50 Science Books I’d like to read

TimeHorse April 10, 2020 2 Comments

Last year, when we were setting the schedule for the Bowie Bevy of Brainy Books, I went through my Audible back catalog and by my calculations, there are 209 titles in my library that I’ve yet to listen to. Some of these are scheduled in my upcoming meetup events but most are gathering dust as I am busy with the official book club list of titles.

Now that it’s time to chose the 2020โ€“2021 Science Book Club. Although I run that meetup and have run it for longer than the founder Megan Thaler, which still amazes me, I always allow a democratic decision on the series of books we read, always scheduling the top 10โ€“12 to form the cycle for the following 11โ€“13 months, with December reserved for our retro cycle books.

I should explain, the Science Book Club has been running since 2009 and has a tremendous back catalog, and although I didn’t attend every meeting, I have attended every one since I began running it in the Summer of 2013. As such, I have a general rule that we can’t do any book we’ve done before in the group as part of the main eleven month year. Also, I require that books be published within the last ten years. I am a little lenient on this in terms of allowing books technically eleven years old given that I’m planning for books into 2021 but allow books from 2010, but no earlier. But official, the rule is no repeats, no fiction, and no books older than ten years. If a book fails any of those tests, it goes into the December book bin, were I allow anything goes!

After winnowing out all the older books, the Great Courses and Fiction books in my back catalog, I was left with fifty books the Science Book Club has never discussed and are at most ten years old. The are as follows:

  • [Medicine] The Case Against Sugar (Gary Taubes, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/384
  • [Sociology] God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (Penn Jillette, 2011)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/256
  • [Neurology] The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery (Sam Kean, 2014)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/416
  • [Neurology] The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human (V. S. Ramachandran, 2011)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/384
  • [Mathematics] Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data (Charles Wheelan, 2013)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/302
  • [Chemistry] The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II (Denise Kiernan, 2013)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/400
  • [Medicine] Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them (Jennifer Wright, 2017)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/336
  • [Neurology] Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Nick Bostrom, 2014)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Ecology] Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (Bill McKibben, 2010)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/272
  • [Sociology] Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find – and Keep – Love (Amir Levine, Rachel Heller, 2010)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Chemistry] The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of Americaโ€™s Shining Women (Kate Moore, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/496
  • [Biology] American Pharoah: The Untold Story of the Triple Crown Winner’s Legendary Rise (Joe Drape, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Technology] Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Ashlee Vance, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/400
  • [Astronomy] The 4-Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality (Richard Panek, 2011)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/297
  • [Physics] The Hunt for Vulcan: โ€ฆAnd How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe (Thomas Levenson, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/256
  • [Biology] The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World (Peter Wohlleben, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/288
  • [Genetics] A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution (Jennifer A. Doudna, Samuel H. Sternberg, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Physics] The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth (Michio Kaku, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/368
  • [Technology] Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything (Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/368
  • [Neurology] Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts (Annie Duke, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/288
  • [Mathematics] The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America’s Enemies (Jason Fagone, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/464
  • [Medicine] Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (Florence Williams, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Technology] Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War (Paul Scharre, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/448
  • [Chemistry] Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder – A Journey into the Wild World of Nuclear Science (James Mahaffey, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/464
  • [Medicine] Pandoraโ€™s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong (Paul A. Offit, MD, 2017)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/288
  • [Medicine] Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ (Giulia Enders, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/271
  • [Biology] American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West (Nate Blakeslee, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/320
  • [Biology] Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Frans de Waal, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Biology] The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History (Thor Hanson, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Mathematics] Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Medicine] First Bite: How We Learn to Eat (Bee Wilson, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Medicine] Are u ok?: A Guide to Caring for Your Mental Health (Kati Morton LMFT, 2018)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/256
  • [Medicine] Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine (Thomas Hager, 2019)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/320
  • [Physics] The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter (Paul Steinhardt, 2019)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/400
  • [Medicine] The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth: And Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine (Thomas Morris, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/368
  • [Sociology] Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free (Wednesday Martin PhD, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/320
  • [Mathematics] Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Sabine Hossenfelder, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Neurology] The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (Dan Ariely, 2010)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/334
  • [Medicine] Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (David Quammen, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/592
  • [Economics] Money: The Unauthorized Biography (Felix Martin, 2014)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/336
  • [Physics] The Science of Interstellar (Kip Thorne, 2014)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/336
  • [Ecology] The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Young Readers Edition (Michael Pollan, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/400
  • [Mathematics] Code Warriors: NSA’s Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union (Stephen Budiansky, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/416
  • [Evolution] Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/464
  • [Medicine] Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe (Serhii Plokhy, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/432
  • [Physics] The Order of Time (Carlo Rovelli, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/256
  • [Sociology] The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language (Mark Forsyth, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/304
  • [Technology] The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Donald A. Norman, 2013)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/368
  • [Medicine] Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes (Nathan H. Lents, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/256
  • [Ecology] My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places (Mary Roach, 2013)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/160

I should explain here the shorthand I use to indicate the formats supported by each book. Unicode has icons for each of the formats as follows:

  • ๐Ÿ“–: Paperback
  • ๐Ÿ•ฎ: Hard Cover (Note, this Unicode Glyph doesn’t appear on all platforms)
  • ๐Ÿ’ป: eBook, such as Kindle
  • ๐Ÿ’ฟ: Audiobook, as in Audible
  • ๐Ÿข: The book is in the Library (this glyph, when present, contains a link to its entry in the Fairfax County Public Library card catalog)

The long and short of that is, to enter fifty new books into the nomination queue is a very tedious affair and took me so many hours yesterday, I forgot to post my note about TeslaOS 2020.20.5 on Thursday.

