BOOK REVIEW: Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller is an unusual book for me to read and review. It is one of the few nonfiction books I have read this year and it is one of the very rare books I have ever read as an audiobook. Typically, I only access audiobooks when on vacation with my husband (since he has the Audible subscription) and this is how I read Why Fish Don't Exist. We had both heard the author discussing her book on multiple NPR shows (e.g., Radiolab, This American Life) and so when we embarked on a road trip to visit three national parks this summer (Bryce, Zion and Death Valley) Why Fish Don't Exist was on top of the list to be downloaded for the drive. It turns out to be a delightful way to experience the book; it’s read by the author herself, and being a radio person her delivery is engaging and the prose is memorable. Plus, in audio format the book only takes less than 6 hours to complete (shorter than it takes to drive from Los Angeles to Utah).

Why Fish Don't Exist is a fascinating and compelling story about the first president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan, who was also one of the most prominent and prolific icthyologists (fish scientists) of his day, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He was also an unrepentant and fervent eugenicist and used his fame and status to promote this vile and dehumanizing ideology in the United States and around the world. Miller includes information in the book that intimates that Jordan may have been responsible for the still-unsolved mysterious death of Mrs. Leland Stanford. One of the clear beneficiaries of the untimeliness of her suspicious demise (by poison, while on vacation on Hawaii) was Jordan himself.

Why Fish Don't Exist is an exemplar of the maxim “truth is stranger than fiction.” Miller’s book is part biography of a great man of science, part autobiographical personal memoir and part philosophical musing on the nature of science. Miller injects pathos into the book by recounting how her scientist-father’s atheistic views, that human (and all other) life is ultimately immaterial to the fate of the Universe, that God doesn’t exist and that nothing happens after people die, had a measurably deleterious impact on a young Lulu Miller’s mental health. The search for a way to understand or refute her father’s nihilist view of life fuels her book’s examination of Jordan’s life and its focus on his obsessive project to identify and classify as many new varieties of fish as he could. Both Jordan and Miller are trying to produce order out of the chaos of the natural world.

Miller is incredibly lucky in her choice of subject. Jordan’s life contains an astonishing number of extraordinary events, often catastrophic, which he suffers but shrugs off. This includes deaths of multiple family members at tender ages (two of his children, his older brother and his first wife), the complete destruction of his collection of rare and unique fish specimens obtained through painstaking worldwide travel by train and ship by natural disasters (twice!) and living through the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1905. The highs and lows of Jordan’s life are cinematic in scope and scale.

Miller is also incredibly effective at using intimate details of her own life to increase the emotional connection between her book and the reader. She describes her own suicide attempt as a teenager to emphasize the importance of her teleological search for life’s meaning. Later in the book she provides details of how her admission of a casual same-sex indiscretion led to the collapse of her first significant romantic (heterosexual) relationship and a subsequent professional downward spiral that delayed the completion of the book. It was during this period that she discovered the dark facets of Jordan’s supposedly shiny jewel of a life: the full-throated support for involuntary sterilization fueled by his eugenicist and supremacist instincts, the suspicious behavior to interfere with the official investigation into Mrs. Stanford’s death and the unseemly romantic entanglement with an Indiana University student when he was the youngest University President in America.

Overall, Why Fish Don't Exist is an informative and engaging book about the complications and contradictions of life itself. Like all good art, it allows the reader to interact with it in different ways, and different readers will be drawn to different aspects, with most people being affected in long-lasting ways. Highly recommended!

Title: Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life.
Author: Lulu Miller.
Format: Audiobook.
Length: 4 hours 55 minutes or 225 pages.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster.
Date Published: April 14, 2020.
Date Read: July 29, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.00/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Stephen Hawking Says "There Is No God" In Posthumous Book

Stephen Hawking, one of the world's most renowned scientists, who died earlier this year at the age of 76 on March 13, has published a book where he reiterates his atheistic beliefs. This is not a new occurrence; Hawking's atheistic beliefs have been well-documented.

For example, this is a quote which comes close to what I believe as well,

We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.

As always, Hawking expresses the truth in a simple, declarative way.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Will The Future Be Godless?

I love this cartoon. I think it epitomizes the tension between scientific and technological advancements and the retrograde nature of religion.

