Synthetic Worlds

Quite a bit has been written about virtual worlds recently, primarily by psychologists, sociologists, and other "people-oriented" researchers who dive in fingers- and feet-first into the synthetic landscape. What's missing is research from other disciplines. Castronova brings the important perspective of an economist to the table.

But that's not what you get at the beginning of the book. Castronova has much larger goals in mind, attempting to introduce the vast intricacies of virtual worlds to newbies. This, in my opinion, is a mistake – the first chapter derails the book and those looking for a more serious discussion might be turned off. But if you're willing to slog through or simply skip those chapters, you're in for a treat.

The hook here is the economics – that people can get rich off of World of Warcraft – and while Castronova addresses that possibility, it's an oversimplification of his premise. Castronova provides a perspective on the insane growth of virtual worlds. If he is occasionally starry-eyed about the possibilities it's forgivable, because in economic terms virtual growth is unprecedented.

Castronova occasionally strays outside economics territory, but his thoughts are still valuable. He posits that the "Wild West" nature of self-governing through player-killing simply doesn't work, which matches with my experience as an administrator on Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). He points the finger at "Coding Authorities," the companies who create and manage these worlds. At base, these companies have no interest in actually monitoring the goings-on of the world. Castronova skewers this sort of laissez-faire management with the statement "I've never once seen a customer service representative actually do anything." And he's right – the sheer burden of properly managing virtual worlds is much too onerous for a game company looking to make back its investment on the latest graphical avatars. Or in other words, until virtual worlds collapse in a flaming ball of anarchy (like Ultima Online nearly did) the programmers and developers won't lift a finger because it doesn't pay to. It's a refreshingly realistic take in a series of breathless books touting the wonders of virtual interaction.

Castronova concludes Synthetic Worlds by daring to make predictions about what will happen next. In a book about the exponentially increasing virtual worlds, this is risky. Within years of publication, some of his predictions have proven out (virtual interfaces are slowly advancing to include gestural interfaces, like the Wii) and some are just simply off base ("virtual citizenship" and its implications have shaky logic). But that doesn't detract from the book's value to those new to online worlds or beginning their research in this relatively new medium.

The Cybergypsies

Back when Indra Sinha was addicted to Shades, I was a kid sneaking into college computer labs to play Ivory Towers. We were both playing Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). In fact, Ivory Tower players loathed Shades players with a passion, who were a bloodthirsty, violent lot – they came to Ivory Towers in waves when Shades was down and slaughtered everyone in sight with unbridled glee. It didn't give me a good impression of Shades.

That's not the impression Sinha gives in his book, The Cybergypsies. Sinha gives an aura of mystical wonder and beauty to a game in which stealing your opponents' weapon was commonplace--as if combat between medieval knights was all about wresting away your opponents' blade. It comes off as ridiculous as it sounds, but Sinha elevates it to poetic levels.

Cybergypsies isn't really about MUDding though. It's about Sinha's sympathy for the plight of the downtrodden, exemplified by the poor of Bhopal who were poisoned in an industrial disaster. Working in advertising, Sinha is in the unique position of trying to translate real-life suffering into everyday media. He finds the bizarre online reflection of the real world's struggles in Vortex, a role-playing MUSH.

In Vortex, like many MUSHs, the current players set the tone. And Vortex's tone is a decadent, anything-goes free love vibe that has a dark side. Cannibalism, baby sacrifice – you name it, the Vortex denizens have done it, reveling in their freedom to role-play anything and everything.

Somewhere in this contrast between MUDding and MUSHing, real-life oppression and cyber-decadence, Sinha struggles to save his marriage. Which is a bit odd, because Sinha makes almost no mention of his children. Speaking as someone who has a very active two-year-old, there's no way I can stay on the computer for more than a few minutes without him tugging on my arm. Sinha either seriously neglected them or intentionally removed them from the narrative; whatever the case, it's a glaring omission from his story of a family life brought to the brink by cyber-addiction.

