Books: Black Easter By James Blish

  (Drivebycuriosity) - If we believe the Roman Catholic mythology there is a big divide: On one side there are god and his angels, on the other are the devil and his demons. True or false, angels & demons are material for fascinating fantasy stories. "Black Easter or Faust Aleph-Null" by James Blish belongs to the best of them ( amazon).

The plot is set in Italy in the 1960s. A wealthy arm dealer commissions a powerful master in black magic to perform a giant and bizarre experiment. All demons of hell should be released and be allowed to roam the earth for a single night. What will happen? (this is a spoiler free blog. You can find a synopsis here wikipedia ).

The novella is paranormal thriller. The plot is told in a realistic - almost scientific - style like a Raymond Chandler novel. If black magic would be possible, it would happen as described by the author. 

I  indulged into Blish`s elaborate descriptions of the setting (a palazzo in Positano ) and the complex preparations, rituals & tools for the monstrous act. Blish created opulent & baroque scenes with grotesque and obscene appearances by the summoned demons. I enjoyed also the involvement of a subcubus (a demon who practices sex with a man in the shape of a woman and flies than to another place to have sex with a woman in the shape of a man).

"Black Easter" is based on real literature written in the Middle Ages when people, especially some parts of the Catholic Church, believed in magic. Blish used - and quoted - text books about sorcery, called grimoires, which were written by popular mystics (wikipedia. ). The novel, published in the 1960s, also was inspired by Goethe`s Faust and the cold war fears about a potential nuclear armageddon. 

"Black Easter" is a jewel of the fantastic literature. I would like to watch the novel turned into a movie directed by a cinematic master of the like of Lars von Trier, Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-Wook or Paul Thomas Anderson.

Photography: Miami In September

 (Drivebycuriosity) - My wife and I are visiting Miami again, the second time this year. Again we are using Airbnb and are staying in a condominium complex in the design district. The weather is splendid with day temperatures  in mid-80s F (30 C).

 

 Last week was tropical. At noon huge cauliflower clouds started to tower over the city and around 3pm the daily short downpour followed. One of these showers created the double rainbow over Miami Beach.

 

 

It was fun to watch the thunderstorms from our balcony.

 

 

Some of the cloud formations looked really funny.

 

 

I enjoyed the almost tropical sunsets.

 

 

Again I was amazed by the lush tropical vegetation which make Miami a very green city.

The images above seem to show a tropical rain forest but they display just one of Miami`s gated communities where the houses are hidden by trees.

 

 

Again I admired Miami`s street art. Above just some examples.

 

This  trompe l'oeil looks like a portal to another world.

 

 

Even the advertisements add to the flamboyant image of the city.

 

 

Someday we might come back.

 

Books: The Tip Of The Hangman By Allison Epstein

(Drivebycuriosity) - In the late 16th century England was in a crisis and on the brink of civil war. There was a conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I. Fundamentalist Catholics wanted to turn England back into a Catholic regime and tried to import the bloody Spanish inquisition. Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots, conspired against her cousin Elizabeth I, Queen of England. She tried to murder her relative, overtake her throne and turn England back into a fundamentalist Catholic nation, with the help of the Pope and Philip I, the Most Catholic King of Spain. Allison Epstein turned the history into a spy thriller: "The Tip of the Hangman" ( amazon).

The plot focuses on Christopher Marlow, today known as poet, playwright and colleague of Shakespeare. As Marlow was just a petty student in Cambridge he got coaxed to work as a spy for the Queen against Mary and the Catholic conspirators. But Epstein`s Marlow did not turn into a Renaissance James Bond, quite the opposite, he was a pawn in a fierce political game. "The Tip" is a fable about a flawed person sucked into a vicious vortex - a dark and sinister story and a tragedy.

It seems that Epstein was inspired by John le Carre, but also by Marlowe`s own plays  and even by Oscar Wilde. The novel transfers the reader back into a dangerous time. In the 16th century England was violent, bloody and life didn´t have much worth. Epstein´s descriptions of the Renaissance towns & manors are fascinating, especially the portrait of  London: "Everywhere the thick scent of mildew and burning wood and shit and piss and the blood, congealed and steaming, that ran in viscous pools. So loud. So much."