For the record, my fifty entries were appended to the end of the existing seventeen moniations already made or carried forward from the last poll. We are, therefore, in addition to the above, also considering the following books:

  • [Physics] Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality (Anil Ananthaswamy, 2018)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Genetics] Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves (George M. Church, Ed Regis, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿข/304
  • [Genetics] Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize (Sean B. Carroll, 2013)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿข/592
  • [Biology] The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldtโ€™s New World (Andrea Wulf, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/496
  • [Evolution] From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds (Daniel C. Dennett, 2017)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/496
  • [Technology] Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Biology] The Plant Messiah: Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species (Carlos Magdalena, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/272
  • [Sociology] Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions (Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/368
  • [Ecology] The Uninhabitable Earth, Life after Warming (David Wallace-Wells, 2019)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/320
  • [Astronomy] The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake (Steven Novella, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/512
  • [Health] How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Michael Pollan, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/480
  • [Geology] Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History (Lewis Dartnell, 2019)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/320
  • [Geology] The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions (Peter Brannen, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/322
  • [Ecology] The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (David George Haskell, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/268
  • [Ecology] The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (David George Haskell, 2017)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/304
  • [Biology] Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live (Rob Dunn, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/323
  • [Genetics] The Gene: An Intimate History (Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2016)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/608

Thus, over the weekend, assuming no more last-minute nominations, I will be create a poll with sixty-seven entries, asking my members to rank them on a five-point system and then use those star rankings and member attendance history to calculate the top 10โ€“12 books and then generate our schedule through the summer of 2021โ€”with the exception of December.

As for the December, 2020 meeting, nineteen books from my back catalog didn’t satisfy my ten year or repeat criterion, and so I added them to the three books carried over from last December’s poll. The first three books are the ones carried over, the rest are from my back catalog.

  • Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time (Martin Gorst, 2001)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿข/352
  • How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (Ray Kurzweil, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • (Fiction) The Witness Paradox: A Time Traveler Anthology (Martin Wilsey, TR Dillon, Jeffrey C. Jacobs, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ปFALSE/246
  • iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way (Steve Wozniak, 2006)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/313
  • How the Mind Works (Steven Pinker, 1998)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/660
  • Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2004)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/336
  • Fear Of Physics: A Guide For The Perplexed (Lawrence M. Krauss, 1993)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/224
  • The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild (Lawrence Anthony, Graham Spence, 2009)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/384
  • Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic & the Domestic (Esther Perel, 2006)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/272
  • The Invention of Air: A Story Of Science, Faith, Revolution, And The Birth Of America (Steven Johnson, 2008)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/272
  • Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner, 2006)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/336
  • Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos (Michio Kaku, 2004)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/428
  • The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms (Amy Stewart, 2004)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/256
  • The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (Richard P. Feynman, 1999)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/270
  • Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach, 2003)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/303
  • Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (Mary Roach, 2005)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/311
  • Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English (John McWhorter, 2008)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/230
  • Apollo: The Race to the Moon (Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox, 1989)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/506
  • Silent Spring (Rachel Carson, 2002)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/400
  • Song for the Blue Ocean (Carl Safina, 1998)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/458
  • Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (Carl Sagan, 1997)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/244
  • The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Carl Sagan, 2008)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/457

So much reading, so little time! Can’t wait to hear what y’all want to read, my sapiosexual friends!

UPDATE 2020-04-10 21:30: I do encourage my Science Readers to retrieve all the information above, such the full title, all authors and their full names, what formats the books are in, a link to the library listing, the publication year and the page count, and post all this to the Meetup Message Board. I do this because I get an email notification every time someone posts there. It’s hard to get to, to be sure, but when I send the email reminding folks to nominate things, I do provide a direct link to the Message Board discussion.

It’s therefore sad that most of my members used the new Meetup Discussion list instead. I get no notifications of any kind when people post here so I was shocked to see, when I posted a link to this article, that in fact a lot of my members posted sketchy book information to that list. A few of the nominations were in the list, but fourteen were new, as far as I could tell.

Of course, not wanting to ignore my member’s wishes, I spent a few more hours today trying to add all their nominations to the list. There are now eighty nominations, thirteen more added.

  • [Medicine] The Body: A Guide for Occupants (Bill Bryson, 2019)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/464
  • [Technology] The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect (Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/432
  • [Medicine] The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance (Nessa Carey, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/352
  • [Evolution] Lamarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past and Present (Peter Ward, 2018)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿข/288
  • [Biology] Aliens: The World’s Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (Jim Al-Khalili, 2017)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/240
  • [Physics] The World According to Physics (Jim Al-Khalili, 2020)๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/336
  • [Physics] Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics (Jim Al-Khalili, 2012)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/239
  • [Technology] What the Future Looks Like: Scientists Predict the Next Great Discoveriesโ€•and Reveal How Todayโ€™s Breakthroughs Are Already Shaping Our World (Jim Al-Khalili, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟFALSE/240
  • [Technology] The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance (Jim Al-Khalili, 2011)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/336
  • [Medicine] Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology (Jim Al-Khalili, 2015)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/368
  • [Technology] An Optimist’s Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer What’s Next? (Mark Stevenson, 2011)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿข/384
  • [Technology] We Do Things Differently: The Outsiders Rebooting Our World (Mark Stevenson, 2018)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ปFALSE/304
  • [Physics] Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (Max Tegmark, 2014)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/432

In addition to these thirteen, one more nomination was added to the December list because it’s a book we discussed in the group before.

