Sunday, October 21, 2018
The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
The World in Six Songs was one of the most frustrating books I've read in a while. Daniel J. Levitn's theory (that all music falls into six types of song - friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, or love) was fascinating, and as a musician and scientist he has the knowledge to back that up. However, every time I became engrossed in his explanation, he'd awkwardly name-drop or tell a story that just seemed too pat (or included an obvious fact-checking error - "We Built This City" was recorded in 1985 so it couldn't be on a 1970 playlist). Interesting material, and a lot of potential, but not well executed.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
They Came to Baghdad
In her autobiography, Agatha Christie said how easy it was for her to write. All she needed was a table for her typewriter and she could produce a novel or two and some short stories every year. She also talked about going on archaeological expeditions with her husband, Max Mallowan. Because everyone on the expedition needed to contribute, she became one of the staff photographers, taking pictures of labeled pottery shards every morning and then, when the heat made most work impossible, retiring to her room and her typewriter after lunch.
This is how I imagine she wrote They Came to Baghdad. It's a caper novel, along the lines of her Tommy and Tuppence series. The book starts with the run-up to a major international conference where the east/west balance of power may be at stake. That's just the framework for a young, barely competent typist's adventures. Victoria Jones has been fired (again) and on her way to her employment agency, she meets a young man, Edward, about to leave for Baghdad as part of an NGO (or something like that - the details are fuzzy, both both to him and to Victoria). On a whim, she decides to follow him and, shockingly, she manages to get a position as a companion to a traveller who's broken her arm. Once in Baghdad, Victoria starts working for Edward's NGO - at least until she's kidnapped and drugged, waking up to find her hair has been bleached and she's far from town. She ends up being mistaken for an anthropologist sent out to work on an archaeological dig, where she not only finds she has a talent for reconstructing ancient pottery from shards but also manages to solve her kidnapping and foil an international plot. There's more (a dead body in the night, an attempted murder on a bus, a dashing spy, and a mysterious woman named Anna Scheele), which Christie ties everything together neatly and with proper support. It's probably not one of her classics, but a highly amusing mystery novel that's definitely worth reading.
This is how I imagine she wrote They Came to Baghdad. It's a caper novel, along the lines of her Tommy and Tuppence series. The book starts with the run-up to a major international conference where the east/west balance of power may be at stake. That's just the framework for a young, barely competent typist's adventures. Victoria Jones has been fired (again) and on her way to her employment agency, she meets a young man, Edward, about to leave for Baghdad as part of an NGO (or something like that - the details are fuzzy, both both to him and to Victoria). On a whim, she decides to follow him and, shockingly, she manages to get a position as a companion to a traveller who's broken her arm. Once in Baghdad, Victoria starts working for Edward's NGO - at least until she's kidnapped and drugged, waking up to find her hair has been bleached and she's far from town. She ends up being mistaken for an anthropologist sent out to work on an archaeological dig, where she not only finds she has a talent for reconstructing ancient pottery from shards but also manages to solve her kidnapping and foil an international plot. There's more (a dead body in the night, an attempted murder on a bus, a dashing spy, and a mysterious woman named Anna Scheele), which Christie ties everything together neatly and with proper support. It's probably not one of her classics, but a highly amusing mystery novel that's definitely worth reading.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
The Malaria Project: The US Government's Secret Mission to Find a Miracle Cure
We haven't beaten malaria. The parasite is too well evolved, too wily. Surviving an infection only gives a few months of immunity (although initial infections are more likely to affect the brain), and anti-malarial drugs have severe side effects. The best prevention is to reduce the transmissibility through economic development But there's a feedback loop in effect - malaria weakens people, sapping their ability to improve their economic status, leaving them in the sort of living conditions that both aid in the transmission of malaria and create a reservoir for the disease.
The Malaria Project starts with an outline of the disease. There are four human strains, but two are most important, cyclical vivid and the more virulent falciparum. This old world disease had a new world treatment, quinine, from the bark of the South American chinch tree. It only saved the patient, though, it did not kill the parasite and left the victim subject to recurrent attacks and left them able to transmit the disease to a neighbor.
19th Century chemistry tried to synthesize quinine from coal tar and failed. One failure, by William Henry Perkin, created the first artificial dye and kicked off the organic chemistry industry. Germany led the way, and after WWI, her patents were confiscated by US companies. WWI also broke down the late 19th Century gains against the parasite. More troops were infected with malaria than died, and Mediterranean regions which had controlled transmission once found the disease to be endemic.
