Recent Reading

As I was packing for my recent trip to Indiana, I noticed a $15 Borders gift card, and placed it in my pocket. To my surprise, the airport had a Borders. Deciding to augment my reading material, I eventually settled on The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. The sales clerk said that he had been wanting to read it as well, so we chatted briefly. I found it quite the interesting read. For those who don't know, the book is written as a series of letters from an older demon (Screwtape) to a younger demon, explaining the best ways to tempt a man away from God and towards sin. I love the way it's setup -- it seems to be a more approachable way of telling someone the error of their ways, and goes on to explain exactly why this or that thing is spiritually bad. I wish more Christians (or "Christians" -- it's good for both) would read it.

Also completed on my trip was Next by Michael Crichton. It's a story of technology gone bad. Well, okay, that describes half his novels. This one deals with genetic experimentation. It's like his last work, State of Fear, in that he's trying to convey a point, which is pretty obvious through the novel, and, if it weren't obvious enough, there's an "Author's Note" at the end which includes his suggestions for how we deal with the issue. Unlike State of Fear, there were no footnotes (which I found highly amsuing in a novel), but the book did have snippets of genuine news articles that reported bogus news which were amusnig (e.g., on the purported World Health Organization report in 2002 that blondes would be extinct in 200 years, which could ahve been easily confirmed a hoax had the reporters actually bothered to call WHO and discover that no such report existed; he also included follow-up "we've been had" articles). Overall, I did not find it his best work, nor did I agree with all of his conclusions, but it was quite readable, and his conclusions were not different enough from my own to grate on me throughout the reading process. He does highlight several problems in our legal approach to genetics, such as the patenting of genes. While reading the book, I decided to browse his bibliography, and was initially surprised to see a pair of books by G.K. Chesterton (who also happens to be on my to-read list). I reproduce the second of these entries here:

Chesterton, G.K. Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Ordered Society. Edited by Michael W. Perry. Seattle: Inkling Books, 2000. Originally published in 1922, this astonishingly prescient text has much to say about our understanding of genetics then (and now), and about the mass seduction of pseudosceince. Chesterton's was one of the few voices to oppose eugenics in the early twentieth century. He saw right through it as fraudlent on every level, and he saw where it would lead, with great accuracy. His critics were legion; they reviled him as reactionary, ridiculous, ignorant, hysterical, incoherent, and blindly prejudiced, noting with dismay that "his influence in leading people in the wrong direction is considerable." Yet Chesterton was right, and the consensus of the scientists, political leaders, and the intelligentsia was wrong. Chesterton lived to see the horrors of Nazi Germany. This book is worth reading because, in retrospect, it is clear that Chesterton's arguments were perfectly sensible and deserving of an answer, and yet he was simply shouted down. And because the most repellent ideas of eugenics are being promoted again in the twenty-first century, under various guises. The editor of this edition has included many quotes from eugenicists of the 1920s, which read astonishingly like the words of contemporary prophets of doom. Some things never change--including, unfortunately, the gullibility of the press and public. We human beings don't like to look back at our past mistakes. But we should.

I just found it interesting, that's all.

I've also been reading Baseball Between the Numbers -- a heavily stats-based book that challenges conventional baseball wisdom, occasionally confirming it, but more often working to debunk it. The book says that those who are not statistically-inclined need not be intimidated, but, even though they don't do much of the math in the pages of the book, I'd say it's probably better to have some familiarity with statistics (and here I mean more a college course on statistics, rather than baseball statistics, although yuo'd certainly want that, too -- if yuo don't understand much beyond HR, R, and RBI, the book is probably a bit much for you). The book favors several unconventional ideas that I was in favor of before reading it, such as returning to the four-man rotation, and using elite relievers in non-save situations (the save possibly being the single worst statistic in baseball). It also points out that accumulating 100 RBIs does not necessarily indicate a good season at the plate, and that Alex Rodriguez is overpaid. At the same time, I purchased Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders. While I haven't done much reading in the book yet (I'm about to sit down to some more), Neyer is one of my favorite baseball columnists. Unfortunately, his columns (and online chat sessions) are now behind a subscriber-only wall, and I'm too cheap to pay for access. Also unfortunately, as he is an online writer, he's ineligible to be a Hall of Fame voter (many espn.com writers are eligible, but that comes from previous service with the print media).