#NSF REPORT: U.S. Doctorate Recipients At Near All-Time High (2016 Data)

The National Science Foundation has released its annual Survey of Earned Doctorates and there are some interesting nuggets in the data (up to 2016):

• The largest share of doctorates awarded in 2016 was in the life sciences (nearly 23 percent), followed by engineering (17 percent), and psychology and the social sciences (16.5 percent). All fields of humanities and arts made up 10 percent of doctorates awarded.
• The time between students entering graduate school and receiving doctorates has fallen in all fields of study over the past 20 years, but, on average, it still takes years longer to earn a doctorate in non-S&E fields than in S&E fields.
• The number of S&E doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents grew 2 percent since 2015 and 39 percent since 2006. The number of doctorates in S&E fields awarded to temporary visa holders grew 2 percent since 2015 and 20 percent since 2006.
• The number of doctoral awards to temporary visa holders is highly concentrated -- 10 countries accounted for 71 percent of the doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders from 2006 to 2016. The top three countries -- China, India and South Korea -- accounted for 54 percent of the doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders.
• Women have earned a slight majority of all doctorates awarded to U.S. citizen and permanent residents each year since 2002, and women have earned more than 30 percent of all doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders over that period.
• From 1996 to 2016, the number of women earning degrees in S&E fields increased by 84 percent.
• The number of doctorates awarded to blacks or African Americans who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents increased by 32 percent from 2006 to 2016. For the same period, the proportion of doctorates earned by Hispanics or Latinos increased by 67 percent.

One key take-away for me is that 1) Latino doctoral recipients now outnumber African-American and that the gap between male and female STEM doctorates is actually slightly widening, even as both numbers increase (see the graphics at the top of this page).

Hat/tip STEMPROF newsletter edited by Mark Connolly.

REPORT: Boys and Girls Equally Interested In STEM; Boys More Prepared

In a new report from ACT (yes, the organization that runs those other college readiness tests) there is a result that states that all though boys and girls have an equal interest in careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), it turns out that boys are generally more prepared for them.

Ed Week reports:

To determine readiness, students were assigned a STEM score based on combined results from their ACT math and science tests. ACT test scores range from 1 to 36. A student earning at least the benchmark score of 26 has a 50 percent chance of earning a B or higher in first-year college STEM courses, and a 75 percent chance of earning a C or higher, according to the report. The student is also more likely to stick it out with a STEM major and earn a bachelor's degree.  

The report revealed that just 18 percent of females, compared to 24 percent of males, earned a score of 26. 

The disparity is even larger among students with an interest in STEM: 22 percent of females earned a score of 26 compared to 31 percent of males. Even more surprising, females interested in STEM were less likely than all males (including those with or without an interest in STEM) to meet or surpass that benchmark score (22 percent versus 24 percent). Meanwhile, the overall level of interest in STEM between females and males is nearly equal at 47 percent versus 50 percent, respectively.

The source of the data is from the 2 million students who took the ACT in 2017.

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: 4 Out Of 5 Americans Can't Name A Living Scientist

Hmmm! A recent poll suggests that Americans are pretty clueless about famous living scientists. According to Science AF:

Of the paltry 19 percent who can actually recall a living scientist, 27 percent named Stephen Hawking, 19 percent named Neil deGrasse Tyson and 5 percent named Bill Nye.

Jane Goodall — apparently the only living female scientist the American public can remember — was mentioned by 2 percent of those surveyed.

So, for today's Celebrity Friday, I will name TEN famous living scientists:

1. Stephen Hawking (physicist)
2. Brian Greene (astrophysicist)
3. Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist)
4. France Cordova (director of the NSF)
5. Marcia McNutt (former editor-in-chief of Science, President of NAS)
6. Bill Nye (science celebrity)
7. Kip Thorne (astrophysicist & Nobel Laureate)
8. Terence Tao (mathematician and Fields medalist)
9. Ingrid Daubechies (mathematician)
10. Jane Goodall (primatologist)

In the comments, feel free to add the names of other famous scientists a well-read person should be aware of.

Hat/tip to Research America.

BOOK REVIEW: The Long Sunset (The Academy, #8) by Jack McDevitt

I was very excited to receive an ARC (Advance Review Copy) of the eighth book in The Academy series by Jack McDevitt called The Long Sunset, which will be released by Saga in April 2018.

