[Very minor spoilers lie ahead]

The Hunger Games tells the story of a teen girl living in a future, post-post-apocalyptic world, where an obviously-evil government keeps the people in line by throwing a handful of them into a televised fight to the death in an outdoor arena once a year. Although it doesn’t happen right away (more on that later), it’s pretty easy to guess that she gets involved in the titular Hunger Games.

The concept may sound like a sci-fi trope, but Collins does a good job of painting a world that feels unique despite borrowing pieces from other stories in its genres. The first third or so of the book is mostly setup for the inevitable beginning of the Games. It could’ve been boring, knowing the story is taking its time to begin, but it’s interesting enough due to the colourful character development, world-building, and writing style.

Then the action kicks into gear, and something odd happens. The writing quality drops immediately the moment the Hunger Games actually begin. It’s as if the latter two-thirds were written by another author (or an author who wrote the first chapters years after the latter ones). What begins as straightforward YA-level prose begins sounding like a teenager’s blog. Rambling tangents come back with “anyway”, ellipses replace proper punctuation, and there are outright typos. I half-expected sentences to start ending in “lol.”

It’s not too distracting, and makes some sense given the first-person narrator’s age, but the fluctuation in style was a bit jarring.

Anyway, the story itself is about what you’d expect given the premise. There is some mild satire of reality television and some mild violence (but this ain’t no Battle Royale). Some unexpected twists have impact, but some expected showdowns are a letdown. Maybe it’s a further subtle bit of satire to have some of the major plot points happen “off camera,” but it’s anticlimactic storytelling. Despite my pickiness, it’s a good story that’s often hard to put down, and anyone who’s up with the premise would enjoy it. I’m looking forward to the movie.

This was also the first book I read on a Kindle. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it was a joy being able to sit under a tree in the sunshine (yeah, took me a while to get around to this review) with the tiny Kindle in one hand, flipping pages with the push of a button. On the other, when I wanted to skim the book while writing this review, I couldn’t. And what if I wanted to come back to it in 10 years? If technology changes too much, or Amazon bites the bullet, or I get another company’s incompatible device, my DRM-infected e-book is lost.

I’ll probably only use the Kindle for cheap books I’ll never want to read again. Hunger Games fits that bill.

I don’t complain much, but when I do, it’s usually about technology. I have an unfortunate combination of bad luck and high standards when it comes to gadgets. Literally, whenever I buy anything with greater complexity than lettuce, it has some flaw, either minor and only noticeable to my hyper-critical eye¹ or a major defects². At least nothing has outright exploded, though not everyone is so lucky (see: iPhone spontaneously combusts aboard flight). It’s tempting to become a cynical old ass, shaking my wooden stick (not a microchip in it!) and grumbling about how quality control has gone down the stinker and nothing works like it should. I’ve certainly given into that temptation a few times.

But think of it this way:

We are a bunch of animals. We were crafted by nature to root around in the dirt, find food, then go home and screw. Yet we’ve taken some of that dirt and, with nothing more than our grubby hands and abnormally large brains, we’ve made tubes of steel that can fly us through the air. We’ve burned sand until we have a slab of glass that allows us to have food delivered to us by poking at it. “Technology” isn’t some mysterious black toaster that pops out perfect gleaming gadgets. We’re literally grabbing whatever imperfect raw materials we find lying around the planet, and sticking them into arrangements that accomplish things no other animal can fathom.

Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But the people crafting our gadgets (and crafting the machines that craft our gadgets) are not magicians. They are humans, animals, maybe smarter than you or I, but only by a little bit. They’re working with limited time and limited resources. They get tired. Sometimes the best they can do is try pretty hard, and hope it’s good enough.

Thinking of it this way, it’s odd to complain.

Maybe a dead pixel on my phone’s screen “shouldn’t” be there, but a bunch of strangers managed to get me 614,399 working pixels that beam all of humanity’s accomplishments directly into my eyes. I can probably live with it. I can probably manage to enjoy everything that works despite the small parts that don’t.

There are exceptions; technologies that are defective by design (e.g., DRM, planned obsolescence) are inexcusable. The average gadget works pretty well though, and although it’s not terrible to strive for perfection, I also need a moment to shut up and revel in the the awesomeness of the imperfect magic people have managed to weave.

¹ E.g., backlight bleed on my iPad 2, suboptimal battery life on my Kindle, phosphor trails on my TV.

² E.g., cutting out audio on my iPhone 4S, a computer with a display that occasionally turns to grey fuzz, six dead Xbox 360s.

Recently, I decided to pop by the university and get a PhD. Since then, a lot of people have been asking, “do you feel any different now that you have a PhD?”

Well yes, of course I do. Whenever I insist that someone call me “doctor Mike”—whether it’s government documents, or my friends, or the lady serving me a shawarma—I get a nice little reminder that I am, in fact, superior to all the common people without PhDs. That’s a great feeling.

It also feels different knowing that I’m now qualified to force my opinion about anything on anyone. Also, I don’t know if you knew this (you don’t have a PhD, after all), but a psych degree comes with a free license to kill. It also makes you a god in the sack, lowers your THAC0 by 3, and allows you to glow when you get in a fight.

