What happens next? Who can say? Its been a day of two halves, one upside one down.
Right now down is winning. Still, like last time, I can take this as an opportunity to spectate on the demise of others, happy in the knowlege that I can jump ship when necessary.
My expectation, when selecting this book, was that I would be reading another account of the life of a drugged out hippy. This is very far from what it contains.
Its a little oddly laid out, with two parallel stories in the first half, Leary as a troublemaker in the army and his joining Harvard as a psychologist. The second half covers his exploration of drugs and the trouble it lands him in. Throughout there are little biographies of people important to the ongoing story, and the social circle he moved in during the 50s and 60s was made of an impressive list of famous names.
There are a lot of nice details, but most importantly you get the feeling that its written by a lucid and vibrant scientist, someone who values understanding, and sharing of the results he has understood for the benefit of society, higher than any regard for the powers that be.
His enthusiasm for the vision he has felt when taking LSD is nearly unstoppable, its the same story I’ve heard a hundred times from people trying to pursuade me that taking drugs is a good thing to do. Its the same story, but its told so much better. Somehow it makes more sense when its not being slurred out by someone for whom the only thing that matters is where next hit is coming from.
In some ways this book has reinforced my view that drugs have a place in modern society – not a place in my life, but in society as a whole – and that with appropriate social and legal structures around them they would significantly enhance life for a large number of people.
One thing that became clear while reading his descriptions of some of his trips is that there is some kind of transcendance state in our minds, which LSD unlocks, but which is available through other means too, its a kind of flow state, where the thoughts are coming thick and fast, theres nothing to stop you, you can take over the world. Maybe there is a way to unlock that door without having to take perception altering drugs – the things you find beyond will be far more useful if you can take advantage of them with all faculties intact.
There is also a reasonable overlap between this and “Brainwash“, which gives at least some credence to that book.
Who should read this book? Everyone. Especially people who are in some sense ‘anti-drug’.
(bearing in mind that it takes me a while to read about these things, none of this information in new, its based on things that have been available for a few weeks now)
Only two potentially interesting things this week.
Tanfield group, the milk float maker have recently launched a 7.5 tonne delivery truck aimed at the courier market, and theres quite a positive vibe about electric vehicles at the moment. The FT chart shows that the price has risen somewhat over the last few months, with a slight fall back in the last week or so. I would consider this a good time to buy. The fundamentals look good and theres plenty of potential for interesting things in the future.
The results from Waterman Group are the kind of thing I’m looking for, advancing turnover, profit, earnings and dividend, albeit only by between 4% and 15%. I’m somewhat opposed to consultancy as a general rule, since most seem to be money grabbing, but that doesn’t mean they’re all bad, and they are making steady progress on the rest of the fundamentals. I don’t know enough about their field of expertise to know whether they’re good or not.
Of these Tanfield are looking more interesting to me, interesting enough that I would buy some but they’re traded on AIM so cannot be held in my ISA. Waterman aren’t the kind of thing I’m looking for at the moment, they’re too safe, I’m after something a little more exciting.
(Geekery warning, worksafe)
This is somewhat perverse – what kind of person builds a 120Tb array from 250Gb disks without understanding what they’re doing? Thats 640 disks, which I reckon will give you a failure rate of about 1 per day on average, but they’re likely to be bunched somewhat since they’re almost certain to have been shipped in the same crate. You’re going to spend your entire life trying to rebuild bits of your file system.
This is not a photo opportunity
Sarah is the Irish schoolgirl who shot to fame in 1999 when she created a new crypto algorithm. The algorithm has since been attacked to the point where it is not considered useful.
The book is about her exploration of number theory, what happened when she worked with Baltimore, the crypto company, and where that took her. She is doubtless a bright star of mathematical talent, and, if this book is anything to go by, communicating that in a way that makes it easy to understand. It takes a tour through the mathematics, and suggests some good ways to go about teaching maths to keen but unknowlegable people, through the school competition circuit, and on, to the international competitions.
One disappointment, for me at least, is that she doesn’t describe the Cayley Purser algorithm itself, this might be modesty or because of its discredited status. She is very clear about her desire for the algorithm to be fully analysed before anyone got too excited, but the press got carried away with the potential.
But all in all, a very interesting book, written by an intelligent communicator. I have a lot of respect for Sarah now, Cayley Purser may have fallen, but she is worth keeping an eye on, there’ll be more good stuff from her in the future.
Who should read this book: anyone who is interested in cryptography, but doesn’t have a strong background in it, will appreciate the easy to understand mathematics, this isn’t to say the maths is easy, far from it, but the explanations are good. It will be a bit simplistic for the kinds of people who code crypto daily.
My next car? (sense of personal danger not included, steering has its own character)
I’ve not got the hang of them at all.
Beaten by Nordic weather – but never mind, we’re adding more functionality for next years entry. My bit isn’t available yet…I’ll let you know when it is.