The main character in the Academy series is Patricia “Hutch” Hutchins. She is a spaceship pilot who has been through various adventures as the  spaceship technology has advanced tremendously  from the beginning of the series when it basically just allowed travel in our solar system (the first book, The Engines of God, has pivotal scenes on Iapetus, a moon of Saturn). In this, the eighth book, set several decades later humanity has real interstellar capabilities, with  ships that can travel faster than light, up to about 200 light-years per day.

The Long Sunset  is set in 2256 (an election year!) and civilization’s attention and interest in space exploration is waning. The United States is now part of the North American Union (NAU) and one key issue in the 2256 presidential election is the Centauri Initiative, which would essentially ban any human exploration of the Galaxy further than Alpha Centauri using the latest interstellar space ships. The main reason for this ban is the notion that the Universe is a dangerous place, with aliens who could potentially be thousands of years ahead of humans technologically and unfriendly, with genocidal consequences. This, despite the fact that dozens of star systems have been explored and the vast majority have been completely devoid of life. Also, the Earth is becoming over-populated so there are two worlds open for colonization that are also vastly oversubscribed.

 One of the interesting features of The Academy series has been the discovery of the remains and relics of ancient alien civilizations on various planets. A few planets have been found with (primarily hominid or mammalian) aliens who are in stages of civilizations hundreds or thousands of years behind humanity. But back on Earth several scientists warn that it is only a matter of time before humans stumble upon aliens that are equally ahead of humanity, and that this could be a species-ending event.

This is a fascinating philosophical question and the debate’s importance becomes heightened when an alien video transmission is received on Earth originating from a very distant (but accessible) star system which demonstrates that aliens with comparable human technology exist (or existed a few thousands of years ago when the signal left their star system traveling at the speed of light).

Of course, an interstellar expedition is planned to explore the transmission source and Hutch is asked to be the captain. However, the incumbent President (who is running for re-election) becomes involved and she and the segment of the population which feels that the proposed interstellar mission to explore the signal's origins is dangerous take extraordinary measures to try and prevent Hutch and her companions to leave.

Happily, they do leave (or else it would be a short book!) and what they discover when they finally reach the transmission star system is surprising and leads to new dilemmas and more philosophical questions.
I don’t want to spoil that aspect of the book so I’ll just say it is very compelling and provides commentary on the philosophical question(s) they left roiling on Earth. Namely, what is the future (and point) of civilization? Is the Universe ultimately a dangerous place, full of species who do not (and will not) have good intentions towards others?

Overall, I wouldn’t say that The Long Sunset is one of the best entries in The Academy series (the earlier books, The Engines of God, Deepsix and Chindi are all excellent) but it does raise some compelling philosophical questions. And the good news is that it may be the beginning of a new arc of The Academy books featuring Hutch that will probably extend the series into double digits. 

Some of these questions raised in The Long Sunset are not exactly original (the dangerous universe notion is one of the central ideas in Cixin Liu’s brilliant The Dark Forest and one of the key unspoiled plot point is very similar to a key plot point in The Bobiverse trilogy by Dennis E. Taylor). However, just because these questions aren’t original doesn’t mean that aren’t effectively deployed in the book. Overall, I found The Long Sunset so captivating that I started and finished it in one sitting (on a transcontinental flight)! I believe most fans of McDevitt and space exploration sci-fi will as well.

Title: The Long Sunset (The Academy series, #8).
Author: Jack McDevitt.
Paperback: 464 pages.
Publisher: Saga.
Date (To Be) Published: April 17, 2018.
Date Read: February 2, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★☆☆  (3.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B (3.0/4.0).

PLOT: B-.
IMAGERY: B.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: B.

Today is 2/7/18, or "e Day!"

Today is February 7, 2018, or 2/7/18 in common date notation, so it  is also known as "e Day." The first 4 digits of the mathematical constant,e, are 2.718, so just like Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 (3/14) today is the day we recognize another very important number, which is the base of the natural logarithms and is often called "Euler's number." It appears in one of the most beautiful equations in all of mathematics:

This amazing equation has the Euler's number, the base of the complex numbers, i, the number π and the numbers 1, 0 as well as the symbols = and +!

Happy e day!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: WATCH How Neil DeGrasse Tyson Explains His Godlessness

Neil deGrasse Tyson on God, religion and reality pic.twitter.com/aedtBERl7O

— Atheist Republic (@AtheistRepublic) February 6, 2018

Today's Godless Wednesday post is just a short video of Astronomer and Science evangelist Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining why a lack of evidence explains why he is godless.

