A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market

June 11, 2014 / posted in Business, dialectics, images of being-human, rational choice theory and homo economicus, reviews, Theory / No Comments

A Mathematician Plays The Stock MarketA Mathematician Plays The Stock Market by John Allen Paulos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What’s really interesting about other people’s reviews of this book is that they seem to expect a book on the stock market from a mathematician to be somehow be based in finance.

There are plenty of books on the stock market out there… that do so from a finance point of view.

This book is pretty brilliant although at first glance, it appears to be pretty straight forward… you think a mathematician would use his knowledge about math to somehow find some brilliant trick about the stock market. But that’s not how this plays out.

Math is a game of numbers. It’s a field of study that looks at patterns. But ultimately the numbers are a measurement, some kind of metric. What’s faulty about using the stock market from a pure numbers point of view is that the numbers in stock prices need to measure the a consistent value for any math relation to work. What I mean is simply that stock prices are based on what people do in terms of trading volume of a stock. Abstract all you like, but the immediate particular reason why anyone does what they do with stock is anyone’s guess.

We can assume that a change in stock prices has to do with an anecdote on the news about a company, or something happening somewhere related to a company. But that’s not always true. Sometimes things happen for seemingly no reason. Much of this, Paulos tries to explain has as much to do with how people perceive the market as much as it has to do with actual values. The later chapters are particularly brilliant on this account. The earlier chapters which seemed to promise this or that mathematical model, or this or that economic model… don’t pan out because as Paulos convincingly tells us, any model that we use to predict the stock market can be outdated unless the model itself anticipates how others will use it, made predictions and how those predictions will affect the market. In other words, any stock market model needs to also be self reflexive in how it’s applied — not just when it’s applied.

Paulo makes some pretty complex abstractions to do this; for instance, applying how the “Efficient Market Hypothesis” is either always correct (when people believe it to be wrong, thus playing the stock market off of information in the news, or about a company’s state) or it is always incorrect (when other people believe the information on the news is invalid as the stock prices already reflect the current value of the stock)… that is to say that particular hypothesis doesn’t work as it should because it takes for its model an absolute system of values based on how other people act. People don’t do things as mechanisms do; people evaluate based off of what they believe others will do as well.

This twist of self reflexivity makes it particularly difficult to formulate any theory that is both consistent (non-contradictory) and complete… in essence, we need to formulate a model that can predict how its predictions are taken into account and then provide us with “a few steps ahead” so that profit can be captured. That would be a pretty sophisticated theory; and in fact be impossible because that theory could only work in the case of the one individual who has it. By definition the same theory could not with all the other individuals who also have it, otherwise there would be no profit!

So a quick conclusion is that the market can at times reflect real values, but often it doesn’t because there’s too much white noise as meanings, theories, trends and news all impact the same metric. So how can we make any consistent model on the stock market if all this information flies under the same metric as the very metric a stock price is supposed to represent?

This is all of course, extracted from the book. What I found really interesting, if one read between the lines from the get go, was that one can always take the meaning of a stock’s movement anyway one likes. That is to say, we have an abundance of narratives that can fit the model of “what really happens”. We simply pick the one we like the best, and go forth as if that were true. As Paulo points out, even through random chance a few individuals are bound to hit it big. And once people notice that, they will follow that person’s movements, ensuring that they will always be right.

Thus, the modeling of stocks, properly considered, must also model how we think as well. But that’s nothing new. Paulo is of course, writing this book as a lament of his own failed investments…and in the process of doing so, he’s also somewhat justifying the bubble bursting was inevitable, a kind of normal market behavior. But he’s correct; the uncertainty in the stock market is not just an uncertainty as to what the price means, but similarly that its certainty is also a reflection of what we all would also believe it to mean.

All in all, I found the book to be really entertaining and interesting. I would have liked a little more direction midway through the book… with each theory or direction Paulo brought up, he quickly shot it down at the end of the chapter. Of course, he was setting this bed of failed theories for the self reflexive analysises… but I didn’t see it coming. So it felt much like wandering, and that’s not a good way to treat your reader as it throws your reader out of the process of reading.

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Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties

June 11, 2014 / posted in reviews, Theory / No Comments

Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the FacultiesKant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties by Gilles Deleuze
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Deleuze is perhaps the best reader of texts that I know of. In this short work, he presents the immanent critique hidden within Kant’s philosophical product.

