Hollywood blockbuster action movies are full of depictions of military machinery, of men and women in uniform, of undercover agents. These depictions are often the direct result of partnerships between the filmmakers and the Department of Defense, the CIA, or other government agencies.

In exchange for access to equipment and personnel, the government may provide remarkably detailed script notes ranging from legitimate factual corrections (“General Perry would likely not be the convening authority”) to changes in plot and characterization (“To make [the civilian ambassador] look like a real wet noodle, have [the Lieutenant] say …”). The viewer is none the wiser that the film they’ve just seen was originally more critical, or that important elements of the plot were changed.

Matthew Alford (Teaching Fellow for Propaganda Theory, University of Bath) and Tom Secker (writer, podcaster, researcher) are authors of a new book, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood, which documents these connections. It is based in significant part on new research under the Freedom of Information Act.

To his credit, Secker has put the source documents online as a ZIP file. Whether or not you buy the book, I recommend grabbing a copy. Incidentally, the quotes above are from the Marine Corps script notes to Rules of Engagement, and they cannot currently be found anywhere else on the Internet.

Much of the book consists of case studies, contrasting the requested changes to movies like Iron Man, Lone Survivor, or Charlie Wilson’s War with the original script, or (where applicable) source material and actual events. It cites examples from film and television, and also briefly discusses financial incentives which may reinforce pro-military biases, such as product placement by gun manufacturers.

The book is poorly edited and includes both typos and repetitions that could easily have been caught. It would also be a stronger book without conspiratorial tangents about, e.g., the timeline of 9/11’s doomed Flight 93. Co-author Tom Secker is no stranger to conspiracy theories, which undermines the credibility of this work.

In spite of these distracting flaws, the authors have done important work in documenting the pervasive pro-government, pro-military biases in US entertainment. Read critically and patiently, National Security Cinema does offer a necessary and useful perspective on these biases, and the downloadable archive of source documents is an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to explore the topic further.

Further reading

Co-author Matthew Alford wrote a good introduction to the research featured in the book for The Conversation (a nonprofit media outlet which I’ve previously reviewed here): “Washington DC’s role behind the scenes in Hollywood goes deeper than you think”.

When the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski collaborate, you know you’re in for a treat to the senses. The basic premise of Sense8 is wild: humans are evolving the capacity to form small “clusters” that share memories, experiences and skills across vast distances, telepathically dropping in on each other’s lives, walking in each other’s shoes.

That premise is used to challenge the viewer to embrace diversity in all its forms, while telling the story of one such cluster and its fight against the inevitable attempt to halt or hide the evolution of the “sensates”.

Meanwhile, the members of the cluster also have to deal with prejudice and drama in their own lives. Trans woman Nomi Marks faces rejection and abusive comments by her bitter, hateful mother; actor Lito Rodriguez has to face coming out as gay in Mexico; bus driver Capheus Onyango deals with organized crime and corruption in Kenya’s Kibera slum.

The show is unflinching in its portrayal of life’s richness and diversity. Recreational drug use, group sex, polyandry, gay and lesbian relationships, and much more all on proud, prominent display. Its in large part the show’s willingness to explore the emotional depths of these experiences that makes it such a remarkable piece of entertainment, owing perhaps to the creative freedom afforded by working on a Netflix production.

Gratuitous? Not really — the core theme of the show is empathy (as symbolized through the psychic connection between the “sensates”), so it makes sense that it would use its large canvas to paint a world where prejudices can and must be overcome. If anything, the show barely touches on themes like disability, mental illness, religion, or many other characteristics that are used to divide and stigmatize.

The only real problem with Sense8 is its plot. The actions of the “cluster” are often difficult to follow, owing to quick jumps and the confusing mechanics of how “sensates” communicate with each other. The bad guys are simplistic and their motivations shallow. As in most TV shows, hacking is portrayed as some kind of magical superpower that lets you take over any computer system within 5 seconds. Some scenes, such as a confrontation during a wedding ceremony in the second season, are cringe-inducing due to ridiculous dialogue and plot.