BOOK REVIEW: The Bobiverse Trilogy (We Are Legion, For We Are Many, All These Worlds)

The Bobiverse is a space opera trilogy consisting of three books (We Are Legion, For We Are Many, All These Worlds) written by Dennis E. Taylor.

We Are Legion is a pretty fun read. It is definitely space opera and based around an interestingly original premise: Bob wakes up and discovered he has basically been reincarnated as a machine intelligence (based on his original personality and brain scan). Bob basically gets hit by a bus walking back after he signs the contract to digitally preserve his brain after death.

The story moves forward with Bob becoming the animating intelligence for a spaceship that is exploring the galaxy looking for habitable planets for humanity. While this is going on Bob figures out how to clone (or more accurately, copy) himself. But these new copies are not identical to the original, and eventually the story splits multiple times as we start to follow what happens with these new Bob copies, who each get their own names and chapters.

I must admit the story gets a little bogged down in the minute details of space exploration at that point but here the fact that the author deliberately deploys humor (oftentimes quite nerdy in nature) is a key plus that kept me engaged in the story. I am curious to see how the story continues and concludes so I will probably read the sequels, eventually.

Title: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1).
Author: Dennis E. Taylor.
Paperback: 383 pages.
Publisher: Worldbuilders Press.
Date Published: September 20, 2016.
Date Read: July 28, 2017.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★ (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

Interesting and fun space opera

For We Are Many is the second book in the Bobiverse series. The key idea is the premise that consciousness can be stored and replicated in an electronic format. Additionally, the plot involves the exploration of the Galaxy and the colonization of multiple planets by the remnants of humanity, steered by artificial intelligences who are copies of the original Bob.

Another key storyline in this book is based around the discovery of a primitive alien species called the Deltans that is basically in the Stone Age stage of development. Bob spends a lot of his time following the Deltans and begins to come to terms with the fact that he is basically immortal which means he will eventually outlive most of the people (and aliens) he has grown close to.  

In addition to the benevolent aliens known as the Deltans, we are also exposed to another species, this time one which is incredibly malevolent. The Others, as they become known as, are sort of like interplanetary locusts. They enter a star system and strip of it all metallic elements, and they also kill any alien life but, ominously, remove the bodies. Eventually we discover that they are using the metals to build a Dyson Sphere around their home star, and it is presumed they use the alien bodies as a food source.

Overall, it's really hard to think of this book as a distinct story separate from the first book that precedes it and the one that succeeds it. In some sense, the trilogy as a whole makes up one complex story.

Title: For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2).
Author: Dennis E. Taylor.
Paperback: 321 pages.
Publisher: Worldbuilders Press.
Date Published: April 18, 2017.
Date Read: August 2, 2017.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★ (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

All These Worlds is the third (and presumably, last) book in the "Bobiverse" series. The action follows seamlessly from the end of the second book For We Are Many. The premise of the Bobiverse is that an electronically replicated version of a human brain (which happened to have originally been in some dude named "Bob") is able to exist in perpetuity in computers. Bob has made multiple copies of itself and solved numerous technological issues to oversee the colonization of multiple habitable planets in our galaxy. The Bobiverse is the volume of space which copies of Bob (each of which is slightly different from the original Bob, and become their own individual personalities and computer-based intelligences) travel through. By Book 3 we have hundreds of Bob-copies running around the Universe, controlling ships and weapons. (Another key feature of the Bobiverse is the existence of 3-D printers, which can produce copies of many physical objects given the plans and the metallic resources, including making copies of 3-D printers!)

Humanity still exists, but it is trapped on an Earth which is slowly turning uninhabitable due to environmental changes (but too quickly for the .1% of humanity that remains barely alive on it). Some fraction of the Bobs spend a fair amount of their time managing the discovery, exploration and colonization of habitable planets in other star systems by humans, with the question of how to physically remove and save the remaining 16 million human beings marooned on our home planet becoming a central issue (colony ships can only hold up to 10,000 people at once, which means one need 1600 colony ship trips in order to save humanity).