In doing so, Deleuze shows both how Kant is not a rationalist or an empiricist, and how Kant is the anti-philosopher. Although Kant today is considered to be the epitome of modern philosophers, at that time Kant sought to break through the limits of Descartes’ subjectivity to achieve a deeper understanding of the human condition one not founded on false or speculative reasoning.

As Deleuze points out, Kant’s methodology works in this way by highlighting the structural points of inflection within his philosophy. These structural features exist immanent within each of the conditions Kant outlines within empirical reason — ultimately to exist as a faculty that stands on its own. In other words, Kant notices what is the same within each relation despite empirical difference. Each of the three domains of experience (feeling, desiring and knowing) balance out the others to provide the higher immanent vehicles that together legislate human balance (judgement, understanding and reason). As Kant analyzes types of experiences encountered within empirical reason, Deleuze shows how Kant points to the suprasensible as the beyond that grounds Kant’s philosophy (and humanity) as being that is both good and moral in the face of Law immanent within transcendental reasoning.

What makes Kant so difficult to approach is his rejection of speculative reason. Bad philosophy has a habit of legislating positions as filters for experience, using a top-down approach to the field of experience. Kant sticks strictly to the thinnest difference within each domain, using the form of language to describe immanent relations of their predicates within itself… in a sense noting the universal form inherent within each field as the criteria for what a faculty is, what is an immanent vehicle within human processing. In other words, Kant finds the universal arising within our navigation and arrangement of phenomena as a spontaneous law grounded within our consciousness, what is the same no matter what, and how those samenesses inter-relate.

The point of all this is to show the reason for reason, to show how the structure of reason itself from the immanent faculties that operate as transcendental reason becomes its own reason, the accord of which reveals for us our place in the world. We are made to be reasonable, and our reasonableness itself is what provides the grounds for our existence, and the meaning of our existence, which Kant insists is the natural product of our natural and good synthesis with nature… not for the goal of fulfilling instinct/nature but for incorporating the beyond, a limit we ourselves cannot understand:

When imagination is confronted with its limit by something which goes beyond it in all respects it goes beyond its own limit itself, admittedly in a negative fashion, by representing to itself the inaccessibility of the rational Idea, and by making this very inaccessibility something which is present in sensible nature.

For through the imagination, no doubt, finds nothing beyond the sensible world to which it can lay hold, still this thrusting aside of the sensible barriers gives it a feeling of being unbounded; and that removal is thus a presentation of the infinite. As such it can never be anything more than a negative presentation – but still it expands the soul.

Deleuze does all this in this breathtakingly short book. Deleuze places Kantian desire as the organizing feature, in the synthesis of feeling, rationality and understanding within the free ‘accord’ of the faculties and how pure relation forms the immanent critique of human experience; bringing to light the clear synthesis of the transcendental method and the three faculties… and in this sense, conjoins with Deleuze’s own readings of philosophers, as Deleuze can rightly be said to be a philosopher who only practices immanent critiques.

The only thought I have; what I wished Deleuze focused on as well, was Kant’s question of freedom. Towards the end of his life, Kant had an answer, an undesirable answer to how our freedom comes about, one which tortured him in his last days. This issue, was not brought up. But perhaps this was because Kant never wrote a specific work to outline this issue.

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Never Again! – Pamphlet

June 11, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

Never Again! - PamphletNever Again! – Pamphlet by Edward Carpenter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Edward Carpenter makes an appeal post-World War I about the selflessness of the common man, who died for the interests of the ruling class. He cites the advances of civilization, moral and technological — as insufficient to rectify all the destruction and loss of humanity in World War I. In fact, these advances were used to further the destruction of humans.

Despite his impassioned plea, Carpenter is short on analysis and answers though. While he compares nationalism and national interests to the interests of humankind, he finds the latter insufficient to bridge the former.

All in all, this pamphlet is only meant to bring awareness to people the insensible destruction and loss of life on both sides… although Carpenter finds the German aristocracy to be to blame. Carpenter stops short of proposing any kind of constructive political change.

