My motive for reading any given paper is generally not “for the sake of reading the paper from start to finish”. And these days I am not reviewing any papers for journals or conferences. So I start by identifying my purpose. Prerequisite #0: Define your purpose. Am I trying to learn a new area of …
Author Archives: swan
Leaving Oregon
Perhaps absent a pandemic, I would have stayed in Portland. The city has amazing food and a decent partner dance scene. But I think it far more likely that I would have left earlier than I did. In the end, Portland is as much a city as I ever want to live in longterm. Nothing …
The Travelling Cryptographer is Back
But I’ve downsized. Considerably. Meet Bella: Bella was difficult to acquire. I got her back in September 2020, after determining the pandemic supply chains were a bit more reliable for outfitting a truck than a van, and after realizing that, well, I don’t actually much like vans, anyway. Half of that turned out to be …
Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy
I finished the last book of Liu Cixin’s trilogy, Death’s End, a few weeks ago, and the first two last fall. So this review will be necessarily a bit more high-level and about my general impressions, because memory is faulty. Feel free to skip to the end for some quotes, though, because I have a …
Orders of Magnitude
As a full disclaimer, I’m terrible at arithmetic. Particularly if I think someone is analyzing my speed at manipulating numbers in my head. I think part of it is because I’ve had more than the average training in mathematics, and I think this is somehow supposed to make me a computer in the original sense …
Unsupported Conclusions
Lately I feel as though I’m drowning in a sea of unsupported conclusions whenever I read the news. Today’s winner is this article from the New York Times, which includes the statement “Americans eat many more vegetables when meals are prepared for them in restaurants than when they cook for themselves”. I’m not going to …
Silence: In the Age of Noise
I do not follow modern day explorers, and so the name Erling Kagge meant nothing to me until I picked up and read his beautiful prose, punctuated by art, in Silence: In the Age of Noise. Kagge’s book is a reminder that observation is key to living well, and silence is key to observation. That …
Food Fights, Barbecuing, and Community
I rarely read one book at a time—and in an attempt to avoid the sunk cost fallacy I sometimes opt out of finishing books—so I thought perhaps I’d review books as I am reading them. Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste, by Tom Nealon, is a delightful book by any measure, but …
Mess of Manhattan
Where the sidewalks aren’t public. But at least there’s city-dressed beef. And it’s both prime and masterfully purveyed. You can even find prewar housing. And there could be music.
Clayton, NY
The milk stout at Wood Boat Brewery is worth a try. Make sure to stroll down along the waterfront. Pause to admire the relic of war. And try some dressing? Or not. Mysterious claims.