 I cared about Epstein`s Marlowe and suffered with him. I would be surprised if the book would not be turned into a major movie soon.

 

Science Fiction: New Eden By Kishore Tipirneni

 (Drivebycuriosity) - Was Einstein wrong? The great physicist postulated that nothing moves faster than light. The speed of light is the speed limit of the cosmos. But Werner Heisenberg and other scientists discovered a weird quantum mechanical phenomena:  Two subatomic particles can be entangled. When one particle changes its behavior the other will change immediately - even if it is at the other end of the universe. It seems that information between them moves much faster than light.

Kishore Tipirneni, the writer of the science fiction book "New Eden", based his novel on quantum physics and the assumption that information can travel much faster than light ( amazon.). Scientists use entangled subatomic particles to communicate over huge distances, which leads to surprising and spectacular  results (This is a spoiler free blog). The plot follows a triangle of 3 young persons: A female science reporter, a physicist who specializes in particle physics and an expert in information theory & computer whizz.  

 "New Eden" is hard science fiction, based on information theory and other sciences, like particle physics, evolution and genetics, but also touches topics like social media & politics. Parts of the novel are philosophical and very speculative and the novel develops into an utopian fairy tale.

I had fun reading the novel. Eden is entertaining with lots of humor and fascinating new ideas. Tipirneni has also the gift to describe complex scientific ideas in a very simple understandable language. In the moment of writing the Kindle version cost just $3.99 and prime subscribers can borrow it for free.

Economics: Will China Kill The Goose Who Lays The Golden Egg?

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - China is performing a massive crackdown of her leading tech companies ( reuters). Beijing is imposing more and more strict regulations and is taking over control over the businesses of Alibaba, Tencent and many other technology companies. 

The crackdown started last November when Beijing called off the IPO (dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong) of the online payment platform Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, which should have been the biggest IPO in history. In April, China hit Alibaba, China`s Amazon, with a $2.8 billion fine, claiming the company behaves like a monopoly. The government also forced Tencent, operator of the  hyper-popular messaging platform WeChat, to suspend all new user registrations temporary. Later Beijing restricted businesses of online food deliverer Meituan and ride-hailing firm Did and they turned the booming online education firms into nonprofits. Recently the government announced that they may ban  internet companies, whose data poses potential security risks from listing outside the country, including in the United States. Almost every day we read about new regulations for China`s Big Tech.

Apparently Alibaba & Co. got too big and too powerful for the communist government, who wants to defend their monopoly power. Xi Jinping, leader of the Communist party and life time president of China, is not happy with so much capitalism and dislikes that Alibaba founder Jack Ma and other high tech billionaires got so much power. China´s  leaders don´t accept other gods beside them.

The new crack down looks like a soft version of the cultural revolution in the 1960s. Then the Red Guards, the followers of Mao`s widow, attacked anybody who could be accused being a "capitalist". The cultural revolution threw the country back into a deep a depression. Since then there has been a tug of war between pro-business thinkers and old guard communists, who don`t care about the economy and don`t understand it. Apparently the stone age communists - led by President Xi - are gaining ground again.

It looks like that Xi is killing the goose who lays the golden egg. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu & Co became so big because they are doing a great service for the  consumers. The Chinese like to use the free messaging services, they welcome cheap & fast online deliveries and many more offers by the big tech companies.  

China`s  phenomenal growth in the recent decades was fueled by (partly) opening the economy and allowing more capitalism. China`s rise was also driven by internet-focused technology companies like Alibaba (e-commerce, cloud) & Tencent (entertainment, WeChat with over 1.2 billion users ) & Baidu (search, artificial intelligence). In the recent years Beijing had accepted that these companies grew fast and reached market capitalizations of hundred billion dollars and more on the stock market. Alibaba & Co. became the engines of China`s growth and modernization because they are are driving e-commerce, AI, digital communication and much more, reducing costs and are making China`s economy more efficient. Without their services the Chinese would suffer even more in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic with lockdowns and quarantines.