  • The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (Brian Greene, 2011)๐Ÿ“–๐Ÿ•ฎ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿข/384

Exhausted but still sapiosexual.

TeslaOS 2020.12.5, or so I’m told

TimeHorse April 9, 2020 1 Comment

Thursday, I was so busy with updating my Science Book Club book nominations list, which I will discuss Friday, that I forgot to transmit this piece on time. I have, however, fixed the release date to correspond to when it was relevant.

That out of the way, I am very excited about TeslaOS 2020.12.5. Well, I would be if I could access #CO2Fre. Unfortunately, I am disallowed from entering #CO2Fre because of fears that, after the scam service from last week because someone things everything in the world has SARS-CoV-2.

One thing I hear is that you can now view your Dash Cam on the big screen. So, what? I’ve been struggling to find the right and reliable USB storage device that can allow me to sync my recordings to my capacious Google Drive but am completed paralyzed when it comes to finding a replacement for my original, failed device that stopped working many months ago. I just wish there was an out-of-the-box solution that didn’t require external DC Power.

And I still haven’t figured out what Game Controller to get. If only there was an official list of supported devices.

As for actually stopping at Stop Signs and Stop Lights, that’s yet to be seen. I’ve not seen it mentioned on any sites about TeslaOS 2020.12.5, so I’m dubious it has that.

But, I guess I’ll find out next week.

All this is bad enough it it weren’t for the fact that I was originally scheduled to give a demonstration of my Tesla #Pใ†”D and all the new capabilities of the vehicle this weekend with the RVA Electric Vehicle association meetup on Saturday. I’m really hoping to switch this to next week as if we hold it on Saturday, I will be presenting #CO2Fre without #CO2Fre!

But at least there’s TeslaOS 2020.12.5, in theory.

TeslaOS 2020.12.5
Apparently, #CO2Fre is now running TeslaOS 2020.12.5. Unfortunately, I have no way of verifying this in the automobile or see what’s in the update as I’m prohibited from entering my vehicle until next Saturday because of unfounded fear of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Still waiting to return to cruising on a cloudโ€ฆ

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

TimeHorse April 8, 2020 2 Comments

When I was given permission to Telework, I was worried without the ninety or so minutes of time commuting each working day I’d never be able to read all twenty or more books I normally read in a year, or for that matter the next book following The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human. But, rest assured, cleary I did and now I’m here to talk about it.

Adam Rutherford, no relation to Ernest, weaves an interesting survey of what Deoxyribonucleic Acid has contributed to our modern understanding of biology. He starts off talking about how humanity is like a braided stream, with genetic lines splitting and then re-emerging between Homo Neanderthalis, Homo Denisova, Homo Floresiensis, and other potential Hominin people lurking around Eurasia around the Wisconsin Glacial Period.

He then talks about how in ancient times, Europe was united under various different tribes, some coming from the East, some coming from the South, and how Europe was transformed by these migrations and that most Europeans today are descended from those Eastern Invaders and in that sense Europe was united long ago, when we were still in the Upper Paleolithic, until the advent of Agriculture in the Neolithic Age.

Next, Rutherford investigates the origin of the American Indian cultures. He tells the story of Kennewick Man in much detail and why it’s so hard to get American Indians to consent to being genetically sequenced. Despite these difficulties, he does show that American Indians all probably descent from a single migration over the Bering Strait and how the Inuit have genetic modifications for low oxygen environments, similar to the Tibetans.

The next part gets a little heady. The idea that we are all descended from Charlemagne isn’t too hard to believe but the idea that we could be descended from folks from the Andaman Islands or Australian Aborigines seems to be pushing it. When you think about it, the base logic is correct. Going back twenty generations you have over a million man great grandparents, and over thirty you have over a billion. Clearly, if each generation averages twenty years, in six thousand years time you do have in theory one billion ancestors, but as there wasn’t a billion people six thousand years ago, clearly there must be some inbreeding. Not necessarily first cousin inbreeding, but maybe seventh or eighth cousin a remove or two would be commonplace.

The problem is when you think that this implies that everyone alive back then who had a child must be your ancestor is a false premise. One can guess the amount of inbreeding, but in truth, it’s possible, and even probable, that the inbreeding is even tighter than the whole population of six thousand years ago. It seems more logical, even if the clusters of today are different than the population clusters from back then, that the Australians at least were isolated until 1606, when Europeans started coming there. With only four hundred years contact, I’m highly dubious I’m descended from a single Aborigine from six thousand years ago, despite many of those Aborigines having descendants alive today. Charlemagne, maybe, but not everyone who ever lived six thousand years ago.