The other problem is that Sinha is extremely well educated and enjoys demonstrating his knowledge in various allusions to disparate texts, often in other languages. Cybergypsies makes you feel dumb.

Sinha doesn't seem to have a point. Shades rises and falls. Vortex's appeal fades. Sinha raises awareness of global suffering through his advertising. He may even help a hacker access a nuclear plant, although it's never clear exactly what happened. And we can only guess that he saved his marriage…Sinha just ends the book without any resolution.

The author is a brilliant writer. But this book is a stream-of-consciousness journal made up of at least three other books, each which deserved its own focus. Readers looking for a parable on cyber-addiction, for a dialogue about human rights grievances, or for the wild and wooly history of the Internet will only get tantalizing glimpses.

Six-Legged Soldiers

Six-Legged Soldiers is an interesting look at how bugs have been drafted by humanity as vectors to spread disease. Be it to destroy crops, sicken an enemy, or torture a captive, insects have been our unwilling minions for as long as mankind has been around.

The first third of the book is dedicated to insects and their use in history. The critters that steal the limelight are the creepy-crawlies we loathe, like spiders, wasps, and scorpions. But according to Lockwood, the real threat isn't just from the direct harm an insect can inflict by bite or sting, but from the diseases they carry. Mosquitoes carrying yellow fever can inflict far more damage on an army than a hive full of angry bees.

From there, Lockwood moves on to conspiracy theory. Rife with allegations alternately unfounded and confirmed, it traces the Japanese government's top-secret experimental program conducted during World War II and America's subsequent dark dealings with the scientists from that same program. Do we have knowledge of bio-weapons capable of spreading plague vectors? Lockwood seems to think so. The real controversy is: have we used them?

The second third of the book discusses this at length, as well as other governments' possible use of insects in modern warfare. The problem is that the evidence is nigh impossible to prove. The very nature of insect warfare, a vector that spreads at its own pace and on its own terms, is its greatest strength and weakness. Modern militaries supposedly reject using insects because they're unpredictable; countries attacked by irruptions of plagues claim the insects were unleashed precisely because they're so innocuous.

Lockwood comes to the conclusion that the most obvious use of insects in warfare isn't on the modern battlefield at all, but as part of a terrorist attack against civilians. He drags out such horrors as the parasitic screwworm, vegetation-devouring beetles, and crop-destroying aphids. Eminently transportable, easily unleashed, and capable of inflicting immense damage with comparatively little effort, Lockwood emphasizes that the next Weapon of Mass Destruction is actually very tiny indeed.

There's a lot of meaty content here, but it's at times overshadowed by Lockwood's narrative, which is reminiscent of a carnival barker. He's enamored with alliteration, to the point of distraction. Six-Legged Soldiers also lacks focus. It's alternately a historical review of insect warfare, a conspiracy theory on government cover-ups, and a modern drama about terrorism. If you're a fan of all three topics like I am, this book is a compelling review of insects as weapons.

Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective

I've been on the Internet before there was a Web, met my wife over a Multi-User Dungeon, and wrote my master's thesis on how anonymity on the Internet makes people act out. The notion of determining the true identity of anonymous sources really appealed to me, especially since I've been the victim of more than one anonymous attack on the Internet.

And thus we have Author Unknown. My version is titled "On the Trail of Anonymous" as opposed to "Tales of a Literary Detective" - near as I can tell, it's the same book with different packaging. Which is good, because my version's cover is of a book with glasses resting on it--not very interesting. That cover exemplifies some of the problems with Author Unknown.

Don Foster is an English professor. He works in an English professor's office, he writes like an English professor, and he stumbles around in bewilderment in the "real world," solving crimes and battling other evil skeptics. He seems to have a magical ability to determine authorship through contextual cues, an ability he never explains in detail. Armed with his trusty sidekick SHAXICON (a mysterious search program that's never mentioned once in the book), the hapless Dr. Foster wages a one-man-and-computer war against those who would cloak themselves in anonymity.