Malaria had never ceased to be endemic in the American South, and that's where Dr; Lowell Coggshall first joined the fight. A formerly indifferent student who saw college as an escape from subsistence farming in Iowa, he worked for the Rockefeller Institute, measuring parasite loads in children and adults and pouring toxic Paris Green on stagnant ponds to kill mosquito larvae. Along with experienced malariologists Samuel Darling and Paul Russell, he made headway but malaria wasn't truly controlled until the TVA brought electricity, running water, and jobs to the area.
While Coggshell was fighting malaria win the US, a German doctor, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, found that the high fever caused by malaria could cure tertiary syphilis (in about 30% of early cases). Many patients died, but since tertiary syphilis is terminal, scientists father day did not see an ethical problem. Jauregg eventually won a Nobel Prize and researchers - both German (where the Nazi regime preferred human over non-human experiments) and American - used mental patients and prisoners as both research subjects and reservoirs for the malaria parasite.
When WWII broke out, malaria control because a war weapon. Again, more soldiers developed malaria than were injured and the available drugs (made from incomplete German patents) were so toxic that soldiers refused to take them. Coggshell, now a Naval officer, devised control methods (screens, repellant, long pants and sleeves, clearing and poisoning stagnant water) executed by enlisted men chosen for their scientific backgrounds. Once control methods were established (if not always followed), Cogwheel turned to testing treatments on soldiers sent home to recover.
US researchers, notably Alf Alving, continued to experiment on prisoners as well, They were better treated than other prisoners, and gave consent, but such consent can't be considered informed or voluntary. Perhaps that's why the first Nazi doctor to stand trial, Claus Schilling, was executed while later doctors were condemned to life imprisonment during the Nuremberg Trials. Alving's work, along with Coggshell's, did lead to effective treatments, but at what cost? Although they passed muster in the day, we cannot argue that they were ethical. But can we refuse the life-saving advances he made?
In the end, it may not matter. Malaria is smarter than we are, and no matter how toxic, the drugs eventually become useless against resistant strains. Multi-drug therapy helps stave that off, but only temporarily Our best bet is to stop transmission, which can only come with economic development, which is hindered by endemic malaria.
The Malaria Project starts with an outline of the disease. There are four human strains, but two are most important, cyclical vivid and the more virulent falciparum. This old world disease had a new world treatment, quinine, from the bark of the South American chinch tree. It only saved the patient, though, it did not kill the parasite and left the victim subject to recurrent attacks and left them able to transmit the disease to a neighbor.
19th Century chemistry tried to synthesize quinine from coal tar and failed. One failure, by William Henry Perkin, created the first artificial dye and kicked off the organic chemistry industry. Germany led the way, and after WWI, her patents were confiscated by US companies. WWI also broke down the late 19th Century gains against the parasite. More troops were infected with malaria than died, and Mediterranean regions which had controlled transmission once found the disease to be endemic.
Malaria had never ceased to be endemic in the American South, and that's where Dr; Lowell Coggshall first joined the fight. A formerly indifferent student who saw college as an escape from subsistence farming in Iowa, he worked for the Rockefeller Institute, measuring parasite loads in children and adults and pouring toxic Paris Green on stagnant ponds to kill mosquito larvae. Along with experienced malariologists Samuel Darling and Paul Russell, he made headway but malaria wasn't truly controlled until the TVA brought electricity, running water, and jobs to the area.
While Coggshell was fighting malaria win the US, a German doctor, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, found that the high fever caused by malaria could cure tertiary syphilis (in about 30% of early cases). Many patients died, but since tertiary syphilis is terminal, scientists father day did not see an ethical problem. Jauregg eventually won a Nobel Prize and researchers - both German (where the Nazi regime preferred human over non-human experiments) and American - used mental patients and prisoners as both research subjects and reservoirs for the malaria parasite.
When WWII broke out, malaria control because a war weapon. Again, more soldiers developed malaria than were injured and the available drugs (made from incomplete German patents) were so toxic that soldiers refused to take them. Coggshell, now a Naval officer, devised control methods (screens, repellant, long pants and sleeves, clearing and poisoning stagnant water) executed by enlisted men chosen for their scientific backgrounds. Once control methods were established (if not always followed), Cogwheel turned to testing treatments on soldiers sent home to recover.
US researchers, notably Alf Alving, continued to experiment on prisoners as well, They were better treated than other prisoners, and gave consent, but such consent can't be considered informed or voluntary. Perhaps that's why the first Nazi doctor to stand trial, Claus Schilling, was executed while later doctors were condemned to life imprisonment during the Nuremberg Trials. Alving's work, along with Coggshell's, did lead to effective treatments, but at what cost? Although they passed muster in the day, we cannot argue that they were ethical. But can we refuse the life-saving advances he made?