I did, however, like the story of Richard โ…ข‘s discovery and it’s comparison to the insane idea that we could find Jack the Ripper in a used hankie. Great presentation of how to do bad and good science. The discussion of Francis Galton was also interesting, as there is stuff to admire the statistical genius with so much racism in his heart.

The topic of Race was an interesting one As Rutherford is half-South-Asian, I know that he would have suffered discrimination in the United Kingdom and of course feel for him. As a half-Jew, I have noted very little Jewish discrimination in the United States, apart from tourists from Europe, but when I do go to Europe, especially the farther East I go, I do notice a distinct hint of Anti-Semitism there. Nothing to write home about, just the random bloke who clearly has a problem with my nose.

However, I will say I think it’s excellent the way Rutherford points out there are more differences within race than there are distinguishing genetic characteristics within a race. I would, though, love to have red hairโ€”well, to be honest, I’d love to have any hair, but that’s another story.

The discussion of SNPs and GWAS. There’s a great discussion of why it’s so hard to find the causes of diseases. After all, it’s very unlikely a SNP change in a single protein expression will change a behavior. And even the known genetic defects can have gene modifiers. The discussion of how heritable certain characteristics are was also fascinating. And the definition of epigenetics was a great new wrinkle. The only element missing is the influence of the bacterial flora that also influences our behavior.

Finally, it was nice to ground us in what evolution can and cannot do. The HOX Genes discussion was fun, as I do like the idea of a HOX d2 gene added to make a great story. And also, it’s interesting that GWAS can’t find an evil gene. I still blame testosterone for much of the evil in the world, but clearly even that hormone can’t be the only element at the root of modern violence. Indeed, if we could eliminate child abuse, we would go a very long way to solving many of what ills our society.

In summary, genetics is a wonderful tool in the development of biological understanding, but I wonder just what our current trends in slow evolution will bring. Only time will tell.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

Next up, The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis, another book without a commute, with three weeks to completeโ€ฆ

Hope to see you in person soon, my sapiosexual friends!

You can have any star you want, as long it is gold

TimeHorse April 7, 2020 No Comments

One huge flaw with Google‘s iPhone app for Gmail is that it doesn’t support multiple star types. You are only allowed a gold star, while with the computer-based web interface, you can have many different colour stars, warning, and other alerts.

This is a huge oversight in the GMail app compounded by the fact that the applications like Safari, which allow the user to simulate Desktop browsing crash when you activate the standard web interface and try to select a star colour other than gold.

It used to be you could just open up a desktop browser session to manually set the star level but now even that doesn’t work and still the app can’t handle it.

Stars are a very useful aspect to GMail. With stars you can denote more than just that an email is important, but why it is important. For instance, I like to use the blue stars for coupons. I don’t want to mix coupons in with stars to indicate a SpamGourmet email address is about to expire.

This, in my opinion, is a major flaw to the Apple iOS GMail app and I hope someday they add an option to modify star type because I had to spend two hours today unable get my coveted blue star and ended up having to get out of bed and go to the computer just for this very simple action.

As a software, I know they could do better. As a software engineer, I may just end up doing better. Thanks to the Python interface to Google, I likely will do better.

So unless they want to hire me, bugger you, Google!

#CO2Fre come Home

TimeHorse April 6, 2020 No Comments

Last week I mentioned my struggles about eliminating the squeak from #CO2Fre. Then, of course, I was forced into a one-room cell as a hypochondriac put me into lockdown. On Sunday, I was released. I would say I finally had a clean bill of health but the truth is I was always healthy and just had to deal with irrationality. But that’s yesterday’s story and today I want to talk about how I wanted to finally pick up #CO2Freโ€ฆ and couldn’t.

I got a ride to the Tyson’s Corner Service Center and used the Tesla app to find #CO2Fre. She was parked in the back, against the side of the building. I had to open it with my ancient iPhone 5S. We sanitized #CO2Fre and then my ride left. There was a large Tesla Model X in front of her. Much as I try to inch her out of the space, I can’t do it. I get within a couple centimeters of the car next to me only to have to give up as impossible.

Trapped #CO2Fre
#CO2Fre is trapped at the Tyco Blvd Tesla Dealership. Her service plan was agreed to, her repairs made, but she couldn’t escape the clutches of Tesla. ยฉ 2020, Jeffrey C. Jacobs.

I scanned the QR Code and indicated I was there for pickup. I also called Tesla and left a message. I told them I couldn’t move #CO2Fre and my key wasn’t inside. Then I asked my ride to return as I waited for the callback that never came. I figured it wouldn’t because it was Sunday, but then it never came on Monday either, so I was rather distressed.

Finally, I called them on Monday and they agreed to move #CO2Fre to an accessible area where I could pick her up Tuesday morning before opening. They also arranged where I could pick up the key. I just hope my ride wakes up in time. After all, she was also my jailerโ€ฆ

#CO2Fre Moved
#CO2Fre was moved on Monday to a location where she could be safely retrieved and finally come home.

Hopefully soon, I can get back to cruising on a cloud.

Meetup Online: It’s Okay to Zoom

TimeHorse April 5, 2020 2 Comments

As an Internet Security professional, I have heard some folks expressing dismay over various security issues in the Zoom video conferencing package and the MatterMost chat services. I may do a piece on MatterMost at a later date, but for now I want to focus on Zoom because Zoom is what Meetup is suggesting as one of their preferred video conferencing platforms. (The other, Google Hangouts, is limited to ten people and thus isn’t practical for a number of the meetups I run.)