The delicious revenge such a skill can bring about is especially evident when Foster tracks down his anonymous peer reviewers. Foster slices right through it all. And what anonymous villains does our hero vanquish? The author of Primary Colors! The Unabomber! Wand Tinasky! Monica Lewinsky! Clement Clarke Moore! Shakespeare himself!

In between all this detective work is a lot of inside baseball. Foster has all the insufferable qualities of an academic, including the habit of quoting everyone and everything else even marginally relevant to the subject at hand, a lot of self-pitying "but I'm just a poor English professor!", and certain assumptions that the reader knows every detail of say, the famed Talking Points or even Primary Colors. Author Unknown has aged poorly.

You won't find much detail on how Foster actually gets to the bottom of his mysteries. SHAXICON seems to do a lot of the work and Foster pieces together the rest. Sometimes Foster leads up to the Big Reveal, and other times he simply tells the reader who the culprit is and then backs into his argument. This makes the book wildly uneven, interesting in one chapter and very boring in the next.

What's shocking is how unscientific the literary world really is. Foster's work is the analysis of text in a scientific way, a way that is now accessible to everyone on the planet in a little tool you might have heard of called Google. Back then, this was big news. Now, a man who knows how to use a specialized search engine? Not so much.

If you're looking for guidance on how to track down your anonymous detractors, this book will not help you. If you're looking for a mildly interesting tale about the evolution of scientific inquiry applied to literature and search tools, then Author Unknown will be enlightening. And if you want to know the true origins of Santa's reindeer, it's a must read.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

You ever have one of those crazy bosses?

She would blast ecological sounds so loudly we had to ask her to turn it down (our jobs included listening to actors read lines). Another time, she called in sick because she was "wafting vapors." She always brought up her education in conversation. She never seemed to actually do any work, but instead worked on her novel, using company resources to write it. And she was strangely preoccupied with "ganja" to the point that she used it as her password, a fact she was only too happy to share. "Wafting vapors" indeed.

After I finished reading Nickel and Dimed, I was convinced Ehrenreich was my former boss. A highly-educated journalist with an arch tone, she blesses us all with her insights by going undercover as a poor person and trying to get by. Which is a bit like the scene from Aladdin when the princess slips out into the real world.

You see, Ehrenreich wants to help people. She really does, and she views things in a sort of black and white, my way or the highway sort of charitable aggressiveness. She's an ideological bully, the kind that is impossible to argue with because she cloaks herself with the cause of the underdog.

And that's a shame, because Ehrenreich's absolutely right in what she uncovers: that the poor can't get by on minimum wage salaries in the year 2000. The only way to survive is to have a partner, she concludes, but with that comes the baggage of living with another person, possibly children, and all that entails. And yet, Ehrenreich's experiment lacks precisely that - when she is given the opportunity o move in with a friend, she turns it down.

Ehrenreich isn't a poor person. In fact, she is so NOT poor that she secretly feels she should be treated differently because she's better educated, or because she's a journalist, or because she's trying to help people when clearly bosses are greedy and poor people are too weak to fend for themselves.

In my first job, I worked in a factory. I've come a long way from that factory job, but it taught me a lot as a high school student. And what's missing most from Ehrenreich's tour in Poor People Land is that these people aren't characters in her book; they're real people. Ehrenreich never seems to detach herself from her upbringing, although she would have us believe otherwise. The signs, if you read carefully, are there.

The one that really turned me off was the fact that Ehrenreich, due to an "indiscretion," smokes pot when she knows she'll be going on job interviews. Now either Ehrenreich didn't know job interviews required drug testing, which speaks poorly to her journalistic abilities, or she has a fondness for pot she fails to disclose as part of who she is. From there it's railing against the system of drug testing, a charge that becomes shrill when she beats the test and sees that as further evidence that drug testing is dumb. There are lots of hard working poor folks who aren't smoking pot before job interviews, and Ehrenreich isn't doing the underrepresented poor any favors by succumbing to the stereotype.

