Science Fiction: Bowl Of Heaven By Gregory Benford & Larry Niven

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Gregory Benford and Larry Niven belong to the Grandmasters of Science Fiction. Together they created the novel "Bowl of Heaven", a fascinating space opera, Vol. 1 of a trilogy  ( amazon). Some humans want to settle in another part of the universe and started a centuries long journey, which leads to  unexpected results (this is a spoiler free blog).

The authors welted a lot sciences into a thrilling adventure story. The novel shows that Benford is an astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the department of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. But he also has the talent to create exciting stories. 

It is not surprising that the tandem imagined a breathtaking technology based on particle physics, cosmology & chemistry. For instance the authors describe a spaceship that is an intricate self-regulating system and self-tech entity, with artificial intelligences embedded in every subsystem. The spaceship is an anthology of self-critical and disciplined minds. Each mind lived its life with a reward system and constraints, dwelling in a community of diverse talents, propelled it into a social intelligence. Comparable to human societies the ship  evolved over the centuries of its flight into its own, original society.  

The authors also invented an alien world that is partly familiar and partly very strange. The inhabitants - intelligent beings, animals & plants - seem to be highly exotic, but they are plausible because based on what we know about evolution on earth. The complex  psychology & sociology of these beings (the aliens) is plausible and fascinating and I also find behavior and the relationships of the human characters interesting. There is also some sex involved, very unusual for the timid science fiction genre.

I got highly entertained, could refresh old knowledge and learned a lot new insights. I also got inspired to think about our place in the universe.

I plan to read Vol. 2 in a not too far future.

Books: The Rules Of Attraction

(Drivebycuriosity) - Bret Easton Ellis belongs to the stars of contemporary American fiction, albeit controversial. His novel "The Shards" (published 2023 ) creates a hitchcockian atmosphere and
pulled me into a sinister vertigo (my review )

His earlier novel "The Rules of attraction" (published 2010  amazon ) doesn`t have these qualities, even the author uses very similar condiments. The plot develops in short episodes, all told in first person, by female & male characters, college students in North East US. They are all obnoxious, pathetic & egocentric. Like in "The Shards" the protagonist`s  universes circle about parties, drugs, beer and fucking - lots of fucking. Unfortunately none of them and their sheer endless experiences were interesting.

It looks like Bret Easton Ellis`craftmanship developed a lot since publishing this novel and in "The Shards" he finally welted his ideas together. 

Economy: The European Commission - The New Robber Barons

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Europe follows the tradition. In medieval times the Rhine Valley, a section of the River Rhine, that flows from the Swiss mountains to the North Sea, was flanked by castles. There lived robber barons who made their living from robbing and blackmailing traders who traveled through their territory. Today the European Union, controlled by the European Commission, does the same. The EU demands ransom from US technology corporations who do business in Europe.

“This year, like last year, the European Union will again make more money from fining US tech companies than from the total tax income from Europe’s own public tech companies!", reports Alex Tabarrok ( marginalrevolution). 

Recently the European Commission fined Google €890 (x.com ) million for breaching their Digital Markets Act. In 2024 the European Commission fined Apple over €1.8 billion "over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers" (ec.europa.eu ). Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been fined several times by EU regulators, including for violations of user privacy and competition laws. It is also facing new fines over purportedly "addictive" features of its apps. In 2021 the EU hit Amazon with a $886 million fine for an alleged data law breach ( bbc.com). The fine was issued by Luxembourg's National Commission for Data Protection, which claimed the tech giant's processing of personal data did not comply with EU law.

The enormous fines are not surprising. Google and other Big Tech corporation earn a lot money - that animates greed and the EU has the power to extort the profits by taking their European business ransom and blackmailing them. If US Tech wants to continue business in the EU they have to pay whatever the EU demands. 

The EU created a complex scrub of arbitrary rules to catch US Tech and accuse them of wrong doing. 

 

 

Books: The Holocaust Industry By Norman G. Finkelstein

 (Drivebycuriosity) - The 20th century had a lot apocalyptic human tragedies: The Jewish Holocaust, the murderous regimes of Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot, the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I and the Japanese terror in China & Korea. And what about Hiroshima and Vietnam? Most of the are these genocides are almost forgotten, but the Holocaust still rules the headlines.