Most of the time the Bobs find aliens that are technologically inferior to humanity and cause no problem but eventually they run into aliens whom they call the Others who are building their own Dyson sphere (a gigantic habitable structure which surrounds a star) and are basically pillaging star systems for the resources necessary to create their own home. They are definitely Bad Aliens and thankfully since space is pretty big, the humans and Bobs can mostly avoid them, until time comes when they can't and The Others decide to travel to our solar system.

Overall, apart from the existential question of what will be done about the Others, and whether humanity be saved (come on what do YOU think will happen?) there is not much dramatic tension in this (or, frankly, any of the previous books) but as a trilogy the three books are a pleasant diversion, especially if you are a fan of stories about space opera, first-contact with aliens or interstellar exploration.

Title: All These Worlds (Bobiverse, #3).
Author: Dennis E. Taylor.
Paperback: 282 pages.
Publisher: Worldbuilders Press.
Date Published: August 8, 2017.
Date Read: August 16, 2017.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★ (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Katherine Johnson (from Hidden Figures) Turns 99!

Katherine Johnson, the NASA “computer” whose life story was the primary motivation behind the hit book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly turned 99 years old yesterday! She was played by Taraji P. Henson in the movie adaptation (see my review) that was nominated for multiple academy awards earlier this year. Last year NASA renamed a building after her on the occasion of her 98th birthday and before that, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Freedom.

Hat tip to Vanity Fair

Happy Eclipse Day!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Montana House Candidate Believes In Creationsm

There has been a lot of talk in political circles over the special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district, but not much about another special election that is upcoming for Montana's at-large congressional seat which was vacated when Ryan Zinke became Secretary of the Interior.

The most prominent Republican candidate in the special election to replace Zinke is Greg Gianforte, who is a tech millionaire who has used money from his family foundation to support the belief that the earth is 6,000 years old, Huffington Post reports.

Just in time for today's Godless Wednesday, The Friendly Atheist has published an excerpt of an interview with a reporter where Gianforte "doubles down" on his creationist views:

MAUK: Your position on evolution has come up in past campaigns because of your support, primarily, of the Glendive museum. Do you personally believe in evolution?
GIANFORTE: I personally believe, as many Montanans do, that God created the Earth.
MAUK: But do you believe, personally, in evolution?
GIANFORTE: I believe that God created the Earth. I wasn’t there, I don’t know how long it took. I don’t know how he did it exactly. But I look around me at the grandeur in this state and I believe that God created the Earth.
MAUK: And so evolution is not something that you believe in?
GIANFORTE: Um, I think I’ve answered your question.

I believe everyone running for public office should be asked, "Do you believe the Earth is less than 4 billion years old?" and if they give some weasly answer like "I wasn't there" or "I don't know" or "I am not a scientist" they should be asked "What other undisputed scientific facts do you not know or personally believe in? Do you believe the Earth is round? Do you believe the Earth revolves around the Sun? Do you believe in the germ theory of disease? Do you believe in antibiotic resistance?"

FYI, the March for Science is happening this Saturday April 22 in Washington, DC  and around the country and the world.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Opposition To Teleological Thinking

Today's Godless Wednesday post is based around a quote from the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1):

"The lack of understanding of something is not evidence for God. It's evidence of a lack of understanding."

An related phenomenon to what Prof. Krauss is talking about here is the tendency to teleological thinking. Teleology is the idea that the material world has a design and a purpose. It is often summarized with the  aphorism "Everything happens for a reason."

I disagree with these notions completely. Sometimes, things just happen.

BOOK REVIEW: The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam

Ramez Naam's Nexus trilogy consists of  the books Nexus, Crux and Apex. The series takes place in the year 2040 and beyond. The central character is Kaden Lane, who invented a drug called Nexus which allows the human brain to be programmed and networked like a computer. Various books in the series have won multiple awards: the Prometheus award (2014), Philip K. Dick award (2015).
The first book Nexus in the series was optioned in 2013 by Paramount to be made into a film. The entire series is a heckuva fun ride; I inhaled all three books during Thanksgiving break last year. They are incredibly hard to put down once you start them. Beware!

Excellent SCIENCE fiction action-packed thriller!

I was skeptical at first about this book (there's a LOT of mumbo jumbo and touchy-feely language in the very beginning) but  I became increasingly enthralled since after the opening sequence Nexus hurtles along at a breakneck pace, introducing nuanced and interesting dilemmas for the characters as the story rushes forward.