The other hypocrisy is that Ehrenreich bristles at psychological tests. I agree with her, I hated those tests too. She objects to the tone of the questions and their underlying agenda, but the back of the book contains a "reader's guide" that asks such loaded questions as, "have you ever been homeless, unemployed, without health insurance, or held down two jobs? What is the lowest-paying job you ever held and what kind of help--if any--did you need to improve your situation?" The lack of self-awareness rife throughout the book is breathtaking.

The final indignity is when Ehrenreich, the educated white woman who knows better, decides on a lark to start a union at Wal-Mart. Heedless of what the consequences might be, she just skips right out of that final job into her conclusions. Never mind that Ehrenreich was intentionally rabble-rousing workers who, if they had decided to try to form a union, could have all lost their jobs. And where would that leave them, while Ehrenreich went back to her comfortable house?

But if you can look past that, and I'm sure a lot of people can't, the book's messages are sound. The end result of a capitalist system in America is ultimately hostile to itself. The rich need the poor to work as cheaply and inexpensively as possible, and this form of human labor market ultimately degrades the bottom ranks until they rebel. Ehrenreich doesn't have any answers as to why the poor haven't rebelled already and instead concludes with navel-gazing reader's guide.

Nickel and Dimed should be required reading for CEOs everywhere who are often responsible for the fates of thousands of peoples' livelihoods. I just wish Ehrenreich hadn't written it.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

I first heard of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion from a graduate school professor. He declared that reading it changed his life and that it would change mine as well. I didn't believe him. It took me seven years before I finally picked up the book. And now I'm sorry I waited so long.

Influence explains the underpinnings of how the American marketing machine works. Cialdini explains that modern humanity has developed shortcuts to decision-making in order to deal with information overload. As a result, we have a reflex of sorts that kicks in for certain situations, such as the need to reciprocate favors, the desire for rare goods, following likable leaders, determining whom we should listen to, following the rest of the crowd, and maintaining consistency in our public persona.

As a teenager, these pressures to conform are front and center, but as adults we forget the compromises we made in the transition. "Are you a follower or a leader?" Cialdini explains that there are good reasons to be a follower and that, in most situations, it's perfectly acceptable to do what the rest of the crowd is doing. But there are situations in which our natural inclinations can be exploited, and there are scenarios where following the herd can lead to catastrophic consequences. Recognizing these behaviors in ourselves is an important part of survival, so that when modern life throws something at us unexpected, like an accident or a door-to-door salesman, we know how to react.

I mentioned that reading this book filled me with rage. I'm not angry at the author, but at all the people who now, with the gift of hindsight and Cialdini's guidance, I realized manipulated me.

I'm mad at the magazine salesman. He got me to buy two years worth of a magazine I didn't want by relying on my desire for consistency after I provisionally agreed to buy a subscription for what I thought was one year.

I'm mad at the Saturn dealer. Despite the "no haggle rule," he used the trick of authority where he "checked with his boss" for a better deal and then pressured me into buying it.

I'm mad at the real estate agent. He used the trick of scarcity to show me terrible, run-down houses to make me feel better about the house I ultimately picked.

And that's what's so interesting about this book. Cialdini wrote this book for US. Not for managers, salesmen, or non-profit volunteers. He wrote it as a defense! And yet everything from reviews on the book's cover to reviews right here on Amazon tout this book as a must for marketers. That's completely against the spirit of what Cialdini wrote - each chapter ends with "how to say no" and while the advice isn't always sound (he essentially tells you to, ya know, not fall for the tricks) it's certainly welcome.

It's a bitter irony that marketers have turned a book about resisting marketing into yet another marketing tool. Now that I've read this book, there won't be another magazine subscription, car, or house I buy without a fight. Buy it today so you can start fighting back too.

March of the Penguins

Babies die. Parents starve to death. And couples struggle to raise their children in a harsh world. This is March of the Penguins.