That is primarily thanks to "The Holocaust Industry", claims the Jewish author Norman G. Finkelstein in his little book "The Holocaust Industry" (amazon  ). The author, who is Jewish himself and had lost family members in concentration camps, is annoyed that a large group of people and organizations are taking advantage from the suffering of the Jewish people. 

Annual Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust are a national event in the US. All 50 states sponsor commemorations, often in state legislative chambers. The Association of Holocaust Organizations lists over 100 Holocaust institutions in the United States. Seven major Holocaust museums dot the American landscape. The centerpiece of this memorialization is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Where is the national museum refering to the genocide on the Native Americans or to some 4–5 million men, women and children died as a result of the US wars in Indochina?

 Apart from Holocaust memorials, fully seventeen states mandate or recommend Holocaust programs in their schools, and many colleges and universities have endowed chairs in Holocaust studies. Hardly a week passes without a major Holocaust-related story in the New York Times. The number of scholarly studies devoted to the Nazi Final Solution is conservatively estimated at over 10,000. 

Finkelstein reports that the Holocaust Industry includes a "credulous press ready to give banner headlines to any Holocaust-related story". According to Finkelstein "the New York Times serves as the main promotional vehicle of the Holocaust industry. It is primarily responsible for having advanced the careers of Jerzy Kosinski, Daniel Goldhagen, and Elie Wiesel. For frequency of coverage, the Holocaust places a close second to the daily weather report". Finkelstein claims that "the US is the corporate headquarters of the Holocaust industry". 

The Holocaust industry sprung up only after Israel’s overwhelming display of military dominance and flourished amid extreme Israeli triumphalism.

 

                Outright Extortion Racket 

In recent years, the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Using the House and Senate banking committees as a springboard, the Holocaust industry orchestrated a shameless campaign of vilification.
 

 The Holocaust Industry accused Swiss bank to take advantage and … “a fifty-year Swiss-Nazi conspiracy to steal billions from Europe’s Jews and Holocaust survivors.”The campaign rapidly degenerated into a libel of the Swiss people.“a country whose citizens . . . boasted to their neighbors about their enviable wealth, was quite knowingly profiting from blood money”; that “the apparently respectable citizens of the world’s most peaceful nation . . . committed an unprecedented theft”; that “dishonesty was a cultural code that individual Swiss had mastered to protect the nation’s image and prosperity”; that the Swiss were “instinctively attracted to healthy profits” (only the Swiss?); that “self-interest was the supreme guide for all of Switzerland’s banks” (only Switzerland’s banks?); that “Switzerland’s small breed of bankers had become greedier and more immoral than most”; that “concealment and deception were practiced arts among Swiss diplomats” (only Swiss diplomats?); that “apologies and resignations were not common in Switzerland’s political tradition” (unlike our own?); that “Swiss greed was unique”; that the “Swiss character” combined “simplicity and duplicity,” and “behind the appearance of civility was a layer of obstinacy, and beyond that was solid egotistical incomprehension of anyone else’s opinion”; that the Swiss were “not just a peculiarly charmless people who had produced no artists, no heroes since William Tell and no statesmen, but were dishonest Nazi collaborators who had profited from genocide,” and on and on.

Apart from blocking access to Holocaust accounts and purchasing looted gold, the Swiss also stood accused of conspiring with Poland and Hungary to defraud Jews.  

Beyond whipping up public hysteria, the Holocaust industry coordinated a two-pronged strategy to “terrorize” (Bower) the Swiss into submission: class-action lawsuits and an economic boycott.

 In February 1996 Hevesi and McCall wrote the Swiss banks threatening sanctions. In October Governor Pataki publicly lent his support. During the next several months local and state governments in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Illinois all tabled resolutions threatening an economic boycott unless the Swiss banks came clean. In May 1997 the city of Los Angeles, withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds from a Swiss bank, imposed the first sanctions.

 In July 1998 Hevesi and McCall threatened stiff new sanctions. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, and California joined in within days. In mid-August the Swiss finally caved in.

Total attorney fee demands run to $15 million, with “many” billing at a rate of $600 per hour. One lawyer is asking $2,400 for reading Tom Bower’s book, Nazi Gold. “Jewish groups and survivors,” New York’s Jewish Week reported, “are taking off the gloves as they vie for a share of the Swiss banks’ $1.25 billion Holocaust-era settlement.”

After the Holocaust industry settled with Switzerland in August 1998, it deployed the same winning strategy against Germany in September.

