Google Speaks by Janet Lowe

On 300-odd small pages of "Google Speaks" Janet Lowe tells the story of Google and the key people who run it: Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt.

This book was published in 2009 - only 3 years ago - and it already shows signs of age: Facebook, which is the biggest danger to Google's dominance of Internet, is not mentioned even once.

A few gems:

Google makes money from advertising, however, initially Page and Brin didn't want to go that route. They wrote: "[...] we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."

The book contains a guess of Google having 1 million servers back in 2006. This was probably an overshot. Google may have about 2 million servers currently.

The ultimate goal of Larry and Sergey is to create AI. Larry Page: "Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. You guys know what that means? That's artificial intelligence." 

Sergey Brin: "It’s not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good." Despite the many controversies mentioned in the book, this guiding principle is clearly visible when you compare the history of Google with the history of Facebook. Google may be first to create AI and bring an end to the human rule on Earth, but it will do so with good intentions.

Karate My Life

Written by Kanazawa Hirokazu in Japanese, translated into English by Alex Bennett.

Apart from Chuck Norris, Kanazawa Hirokazu is probably the most famous karateka alive.  Sensei Kanazawa worked all his life to popularise Karate around the world. He organised clubs, wrote books, travelled, performed in public and on TV. "Karate My Life" contains detailed account of that work.

"In the world of budo everybody is of equal standing regardless of race, creed, or religion. Good people stand shoulder to shoulder within the great family that is the dojo. Even if the dojo is small, the way pursued is great and it links the whole world together."

The book is very personal. It details Kanazawa's childhood, talks about his reasons to start practising martial arts, reveals thoughts on family, and on getting old.

Kanazawa was born in 1931 and started travelling in the early 1960s, when the memories of  Japanese atrocities were still strong. In Britain he overcomes initial hostility of a British woman whose husband was a POW killed by the Japanese, and of a chinese restaurant owner whose whole family was slaughtered by the Japanese Imperial Army in Imphal.

"I realised then that we are all put on this earth inextricably linked to our past. There is a thread that links parents to their children, and then their children. If one generation is careless, the repercussions will be felt for generations to come. We all have a responsibility to prevent such things from happening." 

You can see sensei Kanazawa performing various kata, for example Heian Godan - the fifth basic kata, on youtube.

A few karate terms:

sensei - teacher
sempai - senior student
budo - martial arts
dojo - training hall and the people who train there

kata - form
kumite - sparring
kihon - basics

Geeks Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson

Geeks Bearing Gifts v.1.1, subtitled How the computer world got this way, is a collection of thoughts and notes about people and events of the computer revolution. Written in 2008 by Ted Nelson, a legend himself, the man behind Xanadu.

This book is great, because we get an insider's view into the fascinating history of our biggest invention - the computer.

This book sucks a bit in how it is delivered: proofreading could have been done better, the text in low-res illustrations is barely readable, the disjointed style feels more like reading notes, or encyclopaedia, and finally, the chapter summaries are completely unnecessary. The 200 pages of Geeks Bearing Gifts are divided into 50 chapters numbered from -27, through 0 (UNIX®), to 22. Each chapter starts with a summary, which I started skipping after a few chapters, because a half page summary in a two page chapter means re-reading the same information shortly after reading it for the first time. Irritating.

Still, for a computer geek, this book makes an interesting read. Let me end with an unusually succinct summary of the last chapter "Why We Fight", which contains Ted's manifesto:

"Today's computer world is a godawful mess, ghastly for many people. But there yet may be hope."

In the Land of Israel

In the Land of Israel, Amos Oz shows us a glimpse of "a few places and a few people" in Israel in Autumn 1982. This interesting, but difficult to read book throws us into the complexity and diversity of political views, religious beliefs, economical situation, history and present of various inhabitants of the land of Israel at that time.

Amos's journey starts where he grew up, in the Geulah quarter in Jerusalem, now taken over by the Hasidim, and ends in the port city of Ashdod. In between, we travel with the author and listen to his conversations with people of Bet Shemesh - a stronghold of Likud west of Jerusalem, Tekoa - a Jewish community in the West Bank (historical provinces of Judea and Samaria), Ramallah, an anonymous veteran village, Ofra - a Jewish settlement in West Bank, the East Jerusalem office of Al-Fajr Al-Arabi - The Arab Dawn, and the city of Zichron Yaakov.

In Ofra the author presents his views on statehood, which I will sum up here with these two excerpts: "Nationalism itself is, in my eyes, the curse of mankind", but "[...] existence without the tools of statehood is a matter of mortal danger [...]".

About the author: "Amos Oz was born in 1939 into a family which, as he has said. 'dreamed in Yiddish, conversed in Russian and Polish, read books in German and English', but taught him one language only: Hebrew."