Any STEM academic will recognize the cultural milieu in which much of the story in Nexus takes place. The main character is Kade Lane, a late-stage graduate student who has discovered a breakthrough to expand the Nexus operating system to enhance the duration and intensity by which human brains can interact with each other remotely. There is a lot of clever-sounding technobabble involving computational neuroscience, programming and biology that will appeal to most scientifically oriented readers.

Additionally, the world building of Nexus is top notch. The story is set in the mid-21st century and includes excerpts of documents which refers to (future) historical events which give a compelling sense of verisimilitude to the book. For example, one of the primary antagonists in the plot is Samantha (Sam) Cataranes, who works for the Emerging Risks Directorate (ERD) of the Department of Homeland Security. The ERD uses all sorts of technological forms of surveillance and weaponry to protect the United States from various technological advances that are perceived to be destabilizing or open to potential exploitation by evildoers. As someone who works inside a federal agency, the depiction of government action  (and inaction) appear to be right on point.

The plot follows Kade and Sam as they go to an international biotechnology conference in Bangkok Thailand in order to meet the world's leading scientist in the area of nanotechnology (who is going to offer Kade a postdoc position in her lab) and teach her more about how Kade's scientific breakthrough could change the world (and the humans who live in it). Of course there are people who are determined to maintain the status quo and they want to steal Kade's invention and use it for their ends (or suppress it's development). The struggle between these forces is thrillingly depicted in an exciting and suspenseful way by the author, Ramez Naam.

If you liked Marcus Sakey's Brilliance trilogy (and I certainly did), I'm confident that you will enjoy Nexus. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the Nexus trilogy and hope that it maintain's its quality and energy.

Title: Nexus.
Author: Ramez Naam.
Paperback: 460 pages.
Publisher: Bad Robot.
Date Published: December 18, 2012.
Date Read: November 23, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

Very fun technothriller!

The second book in the Nexus trilogy, Crux, extends the story begun in the first book, Nexus, by broadening the dilemmas encountered by the characters to even larger scale. At the same time Crux reveals ever widening conspiracies by government agencies as they grapple with the technological advances engendered by the widespread distribution of the drug Nexus which allows human-to-human brain communication and control.

Crux is pretty good but not as good as its prequel, Nexus. It's still very well plotted and also action-packed but to me the story itself doesn't really advance as far as the first one did. (This is a known common problem with middle books in trilogies.) 

I've seen in other reviews of the books that Naam has been called a "plot artist" instead of a writer and I think that is unfair, but I would agree that plotting and pacing are his strong suits and characterization and lyrical/lexical expression are not.

This is not to say that Crux is bad, it's just not as fantastic as the first book (Nexus) was. The series (so far) is at least as good as the Brilliance series by Marcus Sakey and the Tao series by Wesley Chu and occupies a similar narrative space (action-packed, techno-thriller set in the near future with SFnal elements).

Title: Crux.
Author: Ramez Naam.
Paperback: 512 pages.
Publisher: Bad Robot.
Date Published: August 27. 2013.
Date Read: November 25, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

An awesome and exciting SF read!

The final book in the Nexus trilogy ratchets up the suspense, stakes and action to pulse-pounding levels.

The killer app (or key idea) of Apex (and the series as a whole) is the existence of Nexus, a drug which allows one to access and manipulate the human brain like a computer operating system. Additionally, Nexus-enhanced brains can communicate with other Nexus-enhanced brains similar to internet-connected computers. 

Ramez Naan takes this technological development and explores how the world would react were this to happen (roughly 25 years in the future), paying particular attention to the governments of United States, China and India. It is an exciting and frighteningly realistic portrayal of how events can be influenced by the decisions and actions by a few key people (the President, White House Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser, etc).

The main character we follow through all three books is Kaden Lane, who developed Nexus 5, which is much more powerful and longer-lasting than earlier iterations of psychotropic drugs. Kaden is flawed but we get to know him quite well, and he matures a lot as the story develops through the three books of the series. The Kaden of Book 3 is definitely NOT the same naive graduate student of Book 1. In addition to Kaden, we also follow the fortunes of Feng, a cloned biologically enhanced bodyguard who was tasked with protecting Kade but now treats him like a brother and Sam(antha) Cataranes, a Nexus-running, US government operative who was tasked with controlling Kaden to satisfy her mission orders but who has a change of heart when she meets a child exposed to Nexus in the womb in Book 2.