Forgoing diplomatic niceties, Congressman Rick Lazio bluntly urged the Committee “to focus on the private sector German companies, in particular, those who do business in the US.”   To whip up public hysteria against Germany, the Holocaust industry took out multiple full-page newspaper advertisements in October.

The shakedown of Switzerland and Germany has been only a prelude to the grand finale: the shakedown of Eastern Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, alluring prospects opened up in the former heartland of European Jewry. Cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of “needy Holocaust victims,” the Holocaust industry has sought to extort billions of dollars from these already impoverished countries. Pursuing this end with reckless and ruthless abandon, it has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.

The Holocaust industry doesn’t need a mobilized public opinion. With the support of key US officials, it can easily break the feeble resistance of already prostrate nations.   

To force submission from recalcitrant governments, the Holocaust industry wields the bludgeon of US sanctions.

A vast, well-heeled bureaucracy has sprung up. Insurance companies, banks, art museums, private industry, tenants and farmers in nearly every European country are under the Holocaust industry gun. 
 

Finkelstein reports that various persons and organization still benefit from the Holocaust. He calls that "Capitalizing the Holocaust"
 

Books: Augustus - First Emperor Of Rome By Adrian Goldsworthy

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - "The king is dead, long live the king!" The traditional proclamation, used to announce the immediate transfer of sovereignty from a deceased monarch to their successor, describes also a pivotal phase in the history of the antique Rome. In the year BC 44 Julius Caesar got assassinated, but his death made the way free for Imperator Augustus, the first of a long row of Roman Caesars. The impressive biography "Augustus - First Emperor Of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy describes the development of Rome`s first Imperator and how the Roman republic turned into a hereditary monarchy ( amazon). 

 

       Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius 

Imperator Caesar Augustus divi filius declared: “Who could be found more magnanimous than I – not to mention again my deceased father – who more nearly divine? For I – the gods be my witnesses! – who have so many gallant soldiers, both Romans and allies, who are devoted to me, I who am supreme over the entire sea within the pillars of Hercules except for a few tribes, I who possess both cities and provinces in every continent . . . when you are all at peace . . . and, greatest of all, are content to yield obedience, I in spite of all this, voluntarily and of my dominion and give up so vast a possession”.

Augustus`stellar career was only possible because of the chaos in the Roman commonwealth during the first century BC and would have been unimaginable in earlier times. But he also was a creation of Julius Caesar himself, who adopted his grandnephew and gave him his name. At eighteen Caesar`s grandnephew ceased to be Caius Octavius and instead became Caius Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar promoted his protege further by giving him important military commands and finally made him the principal heir in his will. 

Augustus did not have the multiple talents of his foster father; he lacked the qualities of an orators, he did not become a successful advocate and was not an eloquent writer, but he was extremely ambitious & unscrupulous and became a very successful warlord. Along Marcus Antonius (Shakespeare`s Mark Antony) he was at the head of the bloody revenge campaign against Brutus and other Caesar assassins and later beat his competitor Antonius in a savage civil war and drove him to suicide. 

Goldsworthy writes: "At some point – perhaps not until the murder of Julius Caesar – Octavius/Augustus determined to be first in the state, and everything he did was directed to this end. Power was not supposed to be inherited at Rome, but armed with his sponsor`s name he rallied the dead dictator’s supporters and proclaimed his intention to assume all of his foster father’s offices and status.To achieve this he had no hesitation in resorting to violence, and so in the years that followed he killed and terrorized, switching alliances as it suited the moment. Ambition was in the blood of any Roman aristocrat, but never before had it been quite so untrammelled by convention nor so openly aimed at winning permanent unrivaled supremacy – but then never before had someone been heir to Julius Caesar, dictator for life and laden with honors greater than any Roman had ever received in the past. The situation in which the young Augustus found himself was as unprecedented as his actions, but his motivation at the very least had strong roots in the traditions of his social class".

 

                          The Wider Good 

Augustus` activity was devoted solely to the immediate end of winning power and defeating his enemies, and probably left no time for anything else. During these years he advertised his connection with Julius Caesar, celebrated the latter’s achievements, sought vengeance for his murder, and at the same time acquired power for himself. Later, in the thirties BC, he began to show more concern for the wider good, beginning to repair and add to the monuments and infrastructure of Rome, and to regulate the food supply of the City. Once again this was sensible politics, but the dedication with which he continued to act in this way was far more than the desire for immediate popularity. Augustus pursued power ruthlessly,

Till the end of his long live Imperator Caesar Augustus remained a warlord whose dominance of the state was based ultimately on his control of far greater military force than anyone else. By modern standards he was and would remain a military dictator, even if he always carefully avoided the title in its Roman sense. For all the display of resigning his powers and reluctant acceptance of the duties pressed on him by the Senate at the start of 27 BC, no one could compel him to do anything as long as he continued to monopolise military power. The legions were his, and the Senate had no real say in how they were run, nor did it any longer control the raising and disbanding of these and other army units.

