It’s a long time since I stopped blogging. And every time I want to restart I wonder: why do I write anyway? and even more confusing, for whom? Today I saw the light! Today I found the answer: for the society :)

I mean, think about it: technology evolved so fast since we invented writing! My intuition is that there is a direct proportionality between writing and the technological advances of the society. And therefore, the duty of every good citizen is to write. Write. Write, write, write. Let’s keep pushing those technological advances!

Ah, and in a break from writing, can i recommend you two amazing books that I have read recently?

* amazing #1: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

* amazing #2: Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes

Two science fiction books - different from one another as different is our world from theirs. And still, each beautiful in its own way. The first will forever change your view of the universe. The second will forever change your view of people with mental handicaps.

(1993), by Cristopher Browning

In one of the most shocking books I have ever read, Christopher Browning follows the evolution of a german reserve police batallion during the second world war, battalion which is involved in making several districts in poland “judenfrei” - free of jewish people. The book follows the psychological evolution of the members of the battalion from “ordinary men” to … masacre machines.

I tried to think about what is it that makes this book so powerful. I first thought that it might be the atrocities that are related. And indeed, some of the related things are terrible. On the other hand, I have read other books on the holocaust, and although they are all dark books, they were not this scary. Maybe the others I have read were written as memoirs and in that they had a small glimpse of optimism: at least the author survived.

I think it is something else that makes this book particularily powerful, and I think it is the abundant quotations from the people who participated in the massacres. The author gathered the quotations from the transcripts of many trials in which members of the battalion 101 were involved. The quotations are the proof that the things which are related are truly real. They are witnesses of how low can the human degradation go. They make all the related events and characters so real. And they follow the evolution of the actors from the people who shade a tear when they hear the first order of killing people to the people who in the end enjoy making jokes about a hard day’s demon’s work.

The last drip of bitterness in the book is the final part in which the author attempts to discover what was special about the people in reserve police battalion 101 that made them able to perform the atrocities that they did. After all there had to be something about them that made them prone to becoming killer machines… The surprise is in fact that they were not special at all, they were just… ordinary men. Ordinary men like me and you, who listened to authority and preferred to go with the flow.

If in a dark book like this there is any trace of hope, it is in seing that few (although much too few) of the many members of the reserve battalion 101 had the power to resist authority, peer pressure, propaganda, and had the courage to say no. I believe the world would be a better place if we all learnt to think for ourselves and had the courage to stand for what we think.

(1958), by Leon Uris

by Leon Uris

From the books that I have recently read, Exodus stands out as one of the best (thanks Jeff for pointing it out to me! :). Leon Uris, a great story (and history) teller presents a summary of the formation of Israel as a state. However, one warning about the book: it is pretty addictive and it might deprive you of sleep. It has been scientifically proved that sleep deprivation has negative consequences as Cyrus pointed out to me today, scientists proved, and I already knew :)

The main character in the book, Ari ben Canaan, plays a key role in several events around the formation of Israel. One of these events is organizing an escape to Palestine of jews in a british detention camp in Cyprus. Besides him, several other characters are developed in detail. One peculiar thing about the way Uris builds his characters is that he takes the time to trace their histories back in time, and, by doing this he has the chance to present the broad context in which the actual story happens. During these backward projections, the book becomes a real history book.

The most extreme socialist experiments of the kibbutzim, the settlements that the jews created in order to work the land. The enthusiastic teen-age jewish army resisting the numerous enemies that surrounded the country. The incompetence of the english leaders of the time to successfully rule the palestine mandate and their refusal of accepting jewish immigrants in palestine during the holocaust. The horrors of the anti-semitism in Europe during the 19 and 20 centuries. The easiness with which mass manipulation can plant the seeds of hatred between nations, seeds that are still bearing fruits nowadays. The mass manipulation… These are several only few of the things that the book talks about.

I remember that quite some time ago, I met a romanian jewish young lady who told me that her dream was to go and live in Israel. I did not understand why would a young girl dream of going into the uncertain place that Israel was at the time… and I am not sure I understand now. However, after reading Exodus I certainly understand why a generation of jewish people saw in emigrating to palestine and forming a Jewish state, not only a dream but the reason to live. And if needed to die.

by Kitty Ferguson

Fun to read. The infinitely small black holes that explode and disappear, the imaginary or negative time, the finitude of the universe in imaginary time… I surely need to reread the book and maybe some more articles on the topic in order to fully understand this stuff. It is anyway edifying to see how contemporary physiscs has lost all of the imediate meaning…

by Douglas Hofstadter

I first heard about the book last year at Dagstuhl, in a discussion with Stephen Koburov. Now that I read it, I am grateful to Stephen for pointing me to an an Extremely Good Book.

In GEB, Hofstaedter performs an entertaining intelectual slalom between fugues, paintings and incompletness theory in order to eventually arrive at the finish line: the discussions on artificial inteligence. Even if I happen to disagree with the author on his optimism about the the emergence of artificial inteligence, I found the book to be a remarcable lecture.

The topics discussed in the book are various. Mathematics. Music. Goedel. Recursivity. Bach. Programs. Genetics (i found this part extremely nicely written). Intelligence. Formal systems. Programming languages. Escher. Margitte. And all of them, braided with the notorious dialogues between Achiles, the Tortoise and their friends, but all of them supporting a single thesis.

One great peculiarity of GEB is the playful unity between form and content. One of the many possible examples of tight unity is the dialogue in which Achilles tells the Tortoise about an author who invented a type of dialogue which would have a logical ending followed by extra paragraphs that would serve as a device to hide the real ending; because the extra paragraphs would be logically unrelated to the dialogue, the careful reader would still be able to spot them. As one already expects when he got that far in the book, the dialogue has a logical ending followed by extra paragraphs that serve as a device to hide the real ending; because the extra paragraphs are logically unrelated to the dialogue, the careful reader will still be able to spot them…

Two are of my ultimate favourite sections in the book. One is the part in which H. explains the self as being a symbol in our brain, but a special one, the one which is associated to our body. We have symbols for all the concepts but as this is all the time involved, as this is the one whrought wich we can make sense of all the others, it is natural that we have a more special relation with it. The second part is the one on typogenetics - a simplified version of genetics which shades light on the amazing way in which the genetics work.

I could write much more about it but maybe another time. My advice now is just Escape and Get the Book!