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Wednesday 31 July 2013
Particle at the end of the Universe aims to explain the Higgs Boson and how it has been discovered.

I have read this book once, but feel that it is a book that requires more than one reading. It is not an easy book, although it is also an introductory book and does explain all concepts. There is no requirement to have a degree in science, or even much understanding of mathematics.

I think the problem is that the world of particle physics is complex and confusing. It is very different from our normal view of the world and it seems harder to rely on the sort of analogies that are common in cosmology. A Big Bang seems easier to visualise than virtual particles.

The book details the sheer difficulty in particle physics, and that several decades passed between the Higg Boson being postulated(by lots of people not just Higgs) and discovery. Billions of euros and vast amount of data have had to be gathered. The author leaves it up to the reader to determine if this is a good use of resources, and indeed argues it is a pure search for truth rather than relying on the usual arguments for spin off benefits.

I did take away some things from this book. It offers an introduction to the Standard Model of particle physics. The standard model looks like:-

The photons make the electormagnetic force. The Z and W Bosons are the weak force and Gluons are the strong force. Not shown is a graviton which is responsible for gravity.

Quarks make up the nucleus of atoms. Leptons are not subject to the strong force and are most important in electrons which give atoms their chemical properties.

The Higgs Boson is important because it explains why some of the particles have mass. It seems this is not the source of mass in the universe, as this is caused by other interactions within atoms(as energy is mass and the energy of particles reacting leads to mass). The other role is breaking symmetry, but I must confess on first reading of this book I do not really understand this.

I liked this book a lot, it is readable and has advanced my understanding of a complex area. I am left wondering if there are other introductory books on particle physics that might allow me to approach it from another angle and so develop a further understanding. Or perhaps Brian Cox will do a television series.
Monday 29 July 2013
This book looks at time; why time seems to flow in one direction? Why can we not remember the future?

This is a more complex puzzle than it appears as the laws of physics are all reversable, they all work if you run them backwards - provided you make certain other changes. For example you could reverse time with the earth rotating around the sun, but you would need to also reverse the direction and angular momentum.

The author explains how the tendency of entropy to increase differentiates the future from the past. The future is more "chaotic". He does this by explaining statistical mechanics in a reality easy to explain way.

After this he asks why the Big Bang, the start of the universe, was such an ordered state and how we found ourselves to be here. The short answer is nobody knows so there is much speculation and he dips into quantum physics, black holes, whether we could build a time machine and multiple universes. The book becomes more speculative as it goes on.

The author ends with a model that involves our universe being a sort of bubble universe that broke away, it emerged as a flux in a larger empty space with just periodic fluctations(something called a De Sitter space which is basically empty space with just virtual particles popping in and out of existence). I read a similiar theory in Roger Penroses Cycles of Time, but I found that book far harder to read.

This is a good book, especially the first half. The author avoids the use of mathematics to describe his theories and so is forced to use analogies in the Stephen Hawkins style. I am sure this means leaving out some of the depth as analogies are rarely perfect. But most of us lack the ability to perform the mathematics, so this is probably a wise step especially when it comes to book sales. I found the second half grew a little more speculative, but it is a book I have read on more than one occasion. It seems a bit more advanced than other books that endless recount twin astronauts travelling at different speeds. And the range of material is quite vast. 



Tuesday 23 July 2013
Stocks for the Long Run is Jeremy Siegel's analysis of the USA's stock market. His thesis is that the stock market is the best place to park your money if you are investing over the long term.

The book argues that the stock market is efficient, meaning it is not easy(or possible) for an investor to pick the right individual shares or to move in and out of the market. The normal investor is best simply buying and holding, or investing in low cost index funds.

The evidence is largely based on the US stock market. Adopting the Japanese, Russian, Chinese or German stock exchanges would have lead to a less rosy outcome for shares. Most of the data is based on the 20th century which was a happy time for the USA.

The author tackles some of the simple market strategies and shows that in general these things may work for a while(Sell in May and go away) the effects do not persist. He also looks at the workings of options markets. The key message hammered in and over is to buy some shares and hold them.