It was up to Augustus and his advisers to decide on the size and shape of the army they would maintain. They needed to judge how many soldiers were necessary to secure his position against potential Roman rivals as well as how many were required to maintain the empire, defending and, where it was desired, expanding the provinces. The two were closely related. Imperator meant ‘victorious commander’ and it would be seriously damaging to Augustus’ reputation and auctoritas if the empire appeared weak to its foreign neighbors and began to suffer reverses on the frontiers or within the provinces.

In spite of Rome`s military power Augustus did not try to expand the empire. He decided against the conquest of the English Island, displaying the same caution that deterred him from risking war with Parthia, the power in the East, unless it became unavoidable. 

Since Augustus was blessed with a very long life he was able to transform large parts of Europe. Under Augustus widespread cultivation of vines and wine-making began in Gaul, while manufacturers of ceramics responded to the demands of a growing market by establishing workshops in Gaul itself. Use of coinage based on the Roman standard, already widespread in the south, extended over a wider area, fostered particularly wherever the army was based and legionaries inclined to spend their wages.

 

              Begin Of A Dynasty 

Augustus held supreme power for forty-four years. 
In this time had gone from the angry avenger of a murdered father to the unifying elder statesman and ‘father’ of the Roman world. His long life empowered him to start a dynasty and a long line of Roman Casesars. His adopted sons shared his popularity and were being prepared for high office. His daughter – and only actual child – proved less willing to play the part given to her by her father.  

Following the model of his foster father Augusts promoted his wider family, especially his nephew Caius Claudius Marcellus, the son of his sister Octavia. After Marcellus`sudden death Augusts adopted Triberius, the first son of Julius Ceasar´s wife Livia Drusilla, and gave him important offices and provincial commands and named him his principal heir. After Augustus`death Triberius was given powers to those of the princeps (like Julius Caesar & Augustus) and smoothly succeeded Augustus in AD 14.

The Caesar is dead, long live Caesar! 

Books: Exploring the World Of Japanese Craft Sake

  

(Drivebycuriosity) - Do you like Sushi & Sashimi, the freshness, taste & texture of uncooked fish? Then you might also enjoy sake. I was wondering how a relatively plain grain like rice can be turned into such a delicious wine. The book "Exploring the World Of Japanese Craft Sake" by Nancy Matsumoto gives an introduction (amazon ). 

The authors went to sake bars and visited a lot sake brewers and rice farmers and interviewed them. Especially the female co-author focused on the family histories of the sake makers, too much for an introduction book.

But there are also some small informative parts about the different kinds of rice used for brewing, the types of water (minerals) and the regional differences. There is one very short chapter about the alchemy of sake making and explains the chemistry of transforming the starch of the grain into final product and I learned a lot about the use of mold - a special kind of mold - during the transformation process. 

Unfortunately the book is not formatted as an e-book and it looks like a PDF -  very hard to read. I will try to find a better book. 

Books: A Case Of Two Cities - The Curse Of Series

(Drivebycuriosity) - Everyone has to be efficient and productive these days - even writers. It seems that when an author has an idea for a good novel he stretches it out and turns it into a series. Unfortunately the following volumes are seldom good.

This is also true for Qiu Xiaolong`s "Inspector Chen Cao" series. I enjoyed volume 1"Death of a Red Heroine" about a detective in Shanghai in the 1990s (my review ). I liked also Vol 2 & 3, but I gave up reading vol 4 "A Case of Two Cities" after about 50% ( amazon).

This book focuses in corruption in China in the 1990. The subject is not new and the author really inflates it. So it becomes tedious to read again and again about the bad behavior of so many politicians and bureaucrats. There is a lot about Chinese poetry which I found interesting in the first 2 vol. but also got tiresome and slowed the already tardy plot. 

So reading Vol 1 - and maybe Vol 2 & 3 - is worth the time and the money, but not Vol. 4.