Penguins have been so personified as cartoon character stereotypes that they're nearly impossible to take seriously. Where they were once comedic inspiration (e.g., Chilly Willy) they have since morphed into too-cute-to-be-real creatures known for tap dancing and drinking bottles of cola. One viewing of March of the Penguins will dispel that perception very quickly.

March of the Penguins follows one of innumerable penguins on their journey to and from their breeding grounds. The challenge lies in the location of the ice floe. The penguins must lay their eggs in a place that is thick enough to not melt, and yet the terrain shrinks and grows, making the trip longer or shorter depending on the season. First the males, then the females, must protect the chicks against the elements, starvation and predators. Will they survive?

Some inevitably do not. This is not a sappy documentary, but an unblinking portrayal of just how harsh the world can really be. It's easy to relate to these creatures, so different from us and yet so alike. After all, they walk.

There are few anthropomorphic creatures that lend themselves to storytelling. Monkeys and apes are an obvious choice, maybe prairie dogs, and then there are the penguins. The film treats them as a tribe, and as they waddle slowly towards their inevitable destination of life and death, surrounded by ice that could be miles or feet high, we see our struggles in their own tribes.

An excellent, sentimental film that is never too cute. Penguins have never been so dignified.

Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit

I bought Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, for research purposes. I'm writing a book about playing the "good guys" who hunt typical movie slashers, and this book seemed like a good introduction into how the ESCU works to catch the bad guys. What I got was something else entirely.

John Douglas is a very scary man. He's someone who has seen far too many horrific crimes, such that they affect him personally-when his kids scrape their knees, Douglas recounts tales of children torn in half by a murderer. When his wife cuts her finger with a kitchen knife, he points out how the spatter pattern would tell a story about what happened. Ultimately, this sort of exposure leads to a divorce and Douglas is upfront about the damage his profession did to his job.

The book starts out with Douglas in the hospital, the victim of being overworked and without enough manpower to help him. Near death, he recounts the creation of the ESCU and his struggles in making the profiling of serial killers (he invented the term) a legitimate profession. But it does not go into much detail as to how the ESCU works. In fact, it's more about Douglas and about the murderers themselves.

And what a ghastly rogues gallery it is! We have serial killers who invent vigilante groups to cover their tracks, we have killers who like to fly prostitutes out to woodlands and then hunt them down like deer, killers who believe God is telling them to kill people, and killers who strangle, rape, drown, and stab.

I read "Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies" at the same time and found an odd juxtaposition between the two books. Legacy of Blood states that the comfort of slasher flicks is that the bad guy is easily recognized by his disgusting appearance and his sudden attacks, when in reality serial killers often look like normal people and torture their victims for hours.

Not true, according to Mindhunter. Indeed, many of the killers are degenerate slimeballs, incapable of social contact and forced to use blitz-style attacks against the weak and helpless because of their inadequacies. Many have severe stutters, bad acne, or some other disfigurement. Nearly all have been abused in some fashion by their parents.

By now, the serial killer traits are well known: bed wetting, fire starting, and torturing small animals. But Douglas makes it clear that in every case, it's the child's upbringing that so horribly warps them to a life of murder. There are no strong role models to stop these children from turning into monsters; indeed, when children fall into the cracks, serial killers are what sometimes crawl out of them.

Unfortunately, exactly how Douglas comes to his conclusions is a lot like magic. Despite all of his attempts to legitimize what he does, his efforts amount to "and then magic happens!" Then Douglas comes up with a startling accurate profile. He never lets us know when he's wrong. That's a minor quibble with a book that I couldn't put down.

Mindhunter is as much a cautionary tale as it is a woeful biography of Douglas' life. Only one of the victims actually manages to turn the tables on their assailant. And in just about every other case, the killers were on murder sprees that lasted years with dozens of victims. As Douglas puts it, "sometimes the dragon wins."