The thing is, many of the earlier security issues which plagued Zoom at the beginning of the recent surge in online meetings have been solved. Tom’s Hardware wrote a very insightful analysis of these issues in a recent article by Paul Wagenseil, Zoom privacy and security issues: Here’s everything that’s wrong (so far).

Most of the issues covered have already been patched, such as UNC password theft under Microsoft Windows. This was a rather insidious security flaw but fortunately the folks at Zoom stepped up to the plate and patched.

iOS profiling also seems to be fixed. Since I do a lot of my Zoom conferencing, with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact grassroots coalition, on the iPhone, this has been a great relief. Now, though, I do most of my meetup Zoom conferences on my laptop.

The decrypting of streams at the Zoom servers and re-encrypting them as they go out to the far-end client is at first blush worrisome, but that in part is necessary for folks recording their zoom sessions and though it puts a vulnerability at the level of Zoom staff, one hopes Zoom is careful with whom it employs. But it must be said, nothing I do on Zoom is something I would be embarrassed about were it to leak. I nonetheless want to do everything in my power to make sure it stays secure and I’m happy to hear Zoom is looking into closing this security flaw.

The auto-download for Macintosh is worrisome but again I am happy to say this practice is also ending as it is a backdoor that Zoom can use to allow third party software onto ones Mac. Zoom also has ceased allowing team profiles to share email addresses, though this is not a feature I’m using for any of my Zoom conferences.

As for recording leaking onto the Internet or folks joining your conference uninvited (Zoom Bombing) or war drive scanning Zoom to find your conference, all of these can be solved by user diligence. It’s important to be mindful of who you let into a conference, and don’t let just anyone have access to your recordings. For my Writing Groups, only myself, the account owner, and the persons being reviewed will ever have access to the recordings, and if the reviewed doesn’t need the recordings, we will delete them.

Also, as of this morning, 5 April 2020, at 0:00 UTC, Zoom now requires passwords on all new Zoom events. Thus, even with a Zoom ID scan, you won’t be able to get into the meeting without the password and although the URL can encode the password in an obfuscated way, simply scanning Zoom IDs will not get you into the conferences. And even if you did, I’d still have to approve you. I won’t.

Zoom
The Zoom Logo

Overall, I’m quite happy with Zoom and hope to use it all through Covidapolis. Overall, I give it this Security Engineers line of approval. And please note, I am available for hire if you like what you see!

Nowhere to run?

TimeHorse April 4, 2020 3 Comments

This is going to be one of my hardest articles for me to write because it’s extremely personal. I covered this issue somewhat with my article about Sheltered in Place with a Domestic Abuser, but when you add in the paranoia of hypochondria, things get even darker. So, alas, I need to go deeper.

It’s also hard to justify my including myself in a post that is ostensibly categorized as Equal Right. After all, I am, quite frankly, notโ€”nor could ever beโ€”a cis-woman.

To be clear, when we talk about equal rights, we don’t mean that should apply to more men getting abused. Reducing abuse overall should be our goal. I do think, though, men are feeling more opened about admitting when something doesn’t feel right, when things go from simple disagreement to some of the hallmarks of abuse.

That said, I’m sad to say the majority of abuse is and probably always will be of the form men against women, and that’s why this type of abuse deserves the most coverage. That is indeed the main focus of a wonderful article by Sarah Fielding in The Guardian dated 3 April 2020: In quarantine with an abuser: surge in domestic violence reports linked to coronavirus.

One caller to a domestic violence hotline reported that her husband threatened to throw her out into the street if she coughed. Another reported they had been strangled by their partner, but feared going to the hospital because of the threat of coronavirus. An immunocompromised man from Pennsylvania called in after his emotionally abusive girlfriend began hiding cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer from him.

Fielding, Sarah. “In quarantine with an abuser: surge in domestic violence reports linked to coronavirus.” The Guardian 3 Apr. 2020: Online.

I am very happy Ms. Fielding was able to show, what I consider hypochondriac controlling abuse, isn’t only affecting women. I feel for both the women is tossed onto the street with a cough, and even more for the one who was strangled (way to social distance, m*th*r f*ck*r!). But that poor man being withheld from necessary sanitizing agents, that’s pretty tragic as well.

Advocates are concerned that this bleak reality has reached the United States, where experts say one in four women and one in seven men faceย physical violence by a partnerย at some point in their lifetimes.

Fielding, Sarah. “In quarantine with an abuser: surge in domestic violence reports linked to coronavirus.” The Guardian 3 Apr. 2020: Online.

Statistics tell the whole story. While one in four women are likely to be the victims of an abusive relationship, one in seven men are just as likely. So, while women make up the majority of victims, for every two women victims, there is at least one man.

Of course, some may find that hard to believe. How could a big, strong man be abused by a “feeble” woman? But that’s because the ways a woman might try to control or belittle or isolate a man, they are different than what a man might do to a woman. A woman typically won’t use violence against her man, though even if she did, many men are cultured to never raise their hand against a woman, even in self-defense. Many men eschew violence and would never use it to assert themselves. So, assuming a man can always prevent abuse because he’s bigger and stronger totally misses the point of what abuse is all about. Abuse is abuse, regardless of gender.