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The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson

June 11, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (American Presidency)The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson by Kendrick A. Clements
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What makes this time period so interesting to me is that it happens during a threshold is that America’s coming of age was happening just now. The nation had done much of the basic industrialization and infrastructure investments, and it had experienced both the boom of industry with its horrors of industry. The result was, much of the population was facing a question as to how the worker and the industrial capitalists would get along? What would be the role of the government, of laws, of self determination? What was to be the sense of how labor was to be arranged in America? And then, along comes one of the most intellectual (and therefore idealistic) presidents, ready to reshape America for the benefit of the common man, worker and farmer — he comes ready on the cusp to provide a gradual outlet for prosperity and change, instead of pure exploitation — and then, when he is just getting warmed up, world war breaks out and interrupts his steady mission to use the government as a mere regulatory instrument.. for the betterment of the common man’s condition.

Whether Wilson’s ideals would have worked in keeping America prosperity going remains a mystery, as World War I interrupted. What WWI provided further was an opportunity for Wilson to enact his ideals of freedom, prosperity, democracy, this time on the world stage in the form of International Law, Treaties and the League of Nations. But this too was interrupted by Wilson’s health problems, first relating to getting the Treaty Signed, then getting the American Congress to support that treaty. Ultimately this last stage of stress proved too much. He collapsed amid the strain and had a stroke.

The stroke had a strangely ironic effect on Wilson. As Clement tells it, the stroke destroyed his psychological capacity to split details and make concessions — do what he did best before the War, to create bipartisanship, and alliances — so that he became a parody of himself. Far too stubborn to compromise, unable to follow complex thought, but still liberal, progressive in his ideals. Being uncompromising, he fits the form of being radical and thus loses the very things he worked so hard to gain.

To me this presidency is about an intelligent, caring man who tried to put what he thought were the highest ideals of humanity in action inscribed in the law, first, at the national level, then at the international level. But this isn’t the entire story.

Wilson only really recognized the subjectivities of people like him. White, educated. He did seem to believe that everyone could strive for the best. But because of this color-blind-ness he also did not recognize the differences in perception, opinion and institutional racism that skewed the lifeworld of other peoples. This is where Wilson strangely fails, in protecting the rights of American-Americans and keeping with the interests of Latin America, as he always took a heavy hand… as he thought what was not only best for himself but for everyone. Note, one of his major flaws is being too controlling, not clearly delegating responsibility…

If anything, this is a good example of how certain ideals and worldviews make well intentioned people blind, unable to comprehend what they are doing, or how life could be different for others. Indeed, Clements takes pain to show that Wilson was not open to criticism once his decisions were made. Wilson was stubborn, idealistic and incredibly uncritical of his own attitudes. Wilson may have been very intelligent, very well intentioned but he was also unable to see anyone else’s point of view, nor was he apt to change his own core views.

In this strange way, where he got so close to achieving his humanistic ideals, he was also thwarted from those ideals by the very from that got him so close. Because of the infinity spelled out in actualizing your will, this infinity makes Wilson a tragic figure… since heros only achieve infinite positive life for all in fairy tails. In this tragic story, Wilson’s body was unable to bear the stress his mind saw so clearly as important to becoming. In this sense, Wilson also failed to be self aware/self critical of how he treated his physical person. Does that make him a fool? Or a hero?

Either way, his personal agenda aside, perhaps because of his stroke, Wilson was unable to dismantle the war machine his administration put together for WWI. This war machine didn’t create an “unholy coalition” where business and government work together exclusively to make profit, but he did put regulating bodies in place that were there to help small businesses/farmers but in the end only enforced the will of larger business on regulating the market place to their advantage. Much of the programs first started by Wilson to help further his ideals ended up setting the stage for their retardation by big business.

In a way, while very competent for his job, Wilson perhaps proved too ambitious for his own good. He over extended himself, and he didn’t allow for enough self criticism in what/how he did what he did… took on too much for himself, as he thought he knew best (even best for other races) and finally, Wilson instead he relied on blind faith that those values he followed were self-justifying.

Hero or fool? Either way, really fascinating.

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The Bluest Eye

June 11, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

The Bluest EyeThe Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Toni Morrison knows people. She can see how they grew from their surroundings, she can see how their self image, and how their attitudes affect those around them, especially those of children. She shows us the saddest case here, the most helpless, a female child, who being born of dysfunctional surroundings is taken to the last straw, last shred of self image. If one’s self image is destroyed, if she hates herself, insists on her own beauty by escaping into fantasy, she can stand all the scorn and hatred of those who look at her. Those most extreme bit of depravity and debasement of the human condition is drawn out as a marker of how all oppression: racism along with classist dehumanization affects all those concerned.