The crackdown is slowing China`s progress because the regulatory overkill creates it more  bureaucracy which " is the death of any achievement” according to Einstein. New regulations and restrictions reduce the productivity & efficiency of Big Tech companies; they shrink their abilities to further innovate, making business more complicated and costly. Many services will not be available any more or for much higher prices. The crackdown is endangering China´s technological progress and might hamper the development of cloud services, artificial intelligence and other growth engines. 

It is an open question if President Xi is intelligent enough to see that he is sabotaging China´s success story. Will he notice that his politics imperil China´s ability to compete with the US?

Books: The Revenant By Michael Punke

 (Drivebycuriosity) - I just finished the "The Revenant. A Novel of Revenge" by Michael Punke, published 2002 ( amazon). The novel was used for the same named breath taking movie with Leonardo di Caprio as lead character, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

It seems that the author wrote the novel for the cinema and used an old and proven recipe: A man was left for dead, betrayed and robbed. He struggles for survival under extreme & vicious conditions and seeks revenge. 

The novel is set in the wilderness of the still unexplored American West in the early 19th century and describes the gritty live of fur trappers - the hunters & gatherers of Americas pioneer phase. The frequent action scenes are elaborately depicted although not really believable - and the miraculous recovery reads like a fairy tale (with greetings from the Count of Monte Cristo). It´s also a problem that the author describes the natives,  called Indians, as highly aggressive and murderous, which seems racist to me.

I learned that the economy in this region was based on beaver furs, which were apparently highly popular in Europe and collected high prices. Successful fur trappers & traders could become wealthy. There were a lot competing corporations who employed troops of trappers and send them into the wilderness in order to collect the valuable furs. Some investors set their money on trapper corporations with a good reputations and forts were constructed in the wilderness as trading posts and shelters. The animal skins were transported on water ways, mainly the Missouri River and the Mississippi, to New Orleans, then the economic and cultural center of the region.

The plot is based on a poem from 1915, "The Song of Hugh Glass", which already was used in the 1971 film "The Man in the Wilderness" ( wikipedia). I prefer the 2015 movie version because of the outstanding cinematography and the amazing performances by Leonardo DiCaprio & Tom Hardy (imdb ).

 

 

Covid-19: Why We Need Boosters Now

 (Drivebycuriosity) - The US is suffering another Covid-19 wave. The spreading Delta variant rises the number of confirmed daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths. "The U.S. is heading into Labor Day weekend with just over four times as many Covid-19 cases and more than twice as many hospitalizations as at this time last year" wrote cnbc.com. Experts recommend that the fully vaccinated should get another dose (booster) to get the new wave under control. 

The new wave has 2 reasons: Insufficient vaccinations and break-through infections. Today are only 52% of the Americans fully vaccinated ( ourworldindata.). The situation is made worse by infections suffered by fully vaccinated people. 

 

( source)

It turned out, that the efficiency of the vaccines is waning over the time. Data from Israel, a country that has one of the world’s highest vaccination rates, indicate that from December 2020 to July 2021 the vaccine protection against both infection and disease had dropped from above 90% to around 40% ( nature).   

These numbers explain the frustrating development in Great Britain. UK was very early and already vaccinated a large part of the population before May. Today almost 64% of the Brits are fully vaccinated, the highest rate in Europe ( ourworldindata). But anyway, the UK have also a high and rising numbers of infections (charts below). France, who came late to the game and vaccinated the population more recently, benefits now from fresher vaccinations even though the country vaccinated fewer people than the UK (61%).

 

 ( source )

 

The development in England is a warning. We can expect that many of the Americans, who got vaccinated before May, already lost a part of their immunity and Americans will be less vaccinated in the coming months, when we approach the winter season. The waning immunity will give the Delta variant more fuel and could generate a new wave, which could not only cause more deaths and long-covid issues, it also could endanger the economic recovery. We need boosters now!

