and (gulp) life itself.

But never say never; maybe someday "science" will suss things out.

(Obtained via the University Near Here's Interlibrary Loan wizards from Brandeis University. Thanks as always.)

True story: I got this book from the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. But only after failing to find it in the "New Non-Fiction" area, but noticing that it had been placed on the "New Fiction" table. I assume that was due to some jerkwad Portsmouth atheist thinking he was clever.

But for the rest of us, this is a really excellent book. The author, Ross Douthat, is not some Bible-thumping yokel, but a columnist for the New York Times (and movie reviewer for National Review). He can, and does, speak the language of urban sophisticates. Although, thank God (or whoever), I'm not one of those.

Douthat's argument for "believing" is laid out carefully in stages. In the early going, he makes some powerful points that indicate a universe, planet, environment, and nature that screams "not an accident". If the fundamental physics of reality were just slightly different, there could be no elements, no galaxies, no biology, … And even if you accept that dice-throw, there are further unlikely happenstances: the complex interactions between life and environment involving convoluted biochemical pathways to keep things moving and procreating.

And don't get me started on free will, consciousness, and the moral sense most of us have.

And we are supposed to believe that all this sorta fell together by sheer chance and accident? Brother, pull the other one.

After that, Douthat starts moving up the mountain of faith. He notes the prevalence of seeming inexplicable occurrences of the mystic and supernatural. He argues against exploring the spiritual on your own; that would be like trying to conduct particle physics research from scratch. Instead, be like Newton, and "stand on the shoulders of giants", taking the accumulated wisdom of millennia as a given.

And finally, he recounts his own path, from childhood Episcopalianism to his mainstream Roman Catholic faith today.

All in all, a fine read. I'm not going back to the pews myself this Sunday morning, but I look at the folks who do with considerable extra respect.