Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Book Review: The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra

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Vectors, matrices, and eigenvalues, oh my! The Manga Guide series’ triumphant return to the fertile and abstract realms of mathematics is, to this reader, most welcome and not a little overdue. This is not to say that previous forays into the physical-, life-, and computer sciences were at all unsuccessful. But even on their worst day, these real-world subjects are not nearly so difficult to penetrate as, say, set theory or integral calculus. And this is coming from a card-carrying math geek.

The wonderful and beautiful thing about this series is in its ability to come at complex and foreign topics from a sideways angle. I’m still amazed at the unusual points of reference the book authors find to bring the reader into some notoriously difficult topics – explaining onto and one-to-one functions in terms of restaurant orders, for example. The highly visual nature of the comic medium also serves as an anchor in what might otherwise be a text-heavy topic.

The manga scenario wrapped around all this math draws on a number of classic tropes, and not only from the realm of manga. Reiji is working hard as the newest student in his university karate club, a membership he paid for by agreeing to tutour his sensei’s sister in linear algebra. He’s the proverbial 98-pound weakling with a good heart, and it’s as good a reason as any to have two young people flirt and talk about matrix multiplication.

Of eight chapters, the first six are laid out as groundwork before the “real” linear algebra topics in the last two. The fundamentals in chapter two include reiviews of (or introductions to) set theory, some basic mathematical logic, and functional relationships. Following this are two chapters covering matrices, and two more on vectors (in a matrix interpretation). Only then are we able to tackle the true topics of the book title, linear transformations, eigenvectors, and eigenvalues.

It may sound like a hodgepodge, but it’s not. Each chapter builds carefully on the previous one. No calculus and only some basic algebra, trigonometry, and co-ordinate geometry are needed before reading this book. But the topics are tough for a newbie. This is university-level mathematics and requires a lot of practice problems before it will sink in for most readers.

The example problems in the text are great, but there are only a few. As with all books in the series, The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra is best utilized in conjunction with a thick textbook, chock-full of additional practice exercises. Much like earning a black belt, the road to mathematical mastery requires many hours of practice and perhaps more than a few forehead smacks on nearby slabs of wood.

(No Starch Press, 2012)

Reprinted with permission from The Sleeping Hedgehog
Copyright (2012) The Sleeping Hedgehog

LJ Ahoy

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My first Library Journal review has now been published, though it was written some time ago. It’s indexed online but viewable only in the print edition or the subscriber database. In case you were wondering, I reviewed the math text, X and the City, from Princeton’s academic press. The verdict? You’ll have to track down my review to find out.

Book Review: The Hidden Reality

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Physicist Brian Greene’s latest popular science publication, The Hidden Reality, is a departure from his previous works in that domain. Subtitled Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, it sure sounds like something the deep-thinking writer of The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos would write. But while his first two books serve as excellent primers on modern physics and modern cosmology, respectively, Greene isn’t interested in rehashing all that here.

Don’t get me wrong. For anyone looking to get a firm conceptual grasp on the deep physical laws which (apparently) govern the reality we live in, those titles are exactly where I’ll steer you. But there’s an untapped audience more interested in some of the implications of today’s cutting-edge physics than the details of the theories themselves.

To wit: parallel universes. The concept has spawned sub-genres in both science fiction and fantasy (alternate history and urban fantasy being perhaps the most prominent examples). More broadly speaking, most genre fiction imagines worlds perhaps highly disparate or only slightly tweaked from the one we know so intimately.

What makes The Hidden Reality a little more accessible than its written antecedents is its survey nature. Each chapter discusses a different theoretical multiverse, each implied by a different physical theory.

Our own three-dimensions of space and one of time might in fact be something akin to spots growing on the soap bubbles of a higher-dimensional brane, as described in string theory. We might exist in a virtual world, simulated on one of many computers in the “real” universe. We might find countless, infinitesimally-different versions of ourselves living in different quantum realities, endlessly splitting.

Greene wisely introduces the requisite scientific background only as needed, rather than spending the first third or half of the book slowly building up the edifices of quantum physics, general relativity, and inflationary cosmology.

It’s intriguing to imagine that one or several of these versions of a multiverse may actually exist, in some cases may be discoverable, and, depending on how they come about, may describe very different arrays of parallel realities. The idea of another version of you that is allergic to shrimp is interesting enough, but the concept of different universes with different fundamental constants, different origins and destinies, is fascinating in a different way.

I probably wouldn’t recommend this title to the decidedly casual reader. This is still Brian Greene, technically accurate, cogently argued, but intellectually demanding. But anyone with at least a passing interest in the real science behind other worlds should find The Hidden Reality illuminating.