And on a lighter note, since I live in Oz now, "oz" in Hebrew means courage or strength, but be careful how you spell it. :-)

History's Greatest Deceptions

The full title of this book by Eric Chaline is History's Greatest Deceptions and the People Who Planned Them.

Surely you have heard of the Ponzi scheme, but do you know the history of Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi himself?

A woman cannot be the leader of the Catholic Church? ...unless she can hide as well as pope Joan did. According to legend, she was exposed when she went into labour ...in public ...riding a horse.

These two cases are among fifty deceptions grouped into religious, military, financial, scientific, and three other categories. The stories are short. More like teasers than full biographies. Nevertheless, you may find something interesting. For example, I learned that long before East Germany became notorious for its strong woman athletes, there was a Polish woman Olympic medalist Stanisława Wałasiewicz who turned out to be a fraud when an autopsy was made on her after being accidentally shot dead in a Cleveland shopping mall.

Springbrook National Park and Fingal Head, Australia

When people think about Gold Coast, they often see Surfers Paradise, beaches, bikies, gambling, sky scrapers. Yes, it is all there, but for me Gold Coast is a magical, warm place where both civilisation and nature are within an hour's drive: libraries, universities, international airports, theatres, museums, amusement parks, botanical gardens, city beaches and wild beaches, national parks, mountains, lakes, forests, old volcanoes, colourful and loud parrots, kangaroos in my front yard.

The name "Gold Coast" was officially adopted only in 1958, and in my opinion it was a mistake. I wish it was still called South Coast. I can only come to terms with "gold" in the name when I think it refers to the colour of sand and sun, not the precious metal.

Our visit to Springbrook National Park in Gold Coast hinterland started with a look at a monument to bad planning:

Springbrook National Park has many lookouts, and to make life easier for tourists spoiled with choice, we proudly present "Best of All Lookout":

It is a truly great lookout, starting with Mt Warning to the south:

And ending with this view to the north:

After checking the lookouts, time to set up the tent. Red skies over Settlement camping area:

At night we went to Springbrook Glow Worms to see the "glowing worms", which turned out to be larvae of an ancient fly. While there, my suspicions about killer Australian leaves were confirmed:

Our guide, Garry Maguire, is a scientist. He discovered a number of glowing mushrooms in Springbrook:

While checking the forest floor for new kinds of glowing things 16 years ago, Garry was bitten by a funnel web spider. I thought that funnel web spiders were limited to Sydney. Another myth busted, they are in Queensland too!

The next day we checked out the Purling Brook Falls lookout:

And the Canyon lookout:

And then the Natural Bridge section, on our way out of Springbrook:

We left cool Springbrook and drove towards the coast. This is Fingal Head, just behind the border in NSW. Looking towards Queensland.

Nearly symmetrical stones of a Giant's Causeway. A brother of the Irish one.

Looking south. Mt Warning looming in the distance.

Currumbin, Gold Coast, Australia

First stop at a hill near Carrara. Looking east: towards the coast and Surfers Paradise. The blocks (plots of land) around the top are for sale with prices starting at $220,000 for the smallest 700 square meter block. You can get one with a view like this or towards the hinterland.

Currumbin. Looking north: a view towards Surfers Paradise. The cliff on the left is Burleigh Head National Park. The jet ski belongs to the life guards. 

Basia. Remember, it's almost Winter here, hence the attire. When the sun comes out it gets quite warm. It was up to 23 degrees Celsius today.

Basia and the big rock.

Tomek and the same rock.

Looking south: a view towards Coolangatta - the southernmost suburb of the city of Gold Coast, and Queensland. Collangata is practically one city with Tweed Heads in New South Wales. For half a year, the time is different between the two. Queensland doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time, NSW does. It must be quite confusing for the people living in Coolangatta or visiting at that time.

Looking west: houses on a hill and the parking lot of a popular beach restaurant located at Currumbin Beach Surf Club. Today it was empty, because recent storms deposited tons of sand and it is being pushed back to the beach by the city council.

Here is the city council bobcat cleaning the parking lot.

 Looking north.

 

Something alive in the sand.

A sculpture of Sun Spirit by Frank Miles, 2006.

Looking north.

Looking up. A Jet Star plane landing at Gold Coast Airport in Coolangatta.

Boiling water for visitors to make tea or coffee. Very useful when you have small kids and need to prepare a warm meal.

No Australian park/beach would be complete without a public BBQ.

A computer in a children's section at a public library in nearby Elanora. See the size and colours of the keys?

And a plaque in the sidewalk in front of that library commemorating Dashiell Hammersmith.   Funny, Google search on "Dashiell Hammersmith" brings 1 result about a fictional character. Nothing on the real person. Either the plaque is wrong or Google search is wrong.