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Recent reading
Jul. 21st, 2016 10:34 pmWhat Lies Beneath the Clock Tower by Margaret Killjoy
A choose-your-own-adventure story where you are a 19th-century guy who stumbles into a subterranean world where the oppressed goblins are rebelling against the enslaving gnomes. I expected to like this more than I did--perhaps it's because the author hits you over the head with her political opinions, though I don't think that's quite it. I think it's more that you're expected to so immediately be ready to lay down your life for the goblins even though you just met them and don't actually know them.
Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott
Non-fiction analyzing why many large-scale modernist authoritarian schemes have failed, even if well-intentioned. A lot of it is about how formal regulations can never capture all the practical knowledge and flexible social interactions that are needed to actually make things work. Also about how one-size-fits-all solutions don't work in situations that need attention to particular local variations and conditions (such as farming). On the way it dips into all sorts of interesting things, beginning with the interesting history behind the adoption of universal measures after the French Revolution, and how that is related to increased state control. I enjoyed it, though it could've been edited down by a third or even half and still say the same thing. It's a bit long-winded.
A choose-your-own-adventure story where you are a 19th-century guy who stumbles into a subterranean world where the oppressed goblins are rebelling against the enslaving gnomes. I expected to like this more than I did--perhaps it's because the author hits you over the head with her political opinions, though I don't think that's quite it. I think it's more that you're expected to so immediately be ready to lay down your life for the goblins even though you just met them and don't actually know them.
Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott
Non-fiction analyzing why many large-scale modernist authoritarian schemes have failed, even if well-intentioned. A lot of it is about how formal regulations can never capture all the practical knowledge and flexible social interactions that are needed to actually make things work. Also about how one-size-fits-all solutions don't work in situations that need attention to particular local variations and conditions (such as farming). On the way it dips into all sorts of interesting things, beginning with the interesting history behind the adoption of universal measures after the French Revolution, and how that is related to increased state control. I enjoyed it, though it could've been edited down by a third or even half and still say the same thing. It's a bit long-winded.