In the end, it may not matter. Malaria is smarter than we are, and no matter how toxic, the drugs eventually become useless against resistant strains. Multi-drug therapy helps stave that off, but only temporarily Our best bet is to stop transmission, which can only come with economic development, which is hindered by endemic malaria.
The Color of Fear
Sharon McCone hasn't retired yet, and neither has Marcia Muller (there's a new McCone novel, just out in hardback). I'm glad - after losing Sue Grafton last year, there are only two remaining godmothers of the female PI novel. Most of the mysteries I read are written by women, and I have Muller, Grafton, and Paretsky to thank for that.
The Color of Fear opens a few days before Christmas. A mob attacks Sharon's birth father, Shoshone artist Elwood Farmer while he's taking a late night stroll. We know from the start that it's a racially motivated attack, the identity of the gang leader, and the fact that there's also a personal connection to M&R investigations, the firm Sharon owns with her husband Hy Ripinsky. I appreciate mysteries which play with the genre's conventions, and Muller has written a successful howdunnit. She's also given Sharon a chance to catch up with family. Her birth mother, attorney Saskia Blackhawk, and her half-sister Robin have featured in the last dozen or so novels, and her nephew/employee Mick and his father (Sharon's ex-brother-in-law) play substantial roles. This time, Sharon's youngest sister Patsy, unseen and barely mentioned since the All Souls days, makes a brief appearance, along with their mother who seems to be slipping into a fantasy world (or who has been living there for years). It's an interesting juxtaposition, holiday cheer with family and friends against a distressingly topical racial attack, but it works well, thanks to Muller's skill.
The Color of Fear opens a few days before Christmas. A mob attacks Sharon's birth father, Shoshone artist Elwood Farmer while he's taking a late night stroll. We know from the start that it's a racially motivated attack, the identity of the gang leader, and the fact that there's also a personal connection to M&R investigations, the firm Sharon owns with her husband Hy Ripinsky. I appreciate mysteries which play with the genre's conventions, and Muller has written a successful howdunnit. She's also given Sharon a chance to catch up with family. Her birth mother, attorney Saskia Blackhawk, and her half-sister Robin have featured in the last dozen or so novels, and her nephew/employee Mick and his father (Sharon's ex-brother-in-law) play substantial roles. This time, Sharon's youngest sister Patsy, unseen and barely mentioned since the All Souls days, makes a brief appearance, along with their mother who seems to be slipping into a fantasy world (or who has been living there for years). It's an interesting juxtaposition, holiday cheer with family and friends against a distressingly topical racial attack, but it works well, thanks to Muller's skill.
Monday, October 8, 2018
A Terrible Beauty
Warning, spoilers for And Only to Deceive
The Moonstone, widely acknowledged as the fist mystery novel, used multiple points of view. The convention fell out of fashion in the 20th Century, but when done well adds background without resorting to excessive exposition. Tasha Alexander uses the convention well, and also avoids making the returned dead spots trope convincing.
A Terrible Beauty begins with Phillip, Viscount Ashton's funeral. Dressed in deep Victorian mourning, Lady Emily can hide her ambivalence for the husband she barely knew. A decade later, happily married to Phillip's best friend Colin Hargraves, Emily receives a postcard sent to the Viscountess Ashton. Is it a joke? Or is Phillip still alive/ Emily hears his name on a trip tot he zoo with her sons, and then thinks she sees him in Athens en route to Santorini, where she, Colin, and her American classicist friend Margaret Michales plan to distract her friend Jeremy, Duke of Cambridge from his grief over his disastrous engagement. Any doubts Emily has about the ghosts of her past disappear when she arrives at her villa, because Phillip arrived ahead of her - with a dead man.
Phillip, it turns out, did not die when poisoned by an associate while on safari in Africa, or so he claims. He'd actually fallen into a deep coma and had been saved by a tribesman who substituted an actual corpse for the funeral, then nursed him back to health. Two years later, he found his way to Munich and tried tor claim his identity. Banks don't give monty do dead men, so he would have been stuck if he hadn't been befriended by a sympathetic German archaeologist. Eventually, the amateur becomes a professional, and under the name Phillip Chapman discovered a bronze which may have belonged to Achilles.