What also helps make Morrison so masterful is her understanding of vantage. She tells us this story from girls who are sympathetic; closeby but far enough apart to be objective… their dialectic dialogue decides for us what is pure and true in understanding the debasement that appears before us. In this sense, Morrison creates an abstract narrative vantage point so that we can witness this horrific debasement, this series of the world shitting on this one little girl, by a community that neither fully cares for its own, or has a stable sense of self worth. Morrison shows us how poverty and class can create the self hatred in the Breedloves as it can in anyone. The shattering of the narrative works as a collage to both allow us to be more fully in the story, but also so that the story doesn’t disintegrate into a particular girl only. But showing us a larger scope, we see we all are participants in this system, of capitalism that prizes the wealthy and creates ideals of beauty and wealth so that those who do not have it can shatter themselves in their pain.

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The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

May 30, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup ArtistsThe Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I pride myself in being able to read anything… which is less about reading and more about having an open mind. So it was really surprisingly (or not) hard for me to even agree to read this book. And when reading it, I wanted to dislike it. Don’t get me wrong; there is plenty in this book to dislike. The biggest problem I had with the book though, as it is about a real thing, is the narrative voice. The narrator isn’t the individual going through the book, it’s often someone who both is expressing their attitudes at the current place the reader is, and at the place after the book was writing. As such, sometimes you’re not sure if the narrator is foreshadowing, being paternalistic towards the reader, or totally into what’s going on at that place in the narrative. This confusion makes sense later on though, when you realize that the author, who presumably is the same man as the narrator as he claims, is still giving pick up artist classes and so on. So even while in the book, he’s reacting with horror, being super self-aware of the limitations of what will happen, how terrible this society of pick up artists is, he’s still involved at least in making money on it.

In reading this book you become aware that while misogyny can happen as a side effect, the majority of men who go into this field lack a sense of self worth when it comes to women. To even acknowledge this, for most men, is incredibly frightening. But still, it’s not surprising given the lack of education, contradictory messages, and lack of self-awareness our society has towards sexual relationships. With the disruption of capitalism and the loss of community in modern society, we have very little traditional resources to rely on in meeting others. So yes, while PUA is about playing on the self esteem of women to get them to spread their legs, it’s really about the (lack) of self esteem of the men who participate in PUA.

It’s also interesting that the majority of women who target their complaints on the PUA community focus on how these men are women hating and how these men are the enemy. Again that’s a knee jerk reaction — one predicated on the anatagonisms of sexual relationships that gave rise to the PUA community in the first place… an understandable but hardly constructive response. What makes this reaction understandable is that it does appear to be an us vs them mentality — but really it shouldn’t be, because in the end, both sexes want the same thing… just with the person of their choice.

As highlighted in the book, the majority of it seems, at first glance, to be about technique, the main tool is social dynamics. Scripts are a good way of learning how to interact, having ropes upon which to hang onto. But in the end, scripts only work on the ignorance of the other part (if women are aware of the scripts they won’t work) and as such, in the end what counts is real interaction. Scripts only work in the context of pure ignorance. They do not work to maintain a relationship, once it’s started. The limits of PUA is the limit of what can be controlled… and since everyone is different to really get the dream relationship, both parties do ultimately need to be committed, mature, self aware and giving… something that is far beyond what PUA can teach, at least, as presented in the book.

What’s most offensive is still, of course, objectification of women, manipulation, and the lying that these men do… reducing courtship to a series of tricks. But like meeting people who seem cool, after a while you do run out of your bag, and you do have to be genuinely yourself… something that takes time and understanding of who you are.

When you think about it though, there are scripts for everything. Including dating. Who pays, how do have conversation… although most of these scripts are not as tightly controlled as PUA techniques, people do have them. It goes beyond the book to say, but I think a large part of what looms over PUA is the build up we have, as a society, of physical beauty and romantic love. These two ideals are among the most socially destructive forces because it weighs too much authority and power on those who happen to be born with what is decided to be physically beautiful…

I am not a woman so I don’t know what it’s like being a woman, but having grown up as a man, I can recollect that much of my formative years was spent in ignorance of how to approach women. If it wasn’t for a few close friendships that I had for many many years with women, I would be in even bigger ignorance. Because I was able to socialize with women on a fraternal level, I could see them as being real people. Different in some ways, given different social pressures, but still actual people. This was very different from some of my guy friends who had no friendships… who would latch onto what seemed to them to be truths about women, some of which were very negative.