The crux of my point is that, if you combine a controlling partner, a partner who actively tries to isolate and belittle, with an abuser who is also a hypochondriac, you end of with a cough fit chucking you out on the streetโ€”or sequestered in a single room, hoping for some water, not allowed to exit confinement.

I write this from my spare room. I am prohibited from leaving this room because on Tuesday and Wednesday I had a runny nose and the bridge felt so tender, like it had been punched. I had no fever, and I know for a fact that these are not symptoms of SARS-CoV-2, but still I have been ordered not to leave this room, except to use the facilities. If I want something to eat or drink, I must make a request, and be at the whim of the hypochondriac. I may not be out of this room when the hypochondriac is around. And, even if I wanted to leave, #CO2Fre is still at the dealership, so I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted.

Nothing is, per se, forcing me to stay here, to be sure. But when you’re told to do something in such a commanding tone, it’s not worth trying to fight your prison sentence. I want to leave my cell, but I am afraid of the consequences if I do without consent. So, here I lie, on this bed, no free chair in the room, wishing to be free but not having the savings to make it so.

And neither do the women and men in Ms. Fielding’s article. That’s the rub.

Only, it’s not.

The National Domestic Abuse Hotline will help. I posted this before but it bears repeating because this is such an important issue and needs to be published. Please, if you are in any danger, call or text the National Domestic Abuse Hotline. They will help.

1980x540-COVID19-POST_Website-Banner-2
The Domestic Abuse Hotline statement on SARS-CoV-2. They’re here to help. If you’re in trouble and afraid, please give them a call.

As for me, I was told I could get out of quarantine jail and retrieve #CO2Fre tomorrow. Then again, I was also told that yesterdayโ€ฆ

Stay safe my ladyโ€”and gentlemenโ€”friends!

Relaxโ€”you actually don’t need to sanitize your food

TimeHorse April 3, 2020 2 Comments

On Sunday, I posted an article about sanitizing your food after you return from grocery shopping. The thing is, the medical professional who posted the original clip went a bit overboard in terms of how sanitary he felt he needed to keep his food once retrieved from the grocery store. The truth is, not everything the doctor says in his video is strictly correct and he is no food safety expert, as has been pointed out to me. However, for the most part my textual commentary doesn’t contradict what I’m about to share and I am happy to give Dr. Don Schaffner his due:

Buckle up, readers, as it’s about to get serious! Thirty-two more tweets, seriously!

Unfortunately, the link above to my original article with take you to that video but if you haven’t hit play on the video, and just read my commentary, you should be fine. Please, trust Dr. Don!

Sometimes I roll my eyes at my fellow writers when they they try to come up with Science Fiction ideas, since I did study undergrad Physics and read a lot of science books. I feel you Dr. Don!

Here here! I already outlined most of what was right in the video in my original post. I think I may have misspoken on how to wash produce but I’ll save that commentary for later.

There’s a bit of nuance to this, but what the good Dr. Don is saying is there is a difference between a random but not yet denatured strand of viral RNA, which in itself isn’t particularly harmfulโ€”at least, not infectiousโ€”where as a live virus was not observed. As in, the crown-like outer shell of SARS-CoV-2, a.k.a. the Coronavirus, the “Crown Virus”. Without the outer shell and crown-like protrusions, the virus has no way of penetrating cells, be they eukarya, bacteria, or archaea. Note, this pathogen only infects eukaryotes, though most viruses are harmless, only infecting bacteria.

More fundamentally, though, Dr. Dan points out that the CDC Study that came up with the 17-day number for RNA was never published in a peer-review paper where the methodology and techniques used could be scrutinized and dissected. Without the process of peer review, the observation is as good as anecdotal.

This was one of my biggest beefs with the video too. I mean, it’s one thing in the winter in Lansing, MI, where the outside might already be the temperature of your freezer. But that won’t work in Florida, not by a long shot. So unless you’re gonna be like Thomas Jefferson and truck in ice from Canada to keep your food from spoiling, don’t leave your perishable food in the garage!

Exactly!

This is a very good point. One of the ways the SARS-CoV-2 deactivates is through desiccation. If the virus is in a medium that allows it to dry out, it will no longer be effective. This is why spittle from sneezing is the most dangerous.

The virus is highly communicable, to be sure, but its transmission with respect to someone with the virus touching an item on the shelf, putting it back, and then having you grab it is exceedingly unlikely. And by the time you get to it, it’s quite likely SARS-CoV-2 has already dried out and perished.

I have to agree, as different packaging materials will allow the virus to remain active long than others, and again, as state above, it’s unlikely by the time you pluck the item from the shelf that it would still have any active virus on it even if it had once.

Washing your hands before eating should be second nature anyway. As Dr, Don says, you can remove the item from the packaging, put it on a clean plate, and then wash your hands before eating and any contamination on the packaging will have been removed from the equation.

Wรธrd!

There are good reasons not to use soap to wash your produce and I will admit I got that wrong before. Soap dissolves cell membranes and while most produce is covered by dead epithelial cellsโ€”like those on the outer layers of your skinโ€”and thus won’t likely cause cellular damage to your food, but if you slice the food it could spoil its flavor and if you fail to wash it all off and it gets in the nooks and crannies of your consumables, Dr. Don is right, you’re itching for a tummy ache. The oily residue soap normally removes isn’t a big issue on produce and thus a simple water bath should be sufficient for cleaning your produce.