These are forgivable problems, and the show is still a lot of fun in spite of them. It has gained a significant online following, and while we’re unlikely to see more than the two seasons that have been produced so far, Netflix has at least committed to producing a finale (the last episode ends on a “to be continued” moment).

It’s a unique show in many respects and has many beautiful, glorious moments. Filmed in locations including Berlin, Chicago, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Nairobi, Reykjavík, San Francisco, and Seoul, it is vibrant with energy and life. Watch it, just prepare to be confused or to cringe now and then, and not because of the lovely, diverse cast or the group sex. :)

First published by Yale University Press in 1998, James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State is one of those rare scholarly works that have achieved wide intellectual impact beyond academia. Its core thesis is simple: states and large corporations depend on radical simplification to plan and execute, and in the process, they often ignore the skill and wisdom of the people whose lives they seek to direct. When this faith in rationality is combined with the power to coerce, disaster and misery may follow.

The case studies in the book range from collectivization in the Soviet Union to the planning of large cities. Agriculture is one of the domains Scott is most familiar with. Consequently, much of the book elucidates just how much skill and knowledge are employed on family farms and by pastoralists, even if that skill was acquired more by a “stochastic” method (trial and error) rather than a scientific one. This makes apparent the tragedy of collectivization, which devalued the skill of farmers in order to better control their productive output (or more specifically, that part of their work the state was interested in).

The book’s biggest strength are these insightful case studies; its weakness is its plodding repetition of the same argument over and over again, along with some unnecessary jargon. With better editing, the book could have easily been brought down to 300-350 pages. This makes the book a bit of a slog, but does not distract from its importance.

To be clear, the author is not merely cheerleading for free markets. Indeed, he clarifies repeatedly that powerful market actors (especially when they conspire with the state) may implement similarly disastrous schemes to maximize their own profits. He speaks of the “ecumenical” nature of a faith in high modernism and documents how some “priests” of this belief system have been willing to enter the services of communists and capitalists alike, so long as they were permitted to pursue their ultimately destructive schemes.

Socialists who have faith in nationalization and other large government schemes should read the book to better understand the risks inherent in such projects; libertarian socialists may find it useful to support their skepticism of centralized power.

The book does, of course, not account for recent developments in computing that make management of large amounts of data (e.g., soil and weather data in agriculture) more feasible, nor does it help to navigate the transition to an information economy. These 21st-century developments should not tempt us to renew our faith in rationalist central planning but strengthen our commitment to building decentralized, resilient, cooperative networks.

Charles Darwin referred to his landmark work, The Origin of Species, as “one long argument”, a title Ernst W. Mayr (one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists) adopted for this treatise on the “genesis of modern evolutionary thought”. First published in 1991, it remains useful reading to better understand how Darwin’s ideas were received and modified over time.

The most valuable insight I gained from the book is that speaking of “Darwin’s theory” is misleading, as Darwin was a proponent of many important separate scientific ideas, including:

• evolution itself: life is not static, but constantly changing;

• common descent: all life on Earth shares a common ancestor;

• multiplication of species, e.g., through geographic isolation;

• gradualism: evolution is a slow process, not sudden emergence of new types;

• natural selection: thanks to genetic variation, from a given pool of individuals, some will have a higher likelihood of survival than others, and those characteristics may spread;

• sexual selection: some characteristics may spread purely because they increase the likelihood that an organism can attract a suitable mate.

All these ideas were present in Darwin’s work, along with some others which were later refuted (such as Darwin’s continued belief in some aspects of Lamarckism). But what’s remarkable is how long it took for the full force of Darwin’s insights to become recognized.

At first, “Darwinism” was mainly identified with evolutionary thinking as such, and with the rejection of religiously motivated reasoning to explain life on Earth. Yet aspects we now recognize as fundamental, such as natural selection, were largely ignored. It would take many decades — and the work by other scientists such as August Weissman and Alfred Wallace — for evolutionary thinking to truly take shape. Understanding this history helps explain why Darwin remains so highly revered in the scientific community: on many of the key questions, he was right on target from the beginning.

This is a dry book, and at times (such as when Mayr tries to establish exactly how much influence Thomas Malthus had on Darwin’s thinking), the author’s attempt to develop a microscopic analysis of the history of Darwin’s thought processes seems almost quixotic. Nonetheless, that same methodological rigor is what gives the book its explanatory power.

