Random Book Review - The Dirk Gently Novels

Author: Douglas Adams
Released: 1987 / 1988
Format reviewed: Mass-market paperback
Pages of content: 306 / 320
Rating: 3/5 / 3/5

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul are two* nominally science-fiction novels by the late and very much missed British author, Douglas Adams.  More accurately, they are comedies with a smidge of science fiction and/or fantasy to help the absurdist humor along.  In that aspect, they are similar to Douglas's more famous Hitchhiker's series.  However, the setting is primarily on Earth in this series, and there is considerably less action.

Both of the books are called detective novels, but as such the clues are a little obscure, at least to this reader, who may not have approached the books in a sufficiently adversarial manner.  The pacing of LDTTS is the better of the two, as there are more jokes sprinkled throughout and the setup portion of the book moves a little better.  DGHDA doesn't really come alive until the last 80 pages, but it's fairly fun once it does.  Both have interesting endings, though neither are entirely satisfactory.

Overall, these are fun, readable books that anyone who enjoys either speculative fiction or British humor should consume.  They don't rise to the level of the early HHGG books, but unlike a lot of recent speculative fiction, they are easy to finish without getting frustrated.  I recommend them for anyone who doesn't have a hangup about reading only 'serious' literature.

* An partial draft of the third novel in the series was published posthumously, but I felt it inappropriate to include it here.

Random Book Review: The Wheel of Time series

Author: Robert Jordan (0-11) / Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (12-14)
Released: 1990-2013
Format reviewed: Mass-market paperback
Pages of content: 11,898 (per internet sources)
Rating: 3/5

Avid and even moderate readers of the fantasy genre are probably familiar with The Wheel of Time, a 15 books series that is one of the top 10 best-selling of all time.  It is also one of more frustrating, with the middle books being interminable slogs of padding and poor editing.  The energy of the early books leached out by book 5 or 6, and Jordan's infamously similar descriptive passages make some of the chapters feel like they were written with word processor macros.  Bringing Brandon Sanderson in to finish the series would have been a good idea even if Jordan had not passed away in 2007, as the new author managed to fill out pages without employing Jordan's literary tics.  He also recaptured some of the energy of the early books, though he didn't always sustain it through all of the plot threads that needed to be resolved in plausible fashion.  And the ~200 page chapter of the final battle is ridiculous, though perhaps inevitable given the multi-book build-up.

For readers who have limited time and/or budget (the complete series will set a reader back by at least $150), I recommend steering clear of this series in favor of smaller series and stand-alone works.  During my recent re-read, I was able to skip several dozen chapters in books 8 through 11 because I knew basically nothing happened.  What's the point in paying for all those words if they are basically useless?  For readers who feel they've read all the other major series, or who want to read one that has been completed, The Wheel of Time is a decent if somewhat mindless way to fill up time.  Readers should keep internet access internet handy, as they are likely to want to look up characters vaguely remembered from previous chapters without having to pick through the earlier books.

Top 3 Superpowers

I am interested in stopping an apparently imminent war.  Would a supernatural deity/technologically advanced race please grant me one of the following abilities:

1) Omnipotence

2) Mind control

3) Teleportation

Thank you in advance.

The Third Constitution of the United States of America

It's been over five years since I last published a version of this document. In that time, I've learned a lot of hard truths about America. My thinking about the details of my constitution has as a consequence become a bit more prescriptive, given the numerous failures of the currently active one. But I feel I've stretched the basic vision of the current one as far as can be done, so I've decided to stop editing and publish what I have. I don't yet have a precise plan for what I am going to do next, so it will probably take another five years of occasional tinkering before I issue another update. Until then, here is version 2.0 of:

The Third Constitution of the United States of America

Enjoy!

2021: At Least It Wasn't 2020

The calendar says it was an entirely different year, but the end is feeling an awful like 2020 with the ongoing COVID surge.  Still, some perspective is warranted.

