The Return

I've been dormant for a long time, but wanted to post a quick update. The previous post is a link to an article I've been meaning to share for some time, but just never quite got around to until now.

I've also revamped the "What I'm reading" widget to be more accurate. Now it just shows what's on my night stand. Which am I reading on any given night? Your guess is as good as mine.

I took a break from non-fiction for a while and polished off two good novels:

I'd seen the movie, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I hadn't really thought about reading the book though. Then the wife got a copy. So I decided to read it.

I wish I hadn't seen the movie. (Almost cliche:) The book is immensely better. Multiple points of view, particularly the 'fountain scene' at the beginning. Much more characterization. Very much enjoyed it. Just made the movie seem thin by comparison.

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This one I had some bittersweet feelings about reading. It's been on the shelf for a long time, but I've avoided it. You see, I just didn't want to face the fact that I was done with the series.

The book was as good as I'd hoped. I guess in the grand scheme of things, it even ends on what could be considered a final note. Captain Aubrey finally called back to duty to get the flag he so desperately desired.

It still left me wanting more though... I've used this series over the years to 'rest' from more serious reading. I started reading Master and Commander probably in about 1998. It took me about three tries to get through the first book. Then I was hooked. I generally seemed to read them in batches or two or three. You can look on our book shelf and see when we moved to England, because the series shifts from the U.S. edition to the U.K edition (buy the UK edition if you can. They have extra bits at the end: essays and such). The lovely wife even indulged me with three companion books.

It's a wonderful series (needless to say). I found I had to kind-of 'skim' the technical details of the sailing for a while. The companions helped, but after a while the terms just started to make sense. (Let me caveat that by saying 'they made sense academically. If you wanted me to point some of the things out on a actual ship...or use them... You'd be disappointed.)

If forced to pick one book as the best? It would be this one.

ValuJet 592

This is an old article, but a good one.

Think about it some time. Especially this part:

Administrators can think up impressive chains of command and control, and impose complex double checks and procedures on an operating system, and they can load the structure with redundancies, but on the receiving end there comes a point—in the privacy of a hangar or a cockpit—beyond which people rebel. These rebellions are now common throughout the airline business—and, indeed, throughout society.

It raises some interesting questions about the efficacy of safety systems, and our reactions to accidents/ mistakes by adding more requirements onto a system. As we add more safeguards and redundancies, the system becomes more opaque and the feedback loops less obvious.

It's interesting to look at some of our submarine forces accidents in this light. Does the very existence of multiple redundancies breed complacency? A thinking of: "I don't really need to check this, because some one else will catch any mistakes."

It's Africa

I don't want to characterize an entire continent with one story, but....sheesh.

The Shadow of the Sun

Rysard Kapuscinski

Yet another tardy book review.

The wife and I stumbled across this at Borders back in NY last summer. I had no great expectations for it, thinking it would be a good travelogue written from a slightly different perspective. What I got was a bit more than that.

The author is a foreign correspondent who previously worked for the Polish News. He has quite a bit of experience in Africa and beyond, and was lucky enough to be there at the beginning of the independence era. The book covers the period from independence to modern time, in that way it provided a more human complement to the previous book.

Kapuscinski comes through with some great insights about the differences between Africans and Europeans/ Westerners, without delving into stereotypes. He achieved this by experiencing Africa in a way many would not be willing to. He lived in the African section of cities, eschewing the more comfortable ex-pat areas. This of course led to some difficulties (as when his house was broken into many times in Lagos), but it also provided opportunities to make observations that others--not willing to make that step--could not make.