Actually, I set up a camera to record my PhD defense so you can see what it was like:

Err but for serious, being The Last Dragon a doctor is, for me, a relief but otherwise no biggie.

These past 6+ years of grad school have certainly been important to me, but my degree was only one project I was working on. It’s not what has defined me as a person. So I’m proud of checking one more thing off my list of accomplishments, sure, but it is only one thing.

As a polymathic sort of person, I get pleasure in pursuing a variety of goals. Reaching those goals is rewarding, but often secondary to the pursuit. I don’t feel different when I complete a multi-year project, because the ongoing learning and building I’d been doing all those years was already fulfilling the reasons for starting the project.

Now I can focus on some other pursuits more. Substantial ones like kicking ass at my job, publishing some of my research, and finishing up those half-completed novels that are sitting around, but also more nebulous ones like building relationships with kickass people, blogging, and contributing to the good of mankind.

I’m proud of my PhD though. Sometime I should tell you guys what my research is all about, because I was extremely lucky to be able to study what I actually wanted to study, and it turned out pretty cool. Until then, cheerio.

— Dr. Michael E. Battista, M.Sc., Ph.D., O.M.G.

Yesterday I saw a turtle squashed in the middle of the road. It’s not something you see every day in downtown London, so I figure it was an omen that it would be one of those days when everything that could go wrong would go wrong.

My first of two thesis defenses was scheduled for 1:00. I gave myself an hour after I got to school to have lunch and go over my introductory presentation. I’d written it the night before, but hadn’t practiced it yet. Last minute I guess, but I work best under pressure and there was much procrasturbation to be had.

When I picked up some sushi and a drink, the server made fun of my “bucket of coffee.” It’s true though, a venti is approaching a litre of friggin coffee. On my way back to my office, my labmate told me that I looked really chill. Which I mostly was, because all my preparation plans were in place, and all I could do was my best.

I got to my office, then flipped on my computer.

I didn’t know Apple computers could have a blue screen of death, but there it was: a blank blue screen. It was perfectly fine just 30 minutes earlier when I left the house, and now, it’s giving me sass with this blue screen. I reset it, and the blue screen was fixed! Except now it was this grainy rainbow screen of death.

I frantically Googled on my phone. I safe-moded and start-up-item-altered and make-verbs-out-of-phrases-ized as fast as my fingers would allow, but nothing that the internet suggested would help.

I took a moment to bite into my sushi. I say “bite into” because the salmon sashimi was this stringy unchewable mess. But as I stared at the spit-out wad of rancid meat, in the light of what was now a grey nonfunctional screen, feeling less than chill, a supernatural clarity came over me. I found myself reaching for a video adapter thingy. I poked it into a hole in the side of my laptop, then removed it.

No more screen of death. Like many grumpy people, my computer just needed something hard shoved into a random orifice.

I quickly loaded up my presentation. Even though I hadn’t worn a tie in a year, I let my fingers figure out how to tie it while I practiced my presentation at quadruple speed.

I got to my defense with sushi breath (I was out of gum, naturally) and a screaming bladder full of venti ounces of caffè. Of course, one of the people who needed to be there didn’t show up, so we started late anyway. But the bottom line is that I got through the presentation and the rounds of difficult questioning, and passed like a boss. Revisions, one more defense, then I’ll be a doctor.

The lesson here is that even when things go horribly wrong (in a first-world-problems sense, anyway), let them go wrong, and it will probably turn out fine anyway. They might even give you a PhD.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of reading about and contributing to science, it’s the old cliche that the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. The method of science has revealed a whole lot about the universe we live in, but even the most well-established facts can be utterly mysterious if examined in depth. Most of this mystery is still too unfathomable to even be labeled as a mystery, beyond even the wildest speculation. However, there are some things we know enough about to ask good questions, but not yet enough to provide good answers. Michael Hanlon explores ten of these questions in this book.

The title is a bit misleading; this is not a comprehensive “guide”, but a rather random selection of ten mysteries. Some are what you’d expect – e.g., what is dark matter? What are consciousness and identity? But there are also some quirky topics you wouldn’t expect here – e.g., what really causes obesity? What should we do with stupid people? I found these rarely-tackled topics to be the most interesting.

It’s a quick read, written in an informal style and never delving too deep into any one topic. It’s just enough to stimulate your appetite for more information, but unfortunately Hanlon rarely provides sources for the science mentioned. That’s somewhat forgivable – this is, after all, a book of questions, not answers. Less forgivable is the preponderance of typos and shoddy writing (e.g., why does everyone have so much trouble distinguishing “which” and “that”?). I thought I was just being picky, but I got the book from the library and whoever read it before me went to the trouble of circling and correcting each of the many mistakes. Hilarious.

This book should be a light, entertaining read for both scientists and non-scientists. I think it would also be a great wake-up call for people who identify with the so-called “skeptical movement.” Skepticism is obviously a requirement for good science, but I think it is often taken too far, to the point where skeptics can claim that we already know everything there is to know about the universe (and therefore anything that contradicts current knowledge must be wrong). This book is just one reminder that no, actually, we know very little about the universe. Mystery is what makes science so exciting.