In addition to Nexus, Ramez Naan also posits other technological and sociological advances that greatly enhance the story. Overall, Apex is a near-future, hard sci-fi techno-thriller, and an excellent read.

Title: Apex.
Author: Ramez Naam.
Paperback: 608 pages.
Publisher: Bad Robot.
Date Published: May 5, 2015.
Date Read: December 3, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

REPORT: Racial Disparities Exist In HIV Criminalization

This will not be a surprise to anyone who has been following the story of HIV criminalization in the United States over the last few years. The Black AIDS Institute has issued a report on a new academic finding that exposes the racial disparities that exist in HIV criminalization.

Two studies—one commissioned by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law that conducts independent research on sexual-orientation and gender-identity law and public policy, and the other presented at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, in July 2016—link the criminalization of HIV to higher rates of incarceration for PLWHA of color, and community activists confirm it.

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Researchers found that while White men made up 40 percent of the people diagnosed with HIV in California, only 16 percent of them had had contact with the criminal-justice system related to their HIV status. Black men made up 16 percent of PLWHA but 19 percent of those who had contact with the criminal-justice system. They were also more likely than White men to come into contact with the system repeatedly based on their HIV status: 25 percent vs. 10 percent. Overall, White men were more likely to be released and not charged. Black women made up only 4 percent of the population of PLWHA, yet an astounding 21 percent of them had come into contact with the criminal-justice system. Researchers say that more work needs to be done to identify what is driving the racial and gender disparities. 

In July, Trevor Hoppe, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Albany, presented his paper "HIV: Does Race Impact Sentencing Under Criminal HIV Exposure and Disclosure Laws in the United States?" at AIDS 2016. Hoppe looked at five states—Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Tennessee—and found that Black men were given an average sentence of 110 months after being convicted on an HIV-specific criminal law, while White men averaged 74 months for violating the same statute. He found the greatest racial disparity in Arkansas, where Black men's sentences were double those of white men—279 vs. 140 months. "In Arkansas, Black men were sentenced to a dozen more years," says Hoppe.

There are too many examples of public policy not keeping up with the advancement of scientific knowledge about HIV transmission and, unsurprisingly, it is people of color who appear to be disproportionately impacted by this. Just ask Michael Johnson!

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Katherine Johnson, Legendary NASA Mathematician, Turns 98 Today

Katherine Johnson is an African-American mathematician who is famous for contributing calculations to several landmark NASA missions. Johnson turns 98 today, and was awarded the National Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in November 2015. In May 2016, NASA named one of its buildings at the NASA Langley Research Center the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility.

Johnson worked at Langley from 1953 until her retirement in 1986, beginning as a research mathematician -- part of a pool of women hired to perform mathematical equations and calculations by hand for engineers. She quickly distinguished herself and was permanently assigned to the branch that would later calculate the launch windows for NASA’s first Project Mercury flights. 

Notable accomplishments include her computation, by hand, of the launch window and trajectory for Alan Shepard’s maiden space voyage aboard Freedom 7 in 1961, and verification, also by hand, of calculations made by the first computers for John Glenn's history-making orbit around the Earth in 1962. She also calculated the trajectory for the historic Apollo 11 first moon landing flight in 1969.

In January 2017, a big-budget Hollywood movie titled Hidden Figures starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons based on the real-life story of Johnson and other Black women who worked for NASA will be released in theaters. See the trailer below:


Happy Birthday Katherine Johnson!

New Study Shows Zero Transmission Between Serodiscordant Couples With One Undetectable Partner

Great news! A recently published very large research study of sexual activity (58,000 examples of condomless penetrative sex) between serodiscordant couples (both heterosexual and homosexual, where one couple is HIV-negative and the other is HIV-positive) has demonstrated that undetectable people have a near-zero probability of transmitting the virus to their sexual partners.

Over the course of two years, the study tracked 888 serodiscordant couples — that is, couples in which one partner is HIV-positive and one is HIV-negative. This included 548 different-sex couples and 340 same-sex male couples. The HIV-positive partners maintained undetectable viral levels with antiretroviral therapy (ART), but the HIV-negative partners did not use PrEP. 

There were 11 cases in the study in which partners contracted HIV, but they didn’t get it from their partners. Researchers tested the virus in each case and confirmed that what they had contracted was not phylogenetically linked to their partners’ virus. In other words, it was conclusively proven that they only contracted HIV because they had sex outside the relationship. 