(Vintage, 2011)

Reprinted with permission from The Sleeping Hedgehog
Copyright (2012) The Sleeping Hedgehog

Book Review: Physics of the Future

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Michio Kaku is a physicist and science popularizer, taking a page each from the books of Neil DeGrasse Tyson and fellow string theorist, Brian Greene. He’s written several popular science books on the wacky and wonderful words of relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory. His last book, however, Physics of the Impossible, was a departure from branes and n-dimensional space. He used fictional technologies like teleportation, time travel, and Star Trek’s phasers as jumping off points for the known physics of today.

That book turned into a Science Channel program of the same name, and the approach was successful enough that he’s done something similar this time around. In Physics of the Future, however, there is a clear, unifying theme. Though he still offers somewhat of a grab bag of physics, drawing on all different areas based on what’s interesting right now, it’s all geared towards answering one question: what are the next hundred years going to look like?

Kaku looks at basically every technology or technological field that is a) integral to our lives, and b) likely to undergo serious changes in the next few generations. There’s a chapter on the future of computing, a separate one on artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, medicine, energy, and space travel. Each chapter has an introduction, a vision of the near future (until 2030), mid-century (2030-2070), and the far future (2070-2100).

The last two chapters, the future of wealth and the future of humanity, are less about any specific technology than the specific changes to our economic, social, and legal systems as a result of these technological changes. The end of wealth, for example, is about our transition to a more and more information-based economy throughout the world, and how we will need a new economic system with the end of scarcity (though he points out certain things will remain scarce, primarily knowledge workers whose labour can’t be automated).

The text is very readable, any number of sections could be essentially lifted from the book and used as feature articles in Popular Science or Discover. For all I know, selected excerpts have indeed seen magazine stands. Kaku is careful not to get bogged down too much in the science behind these technologies. The book’s audience are technology geeks, futurists — most of us, in fact, of the digital age. It’s for the curious layperson, not just the educated layperson. No physics education required

Speaking as someone who has some education in physics, this is nevertheless refreshing. Kaku could have screwed things up by doing too much — trying to give a detailed grounding in the physics when the book is really about how the technology will affect our lives. Having spoken to three hundred scientists at the leading edge of their fields, I’ve no doubt he took enough notes for a dozen technical volumes. But he resists the temptation to ramble, considering societal consequences in broad strokes while avoiding technical trivia.

And that’s the beauty of this book. It’s deep in insights but not bogged down in details. The result is a fast read that you’ll continue thinking about long after you’ve finished the book. Time will tell which predictions hit the mark. But it gives all of us something to look forward to, whether we expect to experience Kaku’s epilogic “day in the life in 2100” or not.

Reprinted with permission from The Sleeping Hedgehog
Copyright (2012) The Sleeping Hedgehog

Book Review: The Manga Guide to Biochemistry

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I was looking forward to No Starch Press’ latest Manga Guide release for months before it actually came out. I quite enjoyed The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology, and thought this would make for an excellent companion piece. Obviously I wasn’t the first person to think so, the author of that previous book, Masaharu Takemura, must have felt the same or he wouldn’t have agreed to write this one as well.

Biochemistry and molecular biology are like solid state physics and physical chemistry or, if you like, psychology and sociology. Both disciplines find themselves interested in many of the same phenomena, but consider slightly different aspects of each one.

Molecular biology is interested in how the body works as a system on the sub-cellular level. The basic processes of life are considered with respect to how they manage to maintain all the functions of a cell. Biochemistry is interested in all the chemical behaviour involved in life, which ultimately is responsible for all those same cellular functions.

Both books discuss many of the same ideas, therefore, but there’s virtually no overlap in content. In Molecular Biology, enzymes were considered as helpers in chemical processes. In Biochemistry, more time was spent on the specific reactions they catalyzed, and the actual chemical structures of reactants and products. Both books discuss the way DNA information is read and translated into specific proteins, but biochemistry goes into the chemical detail of DNA, RNA, and the amino acids that make up a protein and determine its folding.

The storyline is cute: Kumi is a teenage girl constantly worried about her weight. She decides to study biochemistry so she has a better understanding of her metabolism and its relationship to weight gain. This is not just an entertaining framing device; Takemura is intentionally using a non-traditional approach to the topic, introducing major chemical characters into the narrative in an organic way as they become relevant to particular chemical processes.

Proteins, fats (lipids), and carbohydrates (saccharides or sugars) are each discussed in different chapters. The chapter on carbs isn’t really just about carbs, it’s about how sugars are used to create ATP which in turn provides energy for the cell (amongst many other things). The chapter on proteins isn’t just about the Atkins diet, it’s also about how enzymes are created and how they function as biological catalysts.