Precisely!

Even the prescient Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis knew that hand washing wasn’t a panascia. It reduces the change of killing a mother giving birth, but even if done right, it isn’t perfect. Soap and water are great for removing both hydrophobic and hydrophilic substances from your person, but not every pathogen is removed by such reactions. SARS-CoV-2 is damaged because of its hydrophobic coating, but the same isn’t true for all toxic substances.

Indeed, human skin has many friendly microbes that help keep the skin clean and fresh. You wouldn’t want to boil those off anyway, even if you could. Love your friendly microbes. Just use soap and water to kill SARS-CoV-2. That M*th*r F*ck*r must die!

This is another good point. Not all handwashes are equal. I try to do a rather complex technique when washing my hands which I may document another day, but the long and short of it is, just rubbing your hands together isn’t enough, and even my technique isn’t one hundred percent effective.

Great point! Early food preservation in wine bottles with their tartaric acid may have worked for Napoleon’s army, but when we started using steel and aluminium cans, or even glass, we had to be very very sure everything was sterile. Watch any number of episodes from Comment C’est Fait (How It’s Made chez ร‰-U.) to see how this is done.

Remember the words of Franรงois-Marie Arouet, a.k.a. Voltaire, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” (Perfection is the enemy of good.)

This is one point I did make in my original article. Glad to see my point is backed up by Dr. Don.

This one is simply a caveat emptor. Don’t assume a product can kill viruses. Indeed, there are many ways product makers can use language that makes it seem like it’s effective against pathogens, but unless there is peer reviewed literature to back it up, sorry, it’s not magic. It won’t protect you against SARS-CoV-2 any better than simply washing your hands.

There is something to be said for the security blanket of feeling better. But, yes, they won’t help and are no better than a simple cold-water bath.

Or for treating the fabric of your home made N95 mask.

I like using reusable bags and agree washing them like any fabric is a wise idea. If you must use disposable bags, please use ones that are recyclable or compostable.

In other words, keep your bags close but be more mindful of social distancing and that the bagger uses proper sanitary techniques. But again, the likelihood that someone with the virus has used that same checkout stand recent-enough for the virus to still be active is very likely, and most grocery stores, like Wegman’s will do their best to sanitize the checkout counter between each customer during Covidapolis.

Keeping them in your car is a good idea. I always keep my MOM’s Organic Market bag in my car so it’s ready whenever I go there.

Wash your hands!

I have indeed noticed Wegman’s doing just that. They are, IMHO, doing a great job!

Know what you want, like Low Acid Orange Juice, and head straight over. Keep those two meter buffers to keep safe!

If you can get hand sanitizer, then it’s great when there isn’t soap and water available. But when you have soap and water, always prefer that.

Done in the most complete way possible Dr. Don!

Shelter in place, y’all, and use Zoom to see a friendly face!

Much obliged Dr. Don! Happy to help promote good science, sound food handling, and how to weave a great yarn, and sew a great mask!

Bon appetit, mes amis!

Putting SARS-CoV-2 into perspective

TimeHorse April 2, 2020 No Comments

A lot is being said nowadays about how there are more cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States of America than in any other country, worldwide. The truth is, some countries just have more people than others. Indeed, there are only two counties with greater than a billion people and while China is likely deflating its numbers, India is just not reporting anything anyway. The third biggest nation, though, is these United States.

The United States is the biggest in the class of middle-sized countries, along with Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and Nigeria, all with over two hundred million residents. You’d expect any of these top seven nations to have more cases than Nauru and Tuvalu, or even of France and Italy because there are much more people in these top seven countries than there are, by nature, in any of the smaller ones.

The long and short of this is that the proper way to compare infection rates is to do so relative to the population size. For instance, if the numbers are taken per million, you can see which counties are handling Covidapolis better than others. And that is exactly what the following graph shows.

SARS-CoV-2 Infections per Million per Country
This graph puts SARS-CoV-2 into perspective. A huge country like the United States or China should expect by virtue of just more people to have more cases than Italy. But when compared per million it’s clear that as of now, Italy is worse off, but we are headed there. So please, Shelter in Place, everyone!

As you can see, Italy is still ahead of the United States in terms of infections and mortality in terms of overall population size, but the United States isn’t abating and is on the road to match Italy of folks don’t properly Shelter in Place.

So please, my sapiosexual friends, just stay home.

The danger of Upgrading WordPress

TimeHorse April 1, 2020 No Comments

Late last night, just as I completed my post about Tesla trying to scam me, I decided to upgrade WordPress to version 5.4. Normally, this shouldn’t be an issue, but for me, since I run a multisite system, there are extra security issues and directory layout complications that must be taken into account.

The first step was, apparently, to backup my database. Since I’ve never backed up the mysql database before, I felt this seemed like a reasonable approach. I certainly didn’t want to pay JetPack to do it; I’m a genuine code jockey, I can do my own backups. After some digging around, I found mysqldump. Unfortunately, all the instructions on how to use it were incorrect.