As an author, this book gave me a host of ideas on how the good guys and the bad guys work. As a citizen of the United States, it gave me a new appreciation for the FBI. As a husband, it gave me a healthy regard for the mentally disturbed. A must read for anyone who wants to understand how to spot the dragons before they hatch.

If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor

Just in case my biases weren't clear up front, I'm a big fan of the Evil Dead series (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army of Darkness) and by proxy, the gents who worked on it (the Raimi brothers and Bruce Campbell). Bruce is known as THE MAN by fans. Watch Evil Dead 2 and you'll understand.

This is not to say that everything Bruce produces is gold. Indeed, he's slogged through a lot of crap to get where he is. Unfortunately, where Bruce is at this time does not involved huge piles of money, and if the returns on Bubba Ho-Tep are any indication, it's not going to happen any time soon.

But as Bruce would say - so what? If Chins Could Kill gives us an insight into Bruce's philosophy on life and his long, hard struggle from Michigan to Hollywood and back again. I was able to identify with much of Bruce's childhood because my wife grew up in the same area and I lived there for three years. Heck, I went to Michigan State University too (where Sam and Bruce first aired "The Happy Valley Kid").

That said, this book is a breezy read, chopped into chapters only as long as they need to be. Bruce talks about his life in such a way that you suspect he's not telling you everything - certainly, most of the personal stuff is left out except for the divorce from his wife. Even that is vague. Bruce wants us to think he's a well-meaning doofus, but he seems too shrewd and committed to his craft to have just stumbled into his career.

Fans who are familiar with the Evil Dead commentaries will find some of the recollections repetitive. Yeah, we all know about the locals who stole the power saw but not the thousand-dollar camera, or the Ram-O-Cam, or the reaction fans had to Evil Dead. On the other hand, there are little gems hidden here and there, most specifically when Bruce encounters a fox (the animal) and plays with it in the afternoon sun for a few hours. That chapter seems to sum up Bruce: a good-natured fellow who is nevertheless capable of taking advantage of the right situations at the right time.

Bruce's voice comes through in the narration, sometimes so informally that it's difficult to follow. He will often reference an acquaintance without any backstory and then talk about someone else in the next sentence. There's also a lot of pictures with supposedly funny captions - they're not that funny and since they're all in black-and-white, they're all very fuzzy. On the other hand, the (we can only presume) actual emails of various fans that start of each chapter are hysterical.

When Bruce isn't talking about his life (and some of the book does talk about his life, despite Bruce's disclaimer), he talks about the movie industry in a way that's valuable and informative. Here, we learn about movie etiquette, about movie stars who suck (hint: Tom Arnold) and just how capricious the casting process is.

Finally, the book has an addendum covering Bruce's "Chins Across America" tour. As a regular convention attendee myself, this part of the book was by far the most entertaining. It's also the least edited. Still, the fans are at least as entertaining as Bruce himself, and given that Bruce has worked in a variety of genres (fantasy, horror, westerns) his fan base is quite diverse.

Ultimately, Bruce's book is like his movies - it's a little rough around the edges but charming because of it.

Weapons: An International Encyclopedia From 5000 B.C. to 2000 A.D.

I stumbled upon this book in the library, immediately found myself coveting it, and then desperately considered photocopying the entire thing front to back. Fortunately, I didn't have to resort to such extreme measures - as a softcover the book is surprisingly affordable. There are few books of this type that are thorough and so lavishly illustrated; those that are have an equally lavish price tag. This book is a gem for those interested in weapons and armor of ancient and medieval times. There are indexes by geographical location as well as time period - an invaluable source for anyone interested in ancient weapons!