This isn’t the first Manga Guide to take a non-traditional approach to a topic. Calculus took a much more intuitive, less mechanical approach to derivatives and integrals, though not a less rigourous one. Universe followed a historical sequence in discussing the heavens, steadily overturning pre-conceptions as contradictions were discovered. And all of the books in this series have emphasized real-life examples and applications, whatever the topic. The chemical reactions discussed in the book are used to explain everything from the ripening of fruit to the springiness of mochi-style rice.

And it works. There are a number of topics in science that are frequently taught a certain way because it makes it easier to organize a textbook, or faster to “cover” in class, even though it’s not the most efficient approach to actual learning. I appreciate this series’ willingness to eschew traditional learning sequences in favour of intuition, learning in context, and developing ideas organically from previous knowledge. Another enjoyable entry to the series.

(No Starch Press, 2011)

Reprinted with permission from The Sleeping Hedgehog
Copyright (2012) The Sleeping Hedgehog

Book Review: Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5

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In 2002, the British government agency, Military Intelligence, Section 5, also known as the Security Service, or simply MI5, advertised for a part-time historian to write an official history of the Service, in time for its 100-year anniversary in 2009. The paperback edition, released December, 2010, included some small corrections and improved details, particularly on more recent terrorist activity, which previously, for security reasons, could not be published.

It’s a far cry from just a few decades ago where Service staff often could tell no one where exactly they worked, and even the appointment of the Director General was not publicly announced. In order to complete this monumental task, Christopher Andrew, a leading authority on the history of intelligence had access to tremendous amounts of declassified along with still confidential records. No doubt there were occasional clashes between the desire to detail a complete history and the need to avoid compromising national security.

The story of British intelligence dates to the first decade of the 20th century, precipitated by several years of increasing public hysteria and popular novels about “the Kaiser’s spies” operating in England. It all culminated in October, 1909 with an army captain named Vernon Kell and a navy commander named Mansfield Cumming running a two-man operation, trying to build an intelligence organization from the ground up. It wasn’t long before the two men parted ways to head their own organizations. Kell was first Director General MI5, whose province would be espionage and subversion within the Commonwealth, while Cumming was first Chief of MI6, responsible for collecting intelligence about foreign powers outside British soil.

This hefty history seems both thorough and objective. Broken into sections on “The German Threat”, “Between the Wars”, “The Second World War”, “The Early Cold War”, “The Later Cold War”, and “After the Cold War”, the individual chapters nevertheless cover much of the same period from different perspectives. For example, one chapter in the section of “The Early Cold War” covers some specific decrypted Soviet communications that would eventually lead to the uncovering of the famous “Cambridge Five”, enormously successful Soviet spies who had penetrated British intelligence.

Then another chapter is all about the lesser-known but simultaneous period in history of the early negotiations for the state of Israel. The major security threat of that unstable time was Zionist terrorism. (Andrew also tells us that the extremist Jewish Nationalist groups of this time were the very last in history to self-describe as terrorists for their cause.)

It’s interesting to see how priorities have changed throughout the history of the Security Service. Though originally conceived of as defending British Commonwealth from agents of foreign powers inside its borders — essentially spies, saboteurs, and a potential fifth column in case of war – MI5’s authority over all state enemies within the realm also put it front and centre in all instances of domestic terrorism as well.

The significance of this became clear during the Troubles of Northern Ireland, starting in the late 1960s. Actions by the Irish Republican Army originally catalyzed the creation of Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police almost a century earlier (previous to the existence of any military intelligence service), but the Security Service took a leading role when violence re-erupted in the later 20th century. In more recent decades, Muslim terrorist groups have been a major concern to both intelligence officials and the general public in the West, and this, too, has fallen firmly within MI5’s operational scope.

By far the biggest focuses of the Service throughout its history are the enormously successful “Double-Cross System” used to mislead the Germans by false information in the Second World War, and the 40-plus years of espionage and counter-espionage against the Soviet Union, including the uncovering of the “Cambridge Five” and the famous “Atom Spies” who passed on the secret of the bomb. But as noted, it’s interesting to see that even while lesser-known threats are in the background as far as the public is concerned, the Service still has a smaller team quietly collecting information. During WWII, only a small amount of energy was devoted to Soviet intelligence (not enough, it later turned out), but analyzing what intelligence was collected became a priority during the Cold War. Similarly, glimmerings of Muslim terrorism are foreshadowed in the latter years of the Cold War, though they were not considered a priority at the time.