You know those atheist bus signs in Toronto? Well it looks like someone has vandalized one of them…sorta.

Um. Maybe I’m not fully understanding the author’s intention, but the sign (er, piece of paper) they put on top of the ad really isn’t at odds with the ad. It’s a bit ambiguous, scratching out “prob” and covering “bly no go” with the sign (“there’s a D?”) But the message that love is the most important thing is something most atheists would agree wholeheartedly with. With no supernatural being demanding faith, of course love for others is the most important thing there is. It’s all there is.

Some commenters at BlogTO suggest it’s a hate crime. But it’s more of a love crime. It’s like smashing a church sign then spray painting a cross on it.

Maybe the vandal is just confused. Or maybe it’s deeper; maybe they are pointing out the common belief that atheists, religious folks and The Beatles agree on: all you need is love.

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Update: Some have suggested it’s the work of more than one vandal, which would explain a lot.

Saw this on a post along the Thames today:

Weird/cute/sad.

Ok so go read this review of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by critic Jordan Hiller and then come back here.

Since you totally didn’t read it, here’s a summarizing quote:

The film and those like it are merely the reflection of ageing creative people in hopeless search for an elixir.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I do find this review pretty ironic. Most of it attacks the movie because its portrayal of teenage life is not realistic, is just a cheap attempt by its creators to hold onto their own youth, and was created to tap into the conflict between youth and adulthood that everyone struggles with throughout their lives.

The irony comes from the fact that the reviewer compares the movie with what I assume are the teen movies of his own youth in the 80s. Again, maybe the movie really is crap, but is comparing it unfavourably to one’s own favourite nostalgia-enhanced movies while at the same time dumping on nostalgia really a good way to criticize it?

He does make a good point that movies are not realistic, and present an idealized reality that may only be an attempt to cash in on our obsession with youth. But is that a bad thing? Writers can deal with their own youth / responsibility struggles by creating fantasy, and people can relate with that fantasy when they see it put to film. The search for an elixir of life isn’t hopeless; we can take tiny sips of it for two hours at a time every time we watch a good movie.

Additional thoughts:

• Michael Cera may play exactly the same character in every role he’s in, but he’s still awesome.
• I do not disagree that The Breakfast Club and Adventures in Babysitting are cinematic masterpieces.

• Today’s top story: LOLcats are awesome. Among the usual stories of politics, business, and school shootings, today’s LA Times featured an entire article about I Can Has Cheezburger, the internet’s leading provider of pictures of cats with poorly written captions. It’s actually an interesting read; I never really considered that people are making a living off of internet fads. The owner of the site also has an awesome name: Ben Huh. Huh? Huh. (I found this via Tony Pierce’s Twitter).

  

• How to Slow Aging is an article at Canadian Living. Among medically questionable (eating lots of protein, taking vitamin supplements) and trivial (be around stuff that smells good, relax) advice is “get 9 hours of sleep a night.” The thing is, if your goal is to slow aging and extend your life, isn’t spending an extra hour or two a day unconscious kinda the opposite of that? If most people can happily get by on 7 hours of sleep (and I think most can), is it really worth sleeping more to live longer? Let’s do math!

  – Wasting an extra 2 hours out of every 24 means that waking time for each day is reduced by about 8.3%
  – People in Canada live to about 80. To extend that by 8.3% would mean living to almost 87.
  – Can sleeping 9 hours a night extend one’s life expectancy to 87? I doubt it. And even if it did, I’d rather be enjoying waking hours while I’m young and virile than while I’m old and fragile. Screw sleep.

  

• Gmail has a new feature that warns you when you said you’ve included an email attachment, but never actually attached the file. I do this all the time so this will save me lots of sorries. It should also cut down on hearing “no I swear to baby Jesus God damn it, I attached the file. There must be something wrong with your email. Or maybe I have a computer virus.”

Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho describes a few years in the life of Patrick Bateman, a successful investor and psychopath. That’s about all there is to it.

American Psycho is not so much a story, but a drawn out snapshot of the nightmare world of yuppies in late 80s New York. This setting is as much of a character as Patrick Bateman is (the first third of the book is purely about his everyday life in this world, and we only later get a glimpse into the “psycho” part of it). I think that it’s not so much that this world created the monster that is Patrick Bateman (the only description of his father is something like “there is something wrong with his eyes”, implying that his psychosis has pretty deep roots), but that this world allows him to exist. Everyone is so self-centered and focused on superficial crap that they don’t notice the serial killer in front of their noses. In a way, many of the characters in the book are as inhuman as Bateman is.

This is not a straightforward novel; it is very much open to interpretation in both its narrative and its message. Both the matter-of-factly described scenes of brutal violence and the overly detailed descriptions of fashion and music often had me wondering why the hell I kept reading it. But I did keep reading, and while it may not be an entertaining novel in the traditional sense, it did make me think. And it made me want to go out to a cheap restaurant where I don’t need a reservation and make real connections with people, because dude, the world depicted in American Psycho is a shitty place that should be avoided at all costs.

I have to go return some videotapes.