His story convinces Emily and Colin, at least at first. He looks like Phillip, and with few photographs and the passage of a decade, he can explain away any doubts. He's also being chased by a man out steal the Achilles bronze, even if it means killing Phillip. this leaves two mysteries for Emily and Colin to solve, and with the help of Phillip's retrospective memories, I solved both about the same time as they did (although I didn't see the final twist until I read it). A Terrible Beauty is one of the best entries in a generally good but occasionally uneven series
The Moonstone, widely acknowledged as the fist mystery novel, used multiple points of view. The convention fell out of fashion in the 20th Century, but when done well adds background without resorting to excessive exposition. Tasha Alexander uses the convention well, and also avoids making the returned dead spots trope convincing.
A Terrible Beauty begins with Phillip, Viscount Ashton's funeral. Dressed in deep Victorian mourning, Lady Emily can hide her ambivalence for the husband she barely knew. A decade later, happily married to Phillip's best friend Colin Hargraves, Emily receives a postcard sent to the Viscountess Ashton. Is it a joke? Or is Phillip still alive/ Emily hears his name on a trip tot he zoo with her sons, and then thinks she sees him in Athens en route to Santorini, where she, Colin, and her American classicist friend Margaret Michales plan to distract her friend Jeremy, Duke of Cambridge from his grief over his disastrous engagement. Any doubts Emily has about the ghosts of her past disappear when she arrives at her villa, because Phillip arrived ahead of her - with a dead man.
Phillip, it turns out, did not die when poisoned by an associate while on safari in Africa, or so he claims. He'd actually fallen into a deep coma and had been saved by a tribesman who substituted an actual corpse for the funeral, then nursed him back to health. Two years later, he found his way to Munich and tried tor claim his identity. Banks don't give monty do dead men, so he would have been stuck if he hadn't been befriended by a sympathetic German archaeologist. Eventually, the amateur becomes a professional, and under the name Phillip Chapman discovered a bronze which may have belonged to Achilles.
His story convinces Emily and Colin, at least at first. He looks like Phillip, and with few photographs and the passage of a decade, he can explain away any doubts. He's also being chased by a man out steal the Achilles bronze, even if it means killing Phillip. this leaves two mysteries for Emily and Colin to solve, and with the help of Phillip's retrospective memories, I solved both about the same time as they did (although I didn't see the final twist until I read it). A Terrible Beauty is one of the best entries in a generally good but occasionally uneven series
The Best Man to Die
I'd been waiting for one of Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford mysteries to grab me, and The Best Man to Die succeeded. A bit less obviously psychological (popular understanding of motivations has evolved since the year I was born), it also introduces Wexford's drama-student daughter Sheila.
Sheila, and the dustmop of a dog she's watching for a friend, add a bit of levity to a pair of apparently unconnected mysteries. Charlie Hatton was supposed to be best man at his friend Jack Pertwee's wedding. Instead, someone killed him after he left the stag night at the local pub. Wexford came across his body (and Maurice Cullum, one of the revelers and suspects) while walking Sheila's temporary dog. While he spends his Saturday interviewing the wedding party, Inspector Burden goes to the hospital to interview the lone survivor of a car crash. Mrs. Fanshaw, however, insists that her daughter wasn't in the car when her husband ran off the road. If so, who was the young woman found burnt almost beyond recognition in the wreckage? As Wexford investigates the Hatton murder, he begins to suspect that the dead man's blackmail scheme connects to the fatal crash, but how? There's an easy to miss, but obvious once it's mentioned twist which neatly (but not too neatly) solves the case, and a bit of comic tension (it's hard to explain without spoiling) which adds to the final pages. Now I understand why the Wexford novels have remained so popular.
Sheila, and the dustmop of a dog she's watching for a friend, add a bit of levity to a pair of apparently unconnected mysteries. Charlie Hatton was supposed to be best man at his friend Jack Pertwee's wedding. Instead, someone killed him after he left the stag night at the local pub. Wexford came across his body (and Maurice Cullum, one of the revelers and suspects) while walking Sheila's temporary dog. While he spends his Saturday interviewing the wedding party, Inspector Burden goes to the hospital to interview the lone survivor of a car crash. Mrs. Fanshaw, however, insists that her daughter wasn't in the car when her husband ran off the road. If so, who was the young woman found burnt almost beyond recognition in the wreckage? As Wexford investigates the Hatton murder, he begins to suspect that the dead man's blackmail scheme connects to the fatal crash, but how? There's an easy to miss, but obvious once it's mentioned twist which neatly (but not too neatly) solves the case, and a bit of comic tension (it's hard to explain without spoiling) which adds to the final pages. Now I understand why the Wexford novels have remained so popular.
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