Read Beat (...and repeat)

Annabel Abbs-Streets discovered she didn't have to suffer at night when insomnia struck. She discovered something else: her night self.
"The night self is a version of ourselves you experience when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're all alone. Most of us start to ruminate or be worried," she said.
Abbs-Streets said she learned that if you can dial down that voice, there's another version, an alter ego that can provide solace.
She was so impressed with her discovery that she wrote a book about it: Sleepless, a work that also details the lives of accomplished artists who allowed their creativity to shine at night.
New research notes that the brain can rewire itself at night, she said. "Things happen in the brain at night that make us think differently than we do during the day, said Abbs-Streets.
Instead of rushing out to get sleeping pills, those who find themselves waking up at night should try to unleash the power of the night brain, suggests the London-based writer.
 Abbs-Streets has produced both works of fiction and non-fiction including 52 Ways to Walk (a previous Read Beat interview). When she wakes up now in the middle of the night, she tells Steve Tarter "I light my candle and get my notebook out and start scribbling away. I find that after that I go back to sleep." 

If you don't understand math, you can still enjoy Paul Nahin.
Don't get blinded by the 24 books the professor of electric engineering has written or that he's busily at work on book 25.
The longtime University of New Hampshire faculty member has just published The Mathematical Radio, a book complete with equations and diagrams.
One needs only the familiarity of advanced high-school-level math to follow along. But don't be deterred. Nahin isn't just involved with electromagnetic fields and frequencies. He loves radio.
"Radio is perhaps the single most important electronic invention of all, surpassing even the computer in its societal impact (the telephone doesn't depend on electronics for its operation, and television is the natural extension of radio)," he writes.
"Radio changed everything," said Nahin, quoting Reginald Victor Jones, the British intelligence operative credited by Winston Churchill for breaking "the bloody (radio) beam" used by the Germans during WWII's Battle of Britain.
"There has never been anything comparable in any other period of history to the impact of radio on the ordinary individual in the 1920s," wrote Jones in Most Secret War, his memoir published in 1978.
"It was the product of some of the most imaginative developments that have ever occurred in physics, and it was as near magic as anyone could conceive, in that with a few mainly home-made components simply connected together one could conjure speech and music out of the air," noted Jones.
Nahin isn't just a math whiz, however. He's also written about time travel and, in Holy Sci-Fi, writes about the connection between religion and science fiction.
It shouldn't surprise you but the 83-year-old Nahin also expresses a love for video games.

You know you've made it in the book world when the author's name is bigger than the title. That's where Mark Greaney finds himself with the publication of The Chaos Agent, the 13th in the Gray Man spy thriller series.
This time around Court Gentry is battling a diabolical plot to wipe out the world's leading experts on robotics. Greaney said he deliberately focused on AI's dark side in researching the new book.
"Lethal autonomous weapons, otherwise known as killer robots, make up a field that's really advancing," said Greaney, concerned that once wars are fought at "machine speed," the world will face enormous problems. He likened the development of new weapons to the invention of the Gatling gun, the forerunner of the machine gun developed in the 1860s.
The Chaos Agent, like Greaney's other Gray Man novels does a lot of globe-hopping with most of the action taking place in Mexico and Guatemala, countries that Greaney visited to soak up local color.
Greaney figures he's now visited some 36 countries in pursuit of exotic locales for his books.
After collaborating with Tom Clancy on several books,  Greaney carried on with several Jack Ryan stories following Clancy's death before establishing his own spy characters.
A native of Memphis, Greaney told Steve Tarter that interest in world events comes easily having learned about the news of the day as a kid at the dinner table each night. His father, Ed Greaney, served as managing editor of WMC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Memphis.
 

Put aside your fears about a robotic uprising, says Ruth Aylett, a computer science professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a robotics researcher for 30 years.
Talking with Steve Tarter, she emphasized that robots, whatever you may have heard to the contrary, are machines, made and controlled by man.
"Forget the hype and the unrealistic speculations about so-called new species or superhuman abilities, and let's work together as roboticists and as citizens to apply this fascinating and challenging technology where it will do some good," she notes.
The book jacket suggests we look at robots as human-made artifacts rather than placeholders for our anxieties, something that Aylett said comes easily to the general public.
"Human beings are wired to react to things that look as if they have some degree of autonomy as if they were social beings. If something with movement looks even vaguely humanoid, people will assume it has human capabilities," she said.
Aylett puts robots alongside cars, planes and washing machines as tools that people merely use in daily life.
The fact is that the task of fashioning a robot to walk upright is difficult, she said.  Designing a robotic arm to do just a few of the things a human arm can do is a huge challenge, said Aylett.
Youngsters engaged in making robots for competitions get a clear understanding of the difficulty involved in getting robots to do what you want, she said.
As for the science fiction side of the equation, Aylett said she enjoys reading sci-fi. But when it comes to movies, she points to the fact that, through three  generations of filmmaking, "no film has ever used a real robot."
First, actors wore costumes to play robots like R2D2, said Aylett. A second generation of films like Short Circuit relied on puppeteers while the third generation, which we're in now, involves post-production wizardry, she said. 