As a society we value equality. True equality doesn’t yet exist, at least not among the sexes. We do have a long way to go. If equality is to happen both men and women need to be socialized better, to get a better sense of self and a better sense that others are genuine people too… (un)fortunately, to do this we do need to learn scripts, (as children we do, to some degree), master them, discover why they are not who we are, and then find out who we are by trial and error… a kind of dialectic of self development.

Overall the book felt stunted until the latter 1/3. I give it three-ish stars because it provides much interesting content to think about, but lacks some of the finer narrative cohesion as mentioned above… also given the ending it gave itself, the book could have been smarter about how it began… as the two narrative voices clashed, it felt a little deceptive as to what it was really trying to say.

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The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750

May 30, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 (Studies in Social Discontinuity)The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 by Immanuel Wallerstein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this amazingly detailed and rich work, Wallerstein illustrates how various economic principles — pursuit of a robust economy — pursuit of abundance — can be the seminal with which to read various political, military and policy actions of various European nations between the periods of 1600 to 1750… Of course, he also accounts for history and religion before and after this period to bookend his projections… but the implications are clear.

In a capitalist framework, nations themselves self-organize in as much as the industries and socio-economic sectors self-organize to support one another, to get purchase and gain a place within the emerging economy to ‘get their own’. In some cases, such as with Austria and Sweden, rules attempt to get by hook or crook, war or alliance, more resources with which to build a base of power and abundance. Often within the nations themselves, they may seek workers from other places that can build their economy, but more often than not, nations will oppress their own people for the plenitude of the upper classes who languish in plenitude.

Each nation, England, Prussia, Spain, France, the Dutch… they all do this in different ways, with various differences in success. Ultimately, a lucky combination of having access to trade, of being able to compete cheaply in trade (which is often enforced militarily) gives rise to the desired position of Hegemony… which can only last so long before financial control becomes the way to retire ones’ prior dominance… which is a basic example of the economic system, the world system Wallerstein has so noted in his career.

One of the direct implications of this reading though, leads to understanding that politics is always a delayed response in the symbolic area of language towards economic movement. That politics and language is how people tactically negotiate to position themselves among others. Seen in this way, the naked ambitions of nations can be brought to light.

While the history of this period was one that overall was seen as stagnation, it did lead towards British dominance and eventually WWI and WWII, both of which can be seen as military responses to economic aggression. The multitude of wars leading up to the 20th century can also seen as attempts by those in charge to limit the ability of semi-periphery nations to become core nations… often with great success. The frustration of those semi-periphery nations however, continues on to the next generation as they try again, sometimes with different allies, in order to claw their way up to the top, so they too can become richer than they already are.

While questions of why people create competition to compete among themselves is an interesting question, Wallerstein is more interested in pointing out how this happens than why — and he is very interested in showing how each industry, each nation’s contingencies and limitations led them to the actions they took, and why certain strategies, like those in France or Spain, did not lead them to become more powerful than they had already become. The lesson here seems to be that nations that can integrate themselves and move as a whole towards concentrated efforts in key areas will always find ways to dominant, whereas alliances that allow your allies to become stronger are always reluctantly allowed so long as the major competitors are not allowed to progress (which is how Germany came into power)… That the British with their smaller country (than France) was of a more manageable size, and geographically positioned for sea dominance won out becomes no surprise.

Some of these trends can also be seen today. In fact, the whole point of historic narrative is to see ourselves in its reflection and to understand trends today by their antecedents of yesteryear… and this book really holds to that advantage. As with any work though, the devil is in the details, and Wallerstein takes great pains to demonstrate how smaller areas of competition can add up to (or be eliminated by) areas in other places… and how the right push under the right condition can give way to larger movements that far outreach what we already can imagine.

As it is, someone’s got to be on top, right?, in as much as those that are in charge are doomed to lose their position inevitably.

I strongly look forward to reading the next work, World-System III.

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White Teeth

May 30, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

White TeethWhite Teeth by Zadie Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an extraordinarily ambitious book, especially for a book of fiction.

