Reviews and Comments

This book is in the tradition of hefty philosophy tomes so it took me over a year (maybe two) to finish, and now I forgot most of what I read (so I'm probably going to do at least a cursory second pass as a refresher), but at least I finished it before A. C. Grayling's The History of Philosphy (I'm in the home stretch of that one, meaning somewhere in the last five hundred pages). It does have the advantage of applying philosophy to VR and questions like are we in a simulation (you may have heard Elon Musk bring up this topic but don't listen to him anymore) and if we are, so what. And there are plenty of references to pop culture (and by pop culture, I mean nerd culture) such as The Matrix and science fiction works of the Snow Crash ilk going way back. While well-written, it's still a philosophy book and it provides a history of philosophy which is interesting except when it's not (philosophers seem to spend a lot of time debating whether something qualifies as something without defining what that something is, which just reminds me of drunk college), and if feels like every other page a new thought experiment is introduced - which I'm generally not a fan of. In my opinion, the last good thought experiment was by Einstein, but from philosophers they're not experiments, they're just thoughts, resembling bad sci-fi (so if you don't have the motivation to slog through this, then just read Snow Crash). I've worked a few video games and a Second Life-like virtual world, so during discussions of how simulations are constructed and often optimized (a typical game will use lower fidelity rendering and simulation for areas farther away from the player or not even simulate non-visible areas at all), I felt it was generally correct but lacked insight someone might have from being involved in one of those projects. Nevertheless, there are some pretty cool, or at least wacky concepts discussed, like Boltzmann brains, and this being a very modern philosophy book, the comprehensive bibliographic notes at the end have a bunch of web links, including to that time Musk was playing philosopher, before he started playing government advisor. Ah, those were the days. If it's any consolation, maybe this is all just a simulation.

Most of the cookbooks I read are Chinese, so this one on traditional Korean dishes and Korean-American inventions (take Southern food and add gochujang...) is a nice change and educational with its background descriptions for each dish putting it in context how it fits in with traditional Korean culture or how it came about in a cultural collisions. The recipes are shorter than I'm used to, typically taking less than the page, and there are no long dissertations on preparing the kitchen, seasoning the wok (I have four books with wok in the title), comprehensive listing of ingredients, but on the part I care about, personal stories, the author goes into emotional and introspective depth with his experience as a child of Asian immigrants in the South, the insecurities of young adulthood, and his relationship and inspiration from his mother (who he mostly calls by name, which is weird to me, but I somewhat feel like an analyst reading this book). Many of the dishes he learned from his mom in detail for the development of this book so it reads like an Ode to Mom and hey, Mother's Day is coming up soon, consider gifting this!

Although written in the same quippishly humorous and self-deprecating style, this book is different the others I've read where there's a focus to the narrative thread, like the annexation of Hawaii, or how the Puritans were incredibly literate, or Lafayette. Although there's quite a bit of history (and recent history particularly Clinton/Gore/Bush politics), this book is more about her love of history and some random other stuff, kind of like a Chuck Klosterman essay collection but way less mean and snarky. I find her self-admittedly partisan allegiance to Clinton less endearing - the book was written two decades before MeToo, so I don't know if she would agree that hasn't aged well (also the chapter extolling Canada's benificence to Native Americans is a wincer now that I know of their own forced boarding schools), but on the hand neither has Joss Whedon and I give her points for bringing up Buffy the Vampire Slayer in perhaps my favorite of the chapters, which is basically about nerds and Al Gore (nerd) and how the media shafted him and helped "lose" the election (some things never change). That chapter is good because as a self-described nerd it's personal, which is why I'm not calling them essays, it reads as more an autobiographical thread, but on the other hand it's disjointed. The chapter on 9/11 is a fine heartfelt reflection on patriotism and I thought that was a good ending, but then there were a few more chapters on the lunchroom in Carlsbad Caverns and Teddy Roosevelt. But life goes on I guess.