For the most part, the book is understandable to a layperson; the final chapter (which deals with frontiers in evolutionary biology at the time) is both the most technical and the most noticeably dated. A glossary explains some of the commonly used scientific terms.

Recommended if you want to better understand how we naked apes came into the possession of the knowledge of how we came to be.

xkcd (reviews) is a lovely, nerdy webcomic and occasional canvas for larger scale experiments such as "Click and drag" or "Time". It’s also full of subtle references, inside jokes relying on technical or scientific domain knowledge, and easter eggs. explain xkcd, with the not-so-subtle tag line “It’s 'cause you’re dumb”, is a wiki that provides background, transcripts, and trivia on each episode.

And it doesn’t really matter how obvious the joke is — explain xkcd will still spell it out, like so:

Despite the skyline being clearly recognizable as St. Louis due to the Gateway Arch, Black Hat calls it New York City. However, the nickname he gives is neither a common New York nickname (such as “The Big Apple”) nor a St. Louis nickname. Megan tries to correct him, but it becomes clear that Black Hat is making up nicknames. Many of his suggestions are puns for real nicknames of other places.

But then look a bit further, and the same page contains a long table of all the various nicknames referenced in the comic, making the whole page a rather delightful expansion on the content of the strip.

And so it goes for almost every episode. It’s a beautiful idea, well-executed, and it’s being expanded into explain penny arcade, for the eponymous gaming focused web comic which also contains many references which may not always be obvious.

The web platform has many cynics and critics. The litany of complaints includes: incompetent developers (there’s nothing techies love more than being critical of other techies), bloated libraries, framework hell, recalcitrant browser makers, security nightmares, ever-changing specifications, and an unrelenting hype machine. All those criticisms have elements of truth. But there’s also an upside: web development is an open, decentralized, vibrant community, one which seems to inexorably stumble towards making better web applications at least possible.

And it also has open, welcoming subcultures that reject cool, detached cynicism and dominance displays. From projects like Nodeschool to the Recurse Center, there are thousands of people concerned with equipping more of us with the skills to build a better web. I associate Pony Foo with that same culture of learning & sharing. Started as a blog by Nicolás Bevacqua from Buenos Aires, Pony Foo has grown into a larger community that publishes in-depth articles about the web platform (i.e. the JavaScript language, HTML, CSS; various libraries, tools, and frameworks).

Given the rate of change in web development, such resources are indispensable for anyone who wants to do more than maintaining a legacy application. And Pony Foo helpfully provides a roundup of various findings from around the web (courses, tutorials, news, etc.), in a weekly email newsletter, which is just about the right frequency to not be overwhelmed.

While the newsletter highlights Pony Foo’s own articles, they are only a fraction of the content, and the biggest value-add is in the curation of resources from elsewhere. A typical example of a summary:

Error Handling in React 16

Dan explains how error handling works in React 16, which is out on public beta since yesterday. React 16 uses Fiber under the hood, although its async rendering capabilities aren’t turned on yet. It is expected this is enabled at some point in the React 16.x release line.

Dan Abramov

As the summary shows, occasionally the newsletter might benefit from some effort to make technical jargon more accessible or to provide a “why should I care” hook. But the headlines are easy enough to scan for stuff that seems relevant to you.

The newsletter does have sponsored posts in it, which are clearly marked. I don’t find them especially problematic and occasionally even useful. The content is under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA License, which is a bit restrictive (incompatible with Wikimedia projects, for example) but a lot better than conventional copyright. Whether you love or hate the web platform (or love-hate? :), if you regularly build upon it, I highly recommend subscribing (read a sample issue to see if it’s for you).

I’ve had an Echo since May 2015 and it’s since joined a two person household. The main functions we use it for these days are: 1) playing random music, mainly from Amazon Prime’s free catalog, 2) as an alarm clock and kitchen timer, 3) as a news/weather info source, 4) as a calendar reminder. Voice recognition is usually solid except when it occasionally can’t hear us at all, e.g. over music playing. Typically, both of us use it at least 1-2 times per day. The fact that it’s plugged in means it becomes seamlessly integrated into your day-to-day life at home without having to worry about yet another device to charge.