This is not a weekend read. Andrew could probably take some of the highlights and cut this 1000-page behemoth into something much more digestible, but if he did, it wouldn’t be a history anymore. Objective, fact-based (with an endnote for nearly every sentence to prove it), and detailed, Defend the Realm really packs it in. The density of information is high, the amount of filler is essentially nil, and the type is quite small.

Andrew also does not speculate as the writer of a general audience work might. He’s a professional historian and this is a professional piece of historical scholarship. I’ve been reading this book on and off for six months, and some casual readers might have given up before then. It’s not narrative and we know only what definitely happened; he does not tell us about the emotional states of the principal players or speculate on the dramatic tension at some of the events.

On the other hand, the material sometimes speaks for itself. This is the real-life story of war, foreign spies, secret political meetings, terrorists, and narrowly-evaded disasters of all kinds. For hard-core history/military/intelligence buffs, this is a goldmine of carefully collected and organized material. The shadowy realm of military intelligence is a rarely thought about but inescapable part of our modern world.

(Vintage Books, 2010)

Article first published as Book Review: Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew on Blogcritics.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Much Ado About Corn

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I’m reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma after literally having it on my reading list for three years (and in my physical book-pile for one). Another excellent example of scientifically-literate long-form journalism. I do recommend it, even if it also takes you three years to get around to reading it. (Those who want to delve deeper into topics like these sometimes look into classes from accredited online colleges.)

The first few chapters are all about corn, and how it’s behind everything we eat. Some Nixon-era agricultural reforms, WWI-era innovations in industrial chemistry (i.e., the Haber-Bosch process for making synthetic nitrates), and some clever Depression-era cross-breeding combined to create the perfect storm for the agricultural industry.

Long story short, the United States produces way more corn than it needs, therefore it gets used for everything, and the flooded market drives the price of corn down to maybe 60% of what it costs to produce. The government subsidizes the farmers to keep them afloat, but it’s still not a very profitable business for farmers.

Rather, it’s the secondary industries that get filthy rich from the massive availability of artificially cheap corn. The beef industry feeds their cows on corn rather than grass (which is free) because they can keep their pre-slaughtered meat in stalls rather than investing in grazing land. Recent studies suggest that the heart issues associated with red meat may be more due to the corn-fed diet of our red meat, rather than the red meat itself.

Meanwhile Coca-Cola and similar companies turn something that’s nutritious enough in its natural form to be a staple crop for some cultures, into diabetes in a can for North Americans who don’t need the extra calories (perhaps you thought it was sugar in your carbonated beverages, but in North America it’s not, it’s high-fructose corn syrup).

If you go further back, it’s not even corn at the base of our food chain, it’s oil. The Bosch-Haber process we depend on for our artificial fertilizers is energy intensive and requires more energy from fossil fuels put into it than the food energy we get out of it. But without artificial fertilizers, the ridiculous yields that cause corn to be practically worthless would not be possible. So we’re burning all the oil we can to create more corn than we need, which we then dispose of in any way possible, usually at the detriment of our own health.

It’s a great deal for certain industries and terrible for almost everyone else. But it’s an interesting example of how very different issues can be related: human health, environmental issues, industry, economics, government policy, consumer behaviour.

Book Review: Future Science: Essays from the Cutting Edge

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Future Science: Essays from the Cutting Edge is the second non-fiction compilation from editor Max Brockman, following up the earlier essay collection, What’s Next? The topics are as varied as the authors: working scientists from fields as diverse as astrophysics, immunology, computer science, even a new discipline called “experimental philosophy”, which would probably fall under the heading of neuroscience or behavioural psychology (there are several more of those, as well).

Essentially, what Brockman did was get a lot of young, actively working scientists to talk about what’s exciting right now in their field. There’s a balance between the highly topical “look at this cool thing we’ve just discovered” and some of the broader implications of their work. It seems the contributors were given free rein, perhaps actively encouraged, to speculate a bit about what it all means.

I appreciated this larger context. Even though most everything in the book is, as the sub-title suggests, cutting-edge to varying degrees, references to the big picture provide something extra. There’s a sense in this book of being invited to look ahead and ask, well, what’s next? This provides a unifying theme which might be absent in, say, a best of year collection of science journalism. The result is both topical and an historical benchmark: this is us; this is the world — right now.

Kevin P. Hand, a planetary scientist, wants to talk about the next stage of deep ocean exploration — in Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Laurie Santos discusses everything from primate studies to game theory to the economics of consumer behaviour, in order to understand the leaps of illogic that lead to some of our terrible financial decisions. Kirsten Bomblies surveys what’s currently known about plant responses to stress — and what’s still to be determined, if we hope to help both crops and natural ecosystems survive the next century of climate change.