The key take away is that stocks have been the best investment for the past couple of centuries if you are investing over a 40-year timescale. The problem is this may not continue into the future and not everyone can invest over such a long timescale. Many people buy lower risk assets such as bonds because they have shorter investment horizons or are psychologically unable to cope with stock market fluctuations.

Overall this is a good book with an optimistic message. The data sample is a bit limited, and it could be read with other more pessimistic books(Moneywithapin for example). The messages are not exactly dissimiliar, but they look at it from a different perspective. Moneywithapin sees lower returns, but these are driven by mistake investors make(trade too much and paying fees that are too high). Siegel's data assumes no costs and that individuals are not trading too much. Both individuals recommend costs are held very low and recommend low cost trackers.

This is an enjoyable and well written book, but I can't help but feel the author has selected data to suit his hypothesis. And it has often been misinterrupted to suggest stocks must always go up or that stocks are less risky the longer they are held - both are false. Despite these reservations this book is a modern classic.


Monday 22 July 2013
For a long time I was a fan of paperbooks. I always liked the idea of ebook readers, but I always felt it was a bit unfair that the books cost as much as tradition paperback books. The earlier version of the Kindle always looked a bit clunky. It almost looked like something transplanted from the 1980s into 21st century. It was also a lot more expensive than the new models. It was released as recently as 2007, which I find a little surprising as it is quite an obvious idea.









I must admit I am now converted and am the proud owner of the Kindle Paperwhite, 6" High Resolution Display with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi. It is still not quite as stylish as the lastest mobile phone or Apple gadget. The size of the boarder is slightly large compared to the screen, but it does look pretty slick and although it is bigger than a mobile phone it fits nicely in one hand.









The benefits are :
  • It is lighter and easier to carry around than a book.
  • You can obvious carry hundreds of books with you. 
  • You can start to thin out your huge bookcases(we have more books than bookshelves)
  • The battery hardly ever seems to need charging. 
  • The best factor is the screen is easy on the eyes, really easy. You can read books on a tablet, but the Kindle is much nicer. 
  • You can easily sync it with Amazon's huge ebook library.
It is basically the iPod of ebook readers. There are other e-readers out there, but they are not really any cheaper and ultimately amazon has the biggest selection of books so there is no real need to go elsewhere.
I guess there are a few negatives:
  • The backlight used is a bit uneven. It is sort of blotchy, this does not really affect readability but it does look slightly odd.
  • I don't find the store that easy to use. I tend to end up buying books on my mobile phone and then reading them on the kindle.  I think it is because the Kindle's built in store does not have recommendations. But also the summary does not show prices.
  • Finally it is annoying that eBooks are not cheaper than paperbooks. This is not unique to Amazon, and it is partly because the UK Government charge VAT on eBooks but not physical books.

I have no idea how long the Kindles will be around. They remind me a bit of the iPod, when it first came out I carried it around with me. But improvements in the technology of phones have rendered them almost obsolete. I am sure the same fate awaits Kindles, but at the moment they have an edge over tablets - most due to readability. They are also more robust.

Thanks to www.kneadwhine.co.uk for buying one for me.
Saturday 20 July 2013
There are tens of thousands of books about the second world war and perhaps there is not much new to say. All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945 does not set out to be provide any new analysis, instead it is about the experience of individuals caught up in the war.

The scale of horror incurred in Poland, Russia and Germany is horrific, with large portions of their populations dying. Many of the rest faced rape, violence and constant fear. It is pessimistic in that heroism and nationalism are not heavily featured. Even those that fight are seen as doing so because to not do so is to risk being shot by their own commanding officers. Perhaps some of those fighting it did enjoy the experience, but this book portrays it as overwhelmingly a wretched experience.

The overarching theme is that the Germans fought far better than everyone else on a man for man basis, but strategically they made terrible errors. They found themselves outmatched by the huge combined military power of Russia, the USA and the UK. Biting off more than they could chew they were always going to choke to death. But they put up a hell of a fight.

Most of the fighting was done in the East and this does nothing to hide the fact that Russia paid a heavy blood price for victory. Probably the USA and the UK could have done more, but overall they were happy to let Russians do the dying. They most preferred smaller actions for public relations purposes in relatively unimportant theaters of Africa, Greece and latter Italy. Even the bombing of German cities did little to win the war, but made good PR. The boots on the German ground were Russia ones and they were drenched in blood.