Books that deal with big ticket items, such as family, immigration, race, legacy — ultimately deals with people’s place in the world due to such contingencies such as race, social status and the like. Such themes become transcendental filters that limit who a character is (where they are located in terms of these contingencies). And as such, Smith needs her characters to be foils for each other. Yet the modern reader insists that a character become full, be about a particular someone — so we can dive into their minds and souls and know them — so they can be rounded, we end up expanding who someone is beyond those defining characteristics… yet in a writer who is as aware as Smith is, who is aware of a characters strengths, faults and points of view, inevitably in order to focus on such filters, characters who would ‘step out of those limits’ end up being re-inscribed in those transcendental limits, in order to fulfill the exemplification of those boundaries.

This is very much like what happens in real life. If you are defined as being a nerd, or somehow limited in your person, any creation of yourself as such would need to address how others see you. You would have to occupy a position, a consistency of your self image that addresses the stereotype that others perceive you as being. Even a rejection of that self image would require an incorporation of what you are not so that you constantly find yourself located somewhere in the middle between two extremes. Millat and Magid as immigrant twins find themselves located in the middle — though that middle becomes an extreme middle for each, as Millat in the UK has a different middle to address than Magid who probably lives in Bengal as some kind of return of the prodigal son. In fact, Magid adopts the same kind of heir to the Enlightenment rationalism, the claim to pure awareness that Marcus so adheres to, whose expression of “Chalfenism” is a reflection of this rationalist attitude which is in a way, an insistence of principle, a death drive, as Freud would call it… whereas Millat embraces his own middle as the negatively defined Islam extremist sect through the oppression and violence of capitalist fantasies (not his dad’s Islam, not the rationalist attitudes of the Enlightenment, but some kind of Frankenstein of both, the rejected underbelly of both, the non-law in the Law as Zizek would but it, the death-drive of both, the insistence of principle)..

I won’t try and take apart of the novel, but in the example above, you see how characters thus defined through principle become examples of principles. Claim that they are inhuman? That they are flat? Perhaps, if they adhere too much to a principle, they seem so flat. But the structural climax of the novel, the intersection of so many different characters whose reaction to their lessened class status as poor immigrants demands that Smith split her attention in so many different ways. Each immigrant (even 2nd generation immigrant, whose futures the story revolves around) responds to their poverty through a different means… religion, family legacy, capital practicality… and these different attitudes, this in-fighting, this verbal abuse, can not be resolved.

In fact, you wish for it to be resolved, but it won’t be. Because Marcus, the scientist with the Romanesque name, wishes through his use of science to remove the very boundaries of what makes them who they are… by programming the genetic legacy of one mouse, for cancer research, he inadvertently suggests that their contingencies, the very things that under the transcendental filter of these big themes makes them who they are, locates them on the skin of social totality as being in their middle, is in fact a joke. That they can’t be themselves, that they are mechanical, defined by contingencies that are not due to their own person, their own choice. The hysteria surrounding some genetic research today is rightly parodied in the book. Ironically, the response to this possibility of being nothing more than a genetic program, that can be manipulated through Western irregard for non-Western logic, amounts to the messing with the external markers that solidify the transcendent filters that define these characters in their confusion. This is because, as much as these characters suffer through the poverty of their British existence so too do they hang onto the beyond of their past glory… so that changing the coordinates of their biology by analogy threatens to change the coordinates of their past glories. Genetic manipulation, in this novel, acts as a locus of the ‘beyond’ that hangs their Real in place. By proxy, they lose their place in the world by losing the essential difference that makes them who they are… the last essential difference that poverty can’t take away from them.

There are of course, far richer details that can go into this reading. Smith though, chooses an odd angle, genetics, to stir the pot as it were, rather than concentrating on religion itself, or economics itself… both of which could be read as responses to one another, although perhaps not so much in this book. Overall, I thought she did a good job of balancing personal characters with the themes/motifs that she sought to illustrate. It is hard to draw the je ne sais quoi of each character, a kind of mythical image that can assume its own form… in a book, as all we get are words that exemplify something else. But it was beliveable for me. Characters who have so little, like people who have so little, will often hang onto the most abstract of principles/fantasies. That much is true.

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Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

May 30, 2014 / posted in reviews / No Comments

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous IdeaZero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Math is something we take for granted in our daily lives, we live by it (all of us do accounting in one form or another). Our daily transactions require it, whether we sell or buy. Math is the ground upon which all of our technology and in fact, all of our framing works. Our modern lifestyle and worldview requires it to be as solid as the ground we build on.