There’s an app library but we’ve never used it — it just seems a little clunky to do anything more complicated through this interface. We also don’t use the online shopping features. The device occasionally comes on randomly when it hears the “Alexa” command on TV or radio and starts sputtering random nonsense. It’s amusing but also a bit annoying.

Beyond that, you can converse with it through its (surprisingly large) catalog of canned jokes and limited AI. For the kinds of questions Google can give you a pre-computed answer for, it can be helpful, though I’m usually near a keyboard when I have those. Having a microphone in your room may seem a little weird at first (and continues to have that “a little bit creepy” factor), but honestly, your phone and laptop have the same capabilities.

The sound quality is good for casual listening, and the overall usability of the device is great with lots of nice touches. Very straightforward setup, a remote control you can easily attach to your fridge with a magnetic holder, multiple ways to adjust the volume including on the device itself, etc. I’ve found the Android app a bit sluggish and mostly end up using echo.amazon.com instead.

What’s nicest about Echo is Amazon’s dedication to making the product better, which you really do notice as a user. There are typically a couple of new features per month, such as calendar integration or IFTTT support. At $99 with a Prime membership, it was a good deal.

i-clip in use on Charles Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle”

i-clips are little folding magnets to use as a bookmark or paperclip. The front has a design (there are several to choose from), the back has a little arrow that marks the specific spot in a book you’re reading. The packs currently sell for $2.59 per pack of 8 at Amazon, and for $3.95 per pack directly from the manufacturer, Peter Pauper Press.

As someone who often has multiple books unfinished (and who prefers paper books in most situations), I find these little guys indispensable. They have two main advantages compared to paper bookmarks: they’re less likely to fall out, and they can mark the specific page and line where you stopped reading.

I can’t think of anything to improve. They make a nice gift, too.

(One note of caution — since these are metal, you do have to be a bit more careful, as they’re fully capable of tearing into a page when pushed into it. It’s only happened once so far and should be easy to avoid.)

Gwendy’s Button Box is the result of a collaboration between Stephen King and anthology editor/publisher Richard Chizmar. It’s a short novella about a young, awkward girl named Gwendy (shocking, I know) who is given an odd device by a stranger. It turns out that the “button box” has great potential for evil, but it can also change her life for the better. Will she be a responsible custodian?

At one point, Gwendy quizzes her teacher and class about what to do, using a not-so-subtle political analogy. The story invites us to reflect on the responsibilities of power — perhaps, knowing King’s liberal politics, it was prompted by the recent occupation of the White House by a bumbling demagogue.

It’s a good story that stays with you and that suffers only from being a bit too cartoonish in parts. You’ll probably devour this in one or two sittings, so you might want to go for the cheap Kindle edition (7 US$ as of this writing).

number9dream, published in 2001, is David Mitchell’s second novel. Unlike Cloud Atlas, the famous book/movie that followed it, this story stays focused on a single protagonist, Eiji Miyake. Eiji is a young man from a small island, searching for a father he has never met in Tokyo’s vast urban jungle. In the process, he loses himself in his own fantasies, gets caught up in a Yakuza gang war, falls in love, and has to figure out what exactly he’s hoping to get out of his quest.

We don’t always know for sure what is real and what is imagined, a point driven home by a departure into writings Eiji discovers during his quest: the anthropomorphic animal stories of a woman at whose house he is staying; an old World War II journal of a relative. And it’s of course no coincidence that we encounter a character from Mitchell’s first novel, the Mongolian hit man Subhataar, who plays a dangerous game with the Yakuza.

The novel as a whole succeeds in conveying the dreamlike quality that its title (inspired by John Lennon’s “#9 Dream”) promises; its strength is in its power to transport and surprise the reader, its weakness in the flatness of its characters and the limited payoff of its story arc. If you’re new to Mitchell’s work, I wouldn’t recommend reading this one first (I’d suggest starting with Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green instead). And a fair warning—while this isn’t a horror story, there are some violent scenes that may induce nightmares.