If there’s a weakness to this book, it’s an unevenness in its authors’ abilities to communicate their subjects to a popular audience. Some of the writers are naturals, they get to the essence of their work with a minimum of jargon and a maximum of depth. Others are clearly more used to submitting to academic journals, and their style is similarly technical. The subject matter is undoubtedly interesting, but some readers may find it a struggle to get through some of the more scholarly essays.

Science writing is a balancing act between maintaining interest, clarity, and accuracy. It’s possible to lose your audience in detail whether you’re talking about genetics, string theory, or behavioural psychology. I struggled with an article on cosmology, despite coming from a physics background myself.

But on the whole, Future Science delivers what it promises. It takes us to science’s many frontiers, and gives us a sneak peek behind the curtain. I can’t imagine another single book (well, other than its own predecessor) capable of giving such a broad view of scientific discovery on the cusp, as it stands right now. Not every major open question in the whole of science is covered — that would be unrealistic. But there’s plenty of food for thought here.

(Vintage Books, 2011)

Article first published as Book Review: Future Science: Essays from the Cutting Edge by Max Brockman (editor) on Blogcritics.

Book Review: The Manga Guide to Electricity

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This is a story about how Rereko, a fairly ordinary high school student from the advanced world of Electopia, gets sent to Earth for remedial courses in the science of electricity. Her society expects absolutely everyone to know a little something about how electricity behaves, and its more important applications. Since she’s a little bit slow in this subject, a tutour from our own, more primitive planet, may be just her speed. A Tokyo graduate student in electrical engineering, Hikaru, seems like the perfect fit.

Like the other books in this series, The Manga Guide to Electricity aims to break down potentially difficult subject matter into bite-sized, comic book chunks, all wrapped up in an engaging story. While the target audience is individuals interested in the subject matter rather than manga fans only after a fun read, the story provides a natural vehicle for the book to give lots of real-life examples of the subject in question, an endless litany of answers to the unasked question: why does this stuff matter, anyway? As usual, the book features a tutour and a (sometimes reluctant) student.

The dialogue-based format is not only an effective way of unpacking concepts, but also makes it easy to build up a book-length political argument simultaneously: that this information is important and worthwhile even for an average citizen. Plato made Socratic dialogue famous in his philosophical treatises, Galileo appropriated it for the use of scientific education, and Ohmsha and No Starch Press did both of them one better by adding pretty pictures. You almost can’t go wrong.

The focus of this book is on applications. It’s at least as much about basic electrical engineering as it is about electrostatics and electrodynamics. The abstract concepts of electric forces and fields are not really touched on. Point charges don’t come into it. Instead, we jump directly into circuits, explicitly using the analogy of electricity as flowing water: voltage is pressure; current is rate of flow. This is a very useful picture, although there are times it could have been used to greater effect.

The only weakness in this book, from my perspective, is failing to take a little more time to fully flesh out some of the basics. Voltage, current, and resistance are all explained very well. The reader is not simply given a definition, but aided in visualizing the real physical meaning of the concepts. However, the relationship between them is not as well explained. The current is equal to the voltage over the resistance. Why does a higher voltage result in a higher currrent? It’s analogous to increasing the water pressure, forcing it through even faster. Why does an increased resistance lower the current? It’s analogous to constraining or restricting the path, slowing each individual drop of water down.

This and a few other concepts were not sufficiently spelled out, though the formula was introduced. On the other hand, a tremendous number of applications were discussed, although many of them were only roughly sketched out: transformers, generators, semiconductors, diodes, and transistors of many kinds. These thumbnail sketches were appropriately short, and a writer with less of an engineering background may even have left some of them out, but a writer with a pure physics background probably would have spent a little more time on some of the basic concepts, and this is my own background, so I admit my bias.

Still, a solid overview of the topic. I really like the practical, real-life examples that are a hallmark of this series. The very first chapter started by looking at the labels on kitchen appliances, and this was a brilliant way of introducing the topic. And I was quite surprised, I didn’t expect to learn something new in this book, but actually a good chunk of the material was unfamiliar territory for me. I didn’t know that much about the basic physical operations of diodes, transistors, or some of the other types of electrical technologies discussed. It makes me want to learn more about electrical engineering. After all, who isn’t crazy about all the electronic gadgets that make our modern world go round?

(No Starch Press, 2009)

Reprinted with permission from The Sleeping Hedgehog
Copyright (2011) The Sleeping Hedgehog