On the positive side:

• Biden became POTUS and Democrats took control of Congress.
• Two important bills (CARES and IIJA) were passed, and a good number of federal judges were confirmed.
• Several different effective COVID vaccines became available, vastly reducing the death toll from what it might have been without them.
• Biden ended the Afghanistan War after 20 years, reduce America's involvement elsewhere in the Middle East, and severely restricted the use of drones to kill people.
• The American economy improved for many people.
• JWST was launched successfully.
  

On the negative side:

• A loosely organized attempt to prevent Biden from becoming president came far closer than it should have to succeeding, and the insurrectionists managed to occupy part of the Capitol for a few hours.
  
• The two most conservative Democrats in the Senate decided to make themselves co-Presidents, and effectively blocked the most consequential portions of Biden's agenda, including the bills that would most help Democrats hold on to power in 2022 and 2024.
• A very conservative SCOTUS and some equally conservative lower courts made a number of horrible decisions, including the effective gutting of Roe v. Wade in Texas.
• The COVID pandemic continued in America because Republicans cynically chose to promote anti-mask and anti-vax propaganda in order to discredit Biden and promote themselves, which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of over 160,000 Americans.
• The COVID pandemic continued globally due to a combination of poverty, anti-vax propaganda, and several forms of vaccine nationalism.
• Severe consequences of global warming continued to impact people across the planet.
  
• The economic growth caused the trade deficit to approached record highs.

On the worrisome but unresolved side:

• Putin massed troops on Russia's border with Ukraine, but NATO members seem to be fairly unified in stating that an invasion would have serious consequences.
• Xi made himself leader for life, and China continued to make belligerent noises about Taiwan.  Biden has responded with fairly strong words, and some East Asia countries seem to be taking the issue more seriously.
  

A Model Republican Constitution for Great Britain and Northern Ireland

It's time to face the truth: the UK has no constitution and desperately needs one.  A passel of norms, practices, and precedents under-girded by some laws and treaties is simply insufficient to cope with someone who only values power.  This is not to say a written and codified constitution is always sufficient for the same task, as the state of affairs in the US from 2017 to 2020 demonstrates.  However, the current US constitution is both rather outdated and overly dependent on norms, so it is not surprising that it failed to enable accountability for a rogue president.  The same person operating in the UK's legal mire would be able to do far more damage.

So, old chaps, here is the second version of:

A Model Republican Constitution for Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Enjoy!

NYC Transit Mapping Revisited

It's been a while since I've done any mapmaking, but the bug has bitten me again.  I've updated my NYC Airport Transit Access map, my NYC Transit Projects map, and my NYC Commuter and Intercity Rail map.  The changes I made consisted mostly of sorting the existing features into layers, and updating the colors and line weights.  Gurgle has made number of changes to their map interface since I started using it, and mostly not for the better.  But you get what you pay for.  Beyond that, however, those maps are somewhat outdated.

Because I want to preserve the old maps, I have created a new map which includes more details about the existing system, along with some expansion proposals.  One proposal is the IND Second System from 1929, which was a fairly ambitious plan that has only been partially realized over the years.  There have been many proposals, both simple and comprehensive, made since then, but trying to gather them all into one online map is not something I will get to anytime soon.  However, the map also includes my own proposal, which reflect the many changes to NYC from 92 years ago.

Of course, my proposal is a fantasy, as there is no chance of it being funded.  Due to the the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway is on hold, as transit ridership in general has not recovered from the severe plunge caused by pandemic.  Subway ridership reached about 3.1M/day as of October 2021, but that is still far from the 5.5M/day average in 2019.  Given that transit receives intermittent federal funding in this country, I would not be surprised to see SAS P2 completion pushed out by at least 5 years.

In the meantime, enjoy my NYC Subway Lines and Proposals map.  Please note that it is a map of physical infrastructure, not services, so it does not convey the same information as the traditional NYC subway map despite some similarity.