Book review: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe by Ralf Dahrendorf is a book; Goodreads starts off The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 effectively ended the division of Europe into East and West, and the features of our world that have resulted bear little resemblance to those of the forty years that preceded the Wall's fall. The rise of a new Europe prompts many questions, most of which remain to be answered. What does it all mean? Where is it going to lead? Are we witnessing the conclusion of an era without seeing anything to replace an old and admittedly dismal way of life? What will a market economy do to the social texture of various countries of Central Europe? Will it not make some rich while many will become poorer than ever? That last question at least turns out to be answerable No: most have become better off, some greatly so; few have become worse off.

However, I read this thing more than a year ago and, as Spike Milligan memorably said, it left an indellible blank on my mind. The title aims far too high; not only does it - as I recall - fail from this distance in time to manage much in the way of foresight, but philosophically it falls far short of Burke.

Books read, 2026

I have a (crudely ranked) sci-fi books list; and an "other" list. This I one find myself in need of: simply a list of books read, in order. See-also the 2025 version.

* As On a Darkling Plain, Ben Bova

* The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner

* Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Ralf Dahrendorf 

Book review: As On a Darkling Plain

Scifi tosh of my least favourite genre, a self-conscious² attempt to be a proper book. By Ben Bova; see-also The Exiles Trilogy which I also didn't like. So why did I buy it? Mostly for the title, and the hope that it would be an interesting Icehenge knock-off. But it isn't.

Indeed to my surprise it predates Icehenge. This post tells me also that it is a fix-up, which neatly explains the pointless "Jupiter" part which takes up 2/5 of the book, and in which our author runs through yet more cod psychology, and fails to think of an alien animal more interesting than a whale or a shark, but like really really big.

Unlike Icehenge, which manages to imbue the monoliths with a sense of mystery, here the buildings on Titan are just big buildings that throb like a post office motorbike¹.

Going for two out of two on annoyingness³, the book also displays the irritating trope where the character sees something - in this case the buildings - and instantly and unshakeably adopts some prejudice - in this case that the aliens are hostile. And then even more irritatingly the characters have a stupid discussion in which the hero blatantly fails to advance any plausible arguments in favour of his prejudice, and no-one calls him a dimwitted tosser. Sorry, am I ranting?

Lastly, at the end of the book, it turns out that the mysterious throbbing motorbike - sorry, I mean buildings - are emitting gravity waves aimed at causing sunspots and solar flares, in a pathetically inefficient attempt to erase life on Earth. Why the aliens would choose such a hopelessly wigmawolishly woundabout way of killing us all instead of just tossing a couple of asteroids or even a few big nukes at us is never made clear.

Trivia: Sirius B went white dwarf 120 million years ago, so his timeline doesn't fit; but that may not have been known then, for all I know.

Notes

1. What's big and red and throbs between your legs?

2. If, per Lewis, the chief virtue of medaeival literature is its lack of strain, this type of book is the opposite.

3. I shall discretely ignore the dull love triangle stuff, but make it 3/3 if you like.

New gear: wires, crabs

I was in Wales last weekend with the 4C's in the Rucksack Club hut in the Llanberis pass - more on that anon - and passing by Joe Brown's in Capel Curig stopped to poke around. They have an excellent selection of gear, I've not seen better elsewhere, probably better than Outside in Hathersage. Anyway I've begun my project to renew my gear, some of which dates back to the early 90's so is up to 35 years old. Although I do have a lot of newer stuff. First up is a set of wires, technically Wallnuts, from DMM.

And some crabs aka carabiners.

Note what isn't desperately obvious from the picture: they are smaller than standard, by a little, thus lighter, hence "Wisp". Looking at the online prices, Joe Brown's was actually slightly cheaper, something to remember.

New running shoes

Happy New Year. Having lost my beloved Boston Adizero 9's to old age, mountain walking and erging, themselves replacements for the 8's,

I had bought some Altra's in July 2024:

These are nice, without too much absurdly overbuilt heel as almost everything has these days, though a little bitey on the ankles; I've had to cut them back a little. But I still hankered after the Boston's, though you can no longer buy the 9's. Or so I thought! But recently I found some online (Joom) and bought them:

They are nice, although when wearing them I do find them a touch flat :-). I may now be eligible for Imelda status:

Book review: Not Even Wrong

Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit (damn! That is one determinedly old-skool website) is about The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law. I read his blog; it is great, even if I disagree with most of his political takes. I've even listened to some of his lectures on Youtube.

This book is about 1/2 about developments leading up to the Standard Model; about 1/6 thoughts-beyond-the-SM; and about 1/3 String-theory-and-what-is-wrong-with-it. If you blip over the really difficult bits it is fairly easy reading, especially if you have already got some background in strong / weak forces, and some kind of understanding of group theory. If you try to read through all the hard passages (I couldn't), it is hard work, because all that stuff is genuinely hard, and because of course he can only gesture towards explanations in a book like this.

As a summary of to-the-SM I think it is good; it is presented through a symmetry / groups approach, and he gives a lot of credit to Hermann Weyl. I realise now that the SM was "finished" in 1973, and accepted by say 1979, and yet I, going to university around 1983, thought that quarks were only conjectural. Knowledge takes a long time to percolate out, or at least it did then.

His basic complaint is that little of physical substance has happened since then, and so in that sense the book - published in 2006 - is largely up to date. The only thing missing I think is the discovery of the Higgs; there's a point where he notes that one (of several) objection against theory X is that we might not find the Higgs, and / or the mechanism might not work; I think it is now know that it does, though I know I don't understand the details. Since 2006 we've had two more decades of lack of progress in string theory, which IMHO vindicates his essential complaint.

He is polite in almost everything, and I believe tries to be fair to the stringy folk.

Book review: Nettle and Bone

Wiki tells me that Nettle & Bone is a 2022 fantasy novel by Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher. The novel has been described as a dark fairy tale. It won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel. It is, somewhat self-consciously, indeed a fairy-story-esque novel; "dark" is doubtful; the tone is almost always light and fluffy, and there is a reasonable sprinkling of gentle humour. I don't think it is as good as Uprooted or Spinning Silver but in its own way it is charming. As a negative the prose doesn't quite live up to the story.

I picked this up almost in despair at finding anything in Waterstones that I wanted to read, and found myself enjoying it in its various aspects. For one example, the Fairy Godmother who is weak and near useless only because she refuses to use her real talent for cursing people, and who finally comes into her own at the end when she slips in a "will grow up fatherless" curse on the child.

Some of the Goodreads reviews get a touch carried away about the story being "about" the oppression of women or somesuch; that's an element in the story but really, I think, just an element of the story.