The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture

I was never a cat lover. I was definitely a dog person, and I (like all former dog owners) think my dog Jingles was the best dog in the whole wide world. Now we have a cat named Maya. All the myths I ever had about cats were turned on on their ear. In a similar fashion, The Tribe of Tiger gives a powerful insight into these animals without being overly sweet. Very often books of this type become unreadable to non-cat owners who get sick from the sugary references to cats at their cutest. Instead, Thomas examines all manner of cats, from the plight of the African lions to the triumph of the house cat. I wasn't aware that cats had a social organization at all, but unlike dogs (who have a distinct order in the pack), cats treat one cat as leader, with the others all equal in a kind of spoked-wheel formation. When you find out just how important it is that a cat meet another cat's gaze (and the trials of a blind cat who was unable to do so), you will have a new respect for cats, and this book.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

Sacks has written a riveting and somewhat frightening series of case studies about things that, with a little less knowledge, would certainly fit into the supernatural category:

• a man who lost all sense of smell in an accident dreams of being a dog and sniffing flowers, and awakens to find he can smell again;
• an artist slowly loses the ability to distinguish people from objects (the Mr. Magoo syndrome), but his fans think it just makes his artwork better;
• a woman who cannot perceive one side of her body at all, even when presented with a mirror;
• a man whose left and right sides of the brain continually are at war, one hand buttoning him up while the tries to unbutton him.
  

Sachs provides enough strange-but-true stories to show us just how little we know about the human brain. A must read for anyone who wants the facts behind all those "believe it or not" books and shows.

The Demon-Haunted World

I am an X-Files fan. I shamelessly pay lip service to all manner of extra-terrestrial, supernatural, and otherwise "out there" theories about the universe and our role in it. I have to admit, some of them seemed appealing. But there was something missing - we never heard from the other side. This only provided more ammunition for the paranoid, "They don't answer because they know they're wrong!" Here is Carl's answer.

• I never knew who made electricity (John Maxwell), and that the electromagnetic spectrum was created to counter Anton Mesmer's (the hypnotist, who created the word mesmerism) theory of animal attraction (that's where that saying came from!).
• I had no idea just how much hypnosis can influence others - read about the hypnotists who unintentionally plant suggestions into their young patients minds, and the accusations of devil-worshipping and satanic sacrifice that come about as a result.
• Carl slams the alien face on Mars with some hard evidence (there is an error in photography that is one of the nostrils of the figure on Mars).
• Crop circles are FAKE! The guys who invented them came out and admitted it...so why is everyone still talking about them anyway?
  

Before you make any decisions about the New Age, aliens, or any other popular quasi-theories that exist today, READ THIS BOOK.

Creating Cool Web Pages With Html

There are a lot of "The Web's so cool and if you just buy our book you can make a million dollars" kinds of books out there. I've gotten tired of them very quickly. For one, the Web is just new, it's not the salvation of mankind. For another, they always have some underlying motive (beyond making money), and usually its ramming their own web pages down your throat. Taylor doesn't do this. In fact, he makes you feel very welcome as he explains, in a pleasant narrative style, this big blob of networks called the Web. He's not condescending about it, he's not pushy about it, but he is excited about it, and it appears genuine. The book itself details the standard beginner stuff, with some advanced carrots that leave you drooling for more (I know how to do tables but how do I set up a counter?). Many of these books will disappear rapidly over time because of the advent of HTML editors like Netscape Gold, but this book will stick around - there's plenty in there for the advanced user too. One complaint: Dave, stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer!

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I've never been fond of Stephen King's works.

That's not to say I don't have tremendous respect for the man. Heck, I'm green with envy over his success. I'm not quite as envious over his scriptwriting career, but that's still more produced scripts than I have (0). There are exactly two stories I've read that I actually enjoyed: the short story "The Cat from Hell" and the novel "The Eyes of the Dragon." A lot of people have read "The Eyes of the Dragon," so I won't dwell on it other than to say that it's a fantasy novel and not a bad one at that.

Virtually no one has heard of "The Cat from Hell," which I stumbled across as a child looking for short stories about fantastic characters. Boy did I get one, a terrifying tale of an assassin hired to execute a cute little kitty that turns out to be far more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine. I don't think Mr. King doesn't like cats.