Simon Collins, a member of the PARTNER study steering committee, described the results as “simple to understand.” In a statement, he explained, “This provides the strongest estimate of actual risk of HIV transmission when an HIV positive person has undetectable viral load — and that risk is effectively zero.”

The implications of this result for public policy around HIV stigmatization in the United States are profound. There are numerous HIV-positive Americans who are serving draconian criminal sentences for having sex with other people due to misguided laws (combined with overzealous prosecutions and bigoted juries). Oftentimes, it is people of color who are disproportionately impacted, as exemplified by one of the most (in)famous of these cases, the so-called "Tiger Mandingo" case where a 23-year-old African-American man named Michael Johnson was sentenced to 30 years in jail after being convicted of multiple felonies in Missouri.

Hopefully, this new scientific evidence from the PARTNER study can be used to help organizations like the SERO Project support the repeal of some of these pernicious laws around the country.

Science Publishes Article Calling For Elimination Of Racial Categories In Genetics Research

In an important article titled "Taking race out of human genetics" published in Science magazine today, a team of researchers argues that "the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way."

I have often taught classes which include the idea(s) that the identity characteristics of sex, gender, race, sexual orientation are socially constructed. This does not mean that these categories are not real, but that these characteristics are not innate, fixed, "natural" properties of human beings; instead the idea is that how we perceive and interact with people according to these categories is contested, time-dependent and malleable.

It's exciting to see a paragraph like this in the world's most prestigious scientific journal:

One reason is that phylogenetic and population genetic methods do not support a priori classifications of race, as expected for an interbreeding species like Homo sapiens (11, 18). As a result, racial assumptions are not the biological guide-posts some believe them to be, as commonly defined racial groups are genetically heterogeneous and lack clear-cut genetic boundaries (10, 11). For example, hemoglobinopathies can be misdiagnosed because of the identification of sickle-cell as a “Black” disease and thalassemia as a “Mediterranean” disease (10). Cystic fibrosis is underdiagnosed in populations of African ancestry, because it is thought of as a “White” disease (19). Popular misinterpretations of the use of race in genetics also continue to fuel racist beliefs, so much so that, in 2014, a group of leading human population geneticists publicly refuted claims about the genetic basis of social differences between races (20). Finally, the use of the race concept in genetics, an issue that has vexed natural and social scientists for more than a century, will not be obviated by new technologies. Although the low cost of next-generation sequencing has facilitated efforts to sequence hundreds of thousands of individuals, adding whole-genome sequences does not negate the fact that racial classifications do not make sense in terms of genetics.

Coincidentally enough, I actually m et one of the authors of this article (Professor Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania) when she visited my place of employment this week. On Tuesday February 2, she gave an impressive talk which summarized some of the key ideas in her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century. The audience was enthralled and Prof. Roberts answered questions matter-of-factly and informatively.

 Overall, it is exciting to see the idea that race is NOT a human biological feature getting more attention.

CA Anti-Transgender Bathroom Initiative Is Collecting Signatures Now

There is a new threat to LGBT people on the horizon in California. The same people who opposed marriage equality and got their butts kicked so thoroughly by the forces of equality and progress have switched their focus to trying to regulate where gender non-conforming people can pee!

They have filed a ballot measure and are currently have until November 20, 2015 to collect roughly 500,000 signatures. Here is the attorney's general's summary of the proposed initiative:

Initiative 15-0019
LIMITS ON USE OF FACILITIES IN GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS AND BUSINESSES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.  
Prohibits individuals from using facilities in government buildings except in accordance with their sex as determined at birth, through medical examination, or court judgment recognizing a change of gender. Creates legal damages claim of at least $4,000 against a government entity or person that violates the provision. Allows businesses to prohibit employees or patrons, including transgender people, from using facilities except in accordance with their sex as determined at birth, through medical examination, or court judgment. Exempts businesses from criminal and civil liability for implementing such a prohibition. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Increase in state court costs related to civil claims, not likely to exceed a few tens of millions of dollars annually. Unknown increase in state and local government costs related to actions taken to avoid, litigate, or remedy civil claims filed for violating the measure. Potential significant loss of federal funds. (15-0019.)

If you see anyone asking you to sign such a measure, just say no!