And yet, the concepts of infinity and zero, as innocuous as they seem, incorporated into the limits of what makes math math, led us to paradoxes and strange conclusions that most of us ignore in our work, play and abundant use of technology.

Seife’s writing is clear, concise and easy to understand, even if some of his concepts are not. It’s a great credit to his ability as a writer to cut through the intensely diverse field of mathematics to highlight the startling conclusion that zero and infinity touch in the oddest of ways. After a strong foundation, he goes right into the thick of it.

Some of the issues he touches on, such as how irrational numbers are the entire number line, and how our mathematical language reaches an expressive limit that math continually twists around to surpasses through a series of ‘tricks’ is in fact a comment on the tenacity with which we hang onto consistency… after all, consistency of thought in this domain is all we have… and while these concepts of zero and infinity have rocked our world more than once, they continue to define how we orient ourselves. Finding new ways to incorporate zero/infinity is part of what we do; as we defer nothingness and everything to the side, to always try and find where we are and what we are doing, as we both pull stuff out of nothing, which is tantamount to pulling stuff out of the indeterminate everything.

Although Sefie stops short of the philosophical implications of zero, or nothing, (is it real, or a product of our minds? What are the defining limits of where such concepts end, or are they universally ‘out there’?) this great book reaches the heights and depths of infinity and zero to show us not only historically where these concepts originated, but also how their reluctant incorporation into the European worldview led us into the most abstract trappings of theoretical physics… astrophysics and quantum mechanics, giving us a brief glimpse of nothing and everything all at once.

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I Am a Cat

May 30, 2014 / posted in images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

I Am a CatI Am a Cat by S?seki Natsume
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This very charming book works as a kind of rhetorical pun.

Told from the point of view of a cat, who comes lazily to live with a disinterested, shiftless teacher, one can only help but think that the cat’s arrogant, obsessive observations of his human companions epitomize the nature of being a cat.

And then it hit me. The cat, through all this narrative posturing, his anthropomorphic renditions of human traits based off their inscrutable, sayings and behavior could is very much like the projection of how humans impart anthropomorphic characteristics via observing their feline companions.

What I mean is, through the filter of a cat, the cat in his narrative prowess becomes more human-like: objective and rational, whereas humans become more catlike: indolent and paradoxical, full of self obsessive habits, unconsciously arrogant in their assumption that all should give way to their needs, plans and desires.

This rhetorical stance creates many delightful antinomies, humorous and playful. We get to laugh at ourselves, as our petty habits and self-importance are downplayed as often as we downplay a cat’s unassuming kingship. Still, this translation offers many delightful gems applicable equally to human or cat:

For every living being, man or animal, the most important thing in this world is to know one’s own self. Other things being equal, a human being that truly knows himself is more respoected than a similarly enlightened cat. Should the humans of my acquaintance ever achieve such self-awareness, I would immediately abandon, as unjustifiedly heartless, this somewhat snide account of their species as I know them. However, just as few human beings actually know the size of their own noses, even fewer know the nature of their own selves, for if they did they would not need to pose such a question to a mere cat whom they regard, even disregard, with contempt. Thus, though human beings are always enormously pleased with themselves, they usually lack that self-perception which, and which alone, must justify their seeing themselves, and their boasting of it wherever they go, as the lords of creation. To top things off, they display a brazen calm conviction in their role which is positively laughable. For there they are, making a great nuisance of themselves with their fussing entreaties to be taught where to find their own fool noses, while at the same time strutting about with placards on their backs declaring their claim to be lords of creation. Would common logic or even common sense lead ay such patently loony human being to resign his claim to universal lordship? Not on your life! Every idiot specimen would sooner die than surrender his share in the fantasy of human importance. Any creature that behaves with such blatant inconsistency and yet contrives never to recognize the least minim of self-contradiction in its behavior is, of course funny. But since the human animal is indeed funny, it follows that the creature is a fool.

And thus, you have the seed of Soseki Natsume’s thoughts and very detailed observations of human beings in their ego driven mania, self centered in their world view, and self important in their neediness to value themselves above others and all other beings around them.

I highly recommend this book. Though it’s not a treatise on humans metaphysically, it would be sure at maximum, help you take your own problems with less gravity…at the minimum, help you have a good laugh…

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