Beavers have a long and illustrious history. There were beavers as big as bears for millions of years until some 10,000 years ago. Since then the beaver has dutifully carried out the work of an environmental engineer, creating dams and managing water flow, helping both wildlife and plants prosper.
"Beavers are the only animals apart from man that radically transform their environment," states  Leila Philip in Beaverland. 
European fur traders nearly wiped out the North American beaver when the demand for beaver pelts reached a fever pitch after the French and English set up shop on the American continent. .
Tycoon John Jacob Astor created a trade empire on the backs of beavers, she noted. The fur of the beaver and other animals lined hats, coats and blankets around the world.
Estimates are that 60 to 400 million beaver were living in North America prior to 1600. Three hundred years of trapping later, the number of surviving beavers was so low, said Philip, that it took a major effort in the 20th century to restore the animal to a fraction of its former presence (less than 1 percent of the pre-1600 population).
But Philip maintains that the beaver's story is a positive one. There's hope now as efforts are taken to insure that the beaver's role as a wetlands creator and water diverter is protected.
"We're bringing beavers back. California is leading the country in free-thinking beaver policy, moving beavers where they can help in watershed restoration," she said.
"People are waking up to the economic value of beavers," said Philip, a professor at Holy Cross College near Boston.
"It's really important to be hopeful and take action. We need to take a look in our own backyard. I discovered beavers by accident (near her home in Connecticut). They're extraordinary and it left me thinking what else is out there," she said.

 

Race into space? Not so fast, say Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, the husband-and-wife team whose book, A City on Mars, lays out some of the challenges that face space settlements on the Moon, Mars or wherever man (and woman) might be heading in the future.

Space may look more promising with all the problems on Earth but while there may not be pollution on Mars, there are plenty of issues to face before relocating to space. Kelly’s a biologist while Zach’s an artist who provided the many cartoons and illustrations in the book. The two admitted to spending four years researching the subject of space settlements.

They went into the project excited about the possibilities but came away skeptical, said Kelly Weinersmith. “The more research we did, the more problems we came across,” she said. “We’re definitely not anti-space settlement but we are pro-a thoughtful, slow approach.”

Among the issues raised in the book are the problems of living in space, the effects of low gravity or space radiation on the human body, the transport of materials into space, and the laws that would define what resources one could use on the Moon or Mars and the altercations that could break out if there’s a difference of opinion between countries on the use of those resources. 

“Space is beautiful but it’s also deeply political,” said Kelly Weinersmith. Countries tend to look at space exploration as a way of saying, “Look how advanced we are,” she said.

Robotics will play a big role in space exploration, Kelly Weinersmith conceded but only if robots can perform all the tasks needed to allow humans to live in space. That involves technology yet to be developed, she said.

“We don’t know how to do it yet, but we still believe that someday, with enough knowledge, we can have Mars…But we must earn it, both by gaining in knowledge and be becoming a more responsible, more peaceful species. Going to the stars will not make us wise. We have to become wise if we want to go to the stars,” she said. 

Godzilla is one of the great movie franchises of our time. But how many people know about the 1955 novella written by Shigeru Kayama, the Japanese science fiction writer who produced the original Godzilla screenplay?
Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again are works translated by Jeffrey Angles, a professor of Japanese literature at Western Michigan University, that were published in 2023 by the University of Minnesota Press.
The stories include an extensive afterword written by Angles who details how the Godzilla story came to be.
Angles noted that Tomoyuki Tanaka, the producer at Toho Studios in Japan, learned that Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the 1953 film about a dinosaur revived by an atomic test, was a hit in the United States.
"Tanaka realized that if he were to create a film about an ancient monster awakened by a nuclear blast, he might capitalize on the tremendous fears and concerns surrounding nuclear weapons and radioactivity in Japan--the same country that had suffered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade before," stated Angles.
Kayama's original screenplay made several pointed references to nuclear bombs and nuclear testing that the U.S. military was carrying out in the Pacific in the 1950s but Tanaka toned down the anti-nuke sentiment.
Kayama's strident message about the danger of nuclear weapons was included in an 11-part radio series on Godzilla that aired in Japan before the film's release in 1954.
Godzilla opened in November 1954 and was a huge hit in Japan.
The following year, an American studio bought the rights and inserted Raymond Burr (who completed his part for the film in one day of shooting) into a U.S. version of the film. The rest is history.
Dozens of Godzilla movies have followed over the years including Godzilla Minus One, a 2023 Japanese production (also from Toho Studios).
Angles applauds the new production, comparing it favorably with the somber original.
In 2024, the 70th anniversary year for Godzilla, another Godzilla vs. King Kong film is slated to be released.

If you're one of those people who has shuddered at the thought of spiders, snakes, or other creepy crawlies invading your space, you might get new insight from Bethany Brookshire, whose book about pests makes the point that animals are just being animals.
"We believe we're in charge, entitled to space only for us," said Brookshire. "What we really hate about the pests is their success. They're where we don't want them," she said.
Brookshire divides her book into chapters devoted to different pests such as the pigeon (once favored but no longer wanted), mice, wolves, and elephants, to choose just a few.
"Pigeons are one of the oldest domesticated birds and may have been domesticated more than 5,000 years ago," the author noted. "They were used to carry messages, ...and they were considered delicious. Every pigeon on the streets today is the descendant of a domesticated bird," she said.
Brookshire sheds light on wolves and coyotes, animals that, as she told Steve Tarter, receive mixed reviews. Urban residents tend to honor the wolf while rural residents, particularly ranchers, call them pests.
Of the 41,000 cattle that died due to predation in 2015 in the United States, less than 5 percent were killed by wolves, said Brookshire.
As for the adventurous coyote, the animal has been sighted in New York's Central Park and Downtown Chicago, she said.
Pests is not a natural history of the animals we hate but