I must confess I was unaware of the famine in West Bengal in which between 1-3 million Indians died, whilst ships were transporting food to the UK. The famine had complex causes, but we could and perhaps ought to have done more.

The war is now fading into the past as few people are still alive who can remember it. Like many people I never really asked much about it and regret that. This book does not do a bad job of giving voice to the dead victims of that war.

I enjoyed this book, although apart form the famine in West Bengal I am not sure I learnt much. 
Monday 15 July 2013

Soccernomics aims to provide a degree of numerical analysis to soccer. I have heard is stated that each equation added to a book reduces the readership by a half. This book avoids that issue by being quite anecdotal and not digging into or explaining the statistics too deeply.

There are some interesting take-aways:
1. Fans are a more fluid group than people believe. There is a high degree of churn as people move, or get bored with the game or have families.
2. The market for players is effient and paying more for players will generally lead to better results. They do not use transfer fees as they are often non-disclosed.
3. Managers have a small impact on the overall performance of a team. They are little more than figure heads and spokespeople. The authors to have a lot of good to say about Wegner and Clough though.
4. The impact of 2 and 3 means clubs cannot select players on the basis of race without incurring a penalty. With regard to managers they can.
5. Football is not really big business. Even the largest Manchester Unite/Chelsea teams are barely, if at all profitable and their turnover is tiny compared to the largest firms on the stock exchange. The teams at the bottom of the Premier League are closer to a single Supermarket store in terms of turnover.

The book then drifts into some analysis of why England perform poorly on the world stage. They develop a model using income per head, population and football experience. This seems to indicate that England have slightly overperformed(they don't prove this factors are causal or identify exactly how good at predicting these variables are). They then speculate that the future belongs to large country that are open to new footballing ideas.

This book is rather like Moneyball which looks at baseball. But baseball is probably an easier game to analyse as there are fewer situations. And football is already heavily analysed via Opta, this book fails to really deep dive into the data and feels quite superficial. It is quite easy to read. I enjoyed it, but felt the best chapter were around the business of football and fandom rather than football itself.
Monday 1 July 2013
This book gives biographical account of the lives of five defectors from North Korea. It is ethnographical and does not contain much in the way of facts and figures regarding the regime. It is necessarily a biased viewpoint as there have only been a very small number of defectors and so it is hard to be sure that those profiled are necessarily representative of the people who have remained.

The book does show how the regime began to collapse after the end of communism in Eastern Europe and it is from this point that the standard of living in North Korea began to plummet. By the mid 1990s the economic system almost completely collapsed and the country began to endure widespread famine. The individuals in the book find themselves foraging for weeds to cook or engaging in petty theft to survive. The collapse of the economic system sees their skills (doctors and teachers) being no longer used as schools close and medicines run out. That seems to be a common theme as people’s skill remain unused, factors are scrapped, cinemas and hospital close. All that seems to work are the military and secret police. And the result is a huge loss of life (perhaps 10% of the population) and waste of potential.

The system manages to keep going as the people are starved of information about the outside world, and many seem to believe it is a paradise. Moreover Korea’s pre-communist culture is heavily tied in with families and those who betray the regime stain the family name, ensuring their children and grandchildren are punished. This means that defections are rare, and the huge informal spying network acts to ensure no-one criticise the leadership. It feels very much like George Orwell’s 1984.

The sheer level of terror means that the book is unable to speculate on whether everyone really believes in the regime or if they are just pretending. It seems even those who do defect, at the risk of imprisonment to death, still have some hope that North Korea really is a lie and the outside world is much worse.

It seems to be written from a female point of view. Males are assigned workgroups and jobs, these are often no longer paying and so are relatively worthless unless they are used to accept bribes. However women are allowed to engage in small scale enterprises - cooking, selling or prostitution, forging activities and as wives to those across the border in China. This means women have more opportunities for very limited self advancement and are better able to escape.

The book seems to have few positive notes to it, although it does seem that mobile phones are starting to penetrate into North Korea and radio and television can also project into the country. However it does not make any projects when and if the regime will collapse. It seems the famines of the 1990s are gone as food aid has poured into the country.