After some further poking around, I finally came across the correct syntax. Essentially, the user name and host have to come before the --all-databases command. Also, the host can’t be localhost, it must be the IP for the local host. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a way to get it to prompt for my password which meant I had to type my password in the command line, leaving all there in the open for any history recall to see. Not very secure at all.

mysqldump -h 127.0.0.1 --user=<uid> --password=<pw> --all-databases > mysql.2020.03.31.bak

mysqldump command; note <uid> and <pw> are placeholders for the user name and password; you must replace this with your own values.

Alas, I was not able to find a way to get mysqldump to prompt for a password. I think if I have more time, I may write a python script which builds the command by first prompting for the password. At least that way, the password wouldn’t be stored in the command line history.

The mysqldump command is quite clever. It just stores the list of sql commands that would be required to recreate the databases you have stored. However, the file is rather big and being text, it compresses nicely with bzip2 -9, which is what I did.

Once I did this, I was ready for the main Upgrade. I held my breath and pulled the triggerโ€ฆ

Wordpress
This site is built with WordPressโ€ฆ and a very skilled programmer who has been writing HTML since 1993 and hacking UNIX for even longer.

The install progressed along nicely until it tried to write a file to the wordpress directory. ๐Ÿคฆ๐Ÿปโ€โ™‚๏ธ I logged into my server and sure enough, the permissions on the wordpress directory were 755, which meant the user could add and remove files, but the group and anyone else could not. You see, with my multisite, I try to have all wordpress files with user wp-user and group as www-data, to work with apache. And apache runs all web processes as www-data for both user and group. Thus, when WordPress asked to add a file to its codebase, apache could not write it because the www-data group didn’t have permission, only wp-user did.

find /usr/share/wordpress -type 'd' -print0 | xargs -0 sudo chmod 775

Change all the wordpress directors to allow www-data to add and remove files from them.

Realizing my mistake, I changed the permissions on all directories to be 775 (both wp-user and www-data could add and remove files). Unfortunately, it was too late. Instead, I had no choice but to blow away my current install and replace it with a fresh, new install of WordPress 5.4. At least, that’s what I did on a high level. The details, though, are a bit more complex.

Once I extracted all the wordpress files, I needed to get their ownership to match the settings for my wordpress install. I was able to do this quite easily with the chown command.

sudo chown -R wp-user:www-data wordpress/

Command to set the right file ownership for wordpress.

Next, I set the directories as above. Finally, the files themselves had to have the right permissions. Namely, they should be readable and writable by wp-user and the www-data group, but only readable to others, not writable. Namely, they needed to be set to permission 664.

find wordpress/ -type 'f' -print0 | xargs -0 sudo chmod 664

Change all the wordpress files to allow www-data to modify them.

Next, I had to copy over the active wordpress configuration file. This file is actually fairly spartan as all the active site configurations are actually stored in /etc/wordpress; my wp-config.php actually just scans this directory for configurations. The configurations, in turn, point to directories in /srv/www/wp-content with the site-specific files. I thuns needed to bring that file over to the new install.

cp /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php wordpress

Copy the configuration to the new wordpress install.

Next, I wanted to preserve the Languages I had installed. I just copied the entire directory over to the local install.

cp -r /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/languages wordpress/wp-content/

Copy the Languages directory to the wordpress install.

I also have an upgrades directory that I wanted to preserve.

cp -r /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/upgrades/ wordpress/wp-content/

Copy the Upgrades directory to the wordpress install.

Finally, I needed to move the links to my shared, dynamic contents that are for all the sites on my server. Specifically, the uploads, themes, and plugins folders all rest in /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content. (Technically, Uploads rests in blog.restonwriters.org site-specific Uploads directory, but that’s something I’ll fix later to conform with the same layout Themes and Plugins use.) Since these are already symbolic links, they can be moved to the new wordpress install directory to replace the defaults.

One caveat however, is the default install for wordpress comes with one plugin and three themes. In order to preserve those, I renamed the default plugins directory to plugins-default, and the default themes directory to themes-default. This was necessary before the symbolic links could be moved since those directories were in the way.

mv /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/uploads wordpress/wp-content
mv /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins wordpress/wp-content
mv /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/themes wordpress/wp-content

Move the symbolic links to the plugins, themes, and uploads directories.

Finally, the apache permissions file needed to be moved as it was also a link, pointing to /etc/wordpress/htaccess. I store the file there because it makes it easier to maintain in case I accidentally bow the .htaccess file away.

cp /usr/share/wordpress/.htaccess wordpress

Move the symbolic link to the .htaccess file.

Once all this is done, it’s a good idea to run the chown and chmod commands from above on the wordpress install directory once more to make sure the copied files and moved links are also properly attributed.

Finally, it was time to perform the brain transplant and move my staged wordpress install to the active /usr/share/ directory. I moved the current install to a temporary directory and then moved my staging install to the /usr/share/ directory to replace it.

mv /usr/share/wordpress /usr/share/wordpress-old
mv wordpress /usr/share/wordpress

Replace the installed wordpress with the new version.

Once all this was done, I was able to get to my web page, and wordpress prompted me to upgrade my database. Once this was done my sites were back online. In total, this site and its sister sites were down for a total of about forty-five minutes. It was a long day yesterday and I was exhausted but I did get it done and you can now see the results.

Iย hope you enjoyed my story about hacking UNIX. Please note, I am available for hire if you like what you see!