There are a few passages in the book that I think warrant specific attention. During his travels to Uganda to witness the independence ceremonies, he was struck down with Malaria. The account goes on for several pages, but I'll provide a snippet:

...the attack arrives quickly, sometimes quite abruptly, with few preliminaries. It is a sudden, violent onset of cold. A polar, arctic cold. Someone has taken you, naked, toasted in the hellish heat of the Sahel and the Sahara, and thrown you straight into the icy highlands of Greenland or Spitsbergen, amid the snow, winds, and blizzards.... You begin to tremble, to quake, to thrash about. You immediately recognize, however, that this is not a trembling you are familiar with from earlier experiences--say, when you caught cold one winter in a frost; these tremors and convulsions tossing you around are of a kind that at any moment now will tear you to shreds. (p54)

There are plenty of grand observations about the impacts of history: colonialism, slavery etc., the differing values on human life and labor, living if not with at least in much closer proximity to death, that you can find many other places. But every once in a while there is a true gem. A story that encapsulates how differences in lifestyle and culture can really make a difference. Like this about catching a bus in Accra:

We climb into the bus and sit down. At this point there is a risk of culture clash, of collision and conflict. It will undoubtedly occur if the passenger is a foreigner who doesn't know Africa. Someone like that will start looking around, squirming, inquiring, "When will the bus leave?"
"What do you mean, when?" the astonished driver will reply. "It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up." (p16)

It displays a completely different understanding of that most basic of concepts: time. Whereas the European sees time as something apart from humanity, not dependent on humanity: "The European feels himself to be time's slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules." (p16) Compared to the African view: "For them it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is man who influences time, its shape, course, and rhythm.... Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it." (p17)

Interestingly: "In practical terms, this means that if you go to a village where a meeting is scheduled for the afternoon but find no one at the appointed spot, asking, "When will the meeting take place?" makes no sense. You know the answer: "It will take place when people come." (p17) This is quite different from my (albeit limited) experience. I've never encountered this difficulty. Perhaps it is dated. It comes from the chapter on Ghanaian independence in 1957. Maybe it represents a urban/ rural difference. Maybe it is based on the participants in the meetings. Maybe my observation is flawed?

Regardless, the book is well worth your time. It is an interesting, quick read--aided by its layout: short, independent chapters. The perfect format for a nighttime read.

The COCOM is dead! Long live the JIACOM!

Death of the Combatant Command?

The Fate of Africa

The Fate of Africa
Martin Meredith

It's been sitting, reading complete, on the shelf for some time now. I just haven't gotten around to talking about it. As I described in the reading list, it's academic. Not dry but academic. But importantly, it does provide a good survey of African history since the beginning of the Independence period in the mid-twentieth century.

I wouldn't say there's anything earth-shattering here. Quite a bit of interesting history, but nothing that's going to make you put/throw the book down and say 'Gee, that's interesting'.

I know this sounds like a bit of faint praise, but it isn't. The book is quite good, and written to be easily read. Meredith spends some time discussing the causes of the continuous problems African states seem to have breaking out of the cycle of poverty-especially when you look at the progress made in other areas of the world that were in a similar state in the 1950s.

Here's a quick summary:
by the time the 'scramble for Africa' was complete, something on the order of 10,000 independent, states, kingdoms, communities etc had been amalgamated into some forty colonies and protectorates. The borders were largely 'random', mostly drawn in Europe, by people who hadn't actually been to Africa, and that didn't take into account local political / ethnic borders, terrain, history....

By the early twentieth century, colonial administrations were well entrenched, and generally accepted by the local populace. That is not to say that there was not resistance, which there was, and occasionally quite skillful, but the colonial administrations had legitimacy, and that was important.

Colonial footprints remained small and mostly coastal. Most of the day-to-day ruling was done by local chiefs in the service of the colonial administration (a policy which had some serious negative long term consequences).

When the colonial period came to an end after the second world war, there had been little if any preparation for self-governance. In fact, the policies of some European powers (France) were specifically designed to bind the colonies more closely to the European power than to prepare for independence. Then there was an apparently abrupt change and many colonies were 'cut free' with predictable consequences.

Looking back on the book now (I finished it a while ago) I notice that I marked up the introduction and early chapters quite well but the later chapters are mostly devoid on notes. As the book progressed it became more and more survey-ish, and less and less academic.

Still, a worthwhile read and a good introduction to modern African history.