Books: A Light In The Dark - A History Of Movie Directors

(Drivebycuriosity) -   I love cinema. I enjoy to watch movies, but I also want to learn how they were created. So sometimes I read books about movies and their production. "Light in the Dark" by David Thomson portraits some of the movie directors who influenced cinema in the recent 100 years ( amazon).

The early chapters are chronological and portrait some directors who defined cinema in the first half of the 20th century - like Sternberg, Hawks, Hitchcock, Godard & Wells. Later the author changes the structure and he touches topics like the role of women in the cinema business.

The relatively small format - just around 300 pages - doesn`t allow a comprehensive view but Thomson, who is in his late seventies, distills a lot of the experience he had accumulated as a lifelong movie gourmet & critic. "Light in the Dark" is fund to read. I learned something and enjoyed Thomson´s elegant and analytical writing. This book is a kind of appetizer, waking my appetite for movies of some portrayed movie makers, especially Leni Riefenstahl, who is usually ignored. I also find his recomendations of books about cinema & movie creators very helpful.

 

 

Economics: Should We Be Scared By The Rising Oil Prices?

(Drivebycuriosity) - Oil prices are on a run again. The prices of Brent Crude ( international) and WTI (US version) doubled in the recent 12 months. Should we be scarred that the oil price rally is heating up inflation and even causes the next recession ( "Rapid increases in the price of oil have preceded almost all U.S. recessions" ( marginalrevolution )?

I think the recent rally is just a part of the general recovery. The global economy is recovering from the sharp Covid-19 recession and there is a huge pent-up demand for commodities,  produced goods and services. Everything is swinging back, hiking almost all prices (chart below). I believe when everything normalizes the market for oil will get calm again.

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 ( source )

 

Today Oil costs still much less than in the years 2012-2016. Compared with the year 2008 the recent oil price hike is very moderate (chart below).

 

 ( source )

 

 Last weekend a major hurricane shut down US oil production in the Gulf of Mexico but the oil price had just a temporary gain (chart below)

 

 

 (source )

 

It is unlikely that the oil price will reach the 2008 peak of $146 anytime soon. The market for oil has changed after the year 2012 ( chart below). Opec lost her monopoly and has to compete with more producers outside the cartel. Around the year 2012 US oil production started a sharp rise because new technologies reduced the costs of fracking and made it profitable. If oil will get more expensive, producers - especially US frackers - will take advantage and pump more.

 

 

 ( source)

Future oil price raises are also curbed by the technological progress which is restraining the demand for oil. Corporations and many private people are concerned with saving energy, using technologies which are more efficient. And we are at the ascent of the electrical car. Stay calm.
 

 

Books: The Year`s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories Vol. 5

(Drivebycuriosity) -   I love science fiction. But I get often disappointed. Most of the so-called sci-fi books and movies tell just fantasy stories about wizards, dragons & princesses or post-apocalyptic horror stories. It became increasingly challenging to find real "science fiction", stories & novels which have science in it and are not pure fairy tales. So I am searching for hard science fiction which blends entertainment with sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, evolution and more.

I just finished the anthology "The Year`s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories Vol. 5", curated by Allan Kaster (amazon ). The collection harvests the year 2020 and contains 15 short stories (370 pages). Unfortunately the crop is not as strong as in the years before. Maybe it was a weak year (Covid-19 ?) or the curator is loosening it. I found just 2 stories I really liked:

"Time`s own gravity" by Alexander Glass. An identified force invades homes and steals time, meaning humans and animals are aching suddenly and material is rotting. A very spooky idea, realized short and crispy.

 "Eyes of the Forest" by Ray Nayler. A woman has to walk through an exotic forest on an alien planet. I indulged into the desriptions of fauna and flora.

The rest was so so or worse.   

Fortunately the book does not cost much. In the moment of writing it costs just $5.99. So each of the liked stories cost me just $3, which is not too bad. Btw The book cover has nothing to do with any of these stories, as usual.