Anyway, what I've since read from King since often seemed like it meandered. Where "The Cat from Hell" was a tight, gripping story, there has since been a lot of farting, nose picking, and other silliness interspersed through King's novels that turn me off. It's like a kid making farting sounds with his armpit during a scary movie...hard to be scared when someone's giggling behind you.

On Writing explains King's approach and more. It also sums up a lot of King's life, a life that would make exceptionally fertile material for his later horror movies. Most significantly, the book is refreshingly honest. King doesn't think his works are masterpieces, but he does believe he is an artist and a successful one. He talks about it like it is, explaining what it takes to be a writer and more significantly, what will make you a GOOD writer. King has little respect for writing classes. In fact, one could argue On Writing is the first and last book anyone needs about writing.

For King, the most important aspect of writing is telling the truth: about oneself, about what you know, about whom you know, and how you know it. His clear-minded approach cuts through the usual claptrap about high art, English teacher sophisms, and notions about what it means to be a "success." King really gives it his all, baring his heart and soul and admitting to some very nasty things in his life that nearly ended his career.

Then King was hit by a van.

That last chapter is riveting, not the least of which is because it is as if the book's wisdom is put to the test. King, in detail that only he can describe, explains just what happened. And it all seems a lot like his novels, a real life horror story.

The highest compliment I can give this book is that it sent me straight back to my writing, the "closed door" kind, the kind written for the Ideal Reader, the kind that is what I know not what I think I should know.

King inspires prospective authors to write the Truth. And that's more valuable than all his other books put together.

Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective

I've been on the Internet before there was a Web, met my wife over a Multi-User Dungeon, and wrote my master's thesis on how anonymity on the Internet makes people act out. The notion of determining the true identity of anonymous sources really appealed to me, especially since I've been the victim of more than one anonymous attack on the Internet.

And thus we have Author Unknown. My version is titled "On the Trail of Anonymous" as opposed to "Tales of a Literary Detective" - near as I can tell, it's the same book with different packaging. Which is good, because my version's cover is of a book with glasses resting on it--not very interesting. That cover exemplifies some of the problems with Author Unknown.

Don Foster is an English professor. He works in an English professor's office, he writes like an English professor, and he stumbles around in bewilderment in the "real world," solving crimes and battling other evil skeptics. He seems to have a magical ability to determine authorship through contextual cues, an ability he never explains in detail. Armed with his trusty sidekick SHAXICON (a mysterious search program that's never mentioned once in the book), the hapless Dr. Foster wages a one-man-and-computer war against those who would cloak themselves in anonymity.

The delicious revenge such a skill can bring about is especially evident when Foster tracks down his anonymous peer reviewers. Foster slices right through it all. And what anonymous villains does our hero vanquish? The author of Primary Colors! The Unabomber! Wand Tinasky! Monica Lewinsky! Clement Clarke Moore! Shakespeare himself!

In between all this detective work is a lot of inside baseball. Foster has all the insufferable qualities of an academic, including the habit of quoting everyone and everything else even marginally relevant to the subject at hand, a lot of self-pitying "but I'm just a poor English professor!", and certain assumptions that the reader knows every detail of say, the famed Talking Points or even Primary Colors. Author Unknown has aged poorly.

You won't find much detail on how Foster actually gets to the bottom of his mysteries. SHAXICON seems to do a lot of the work and Foster pieces together the rest. Sometimes Foster leads up to the Big Reveal, and other times he simply tells the reader who the culprit is and then backs into his argument. This makes the book wildly uneven, interesting in one chapter and very boring in the next.

What's shocking is how unscientific the literary world really is. Foster's work is the analysis of text in a scientific way, a way that is now accessible to everyone on the planet in a little tool you might have heard of called Google. Back then, this was big news. Now, a man who knows how to use a specialized search engine? Not so much.

If you're looking for guidance on how to track down your anonymous detractors, this book will not help you. If you're looking for a mildly interesting tale about the evolution of scientific inquiry applied to literature and search tools, then Author Unknown will be enlightening. And if you want to know the true origins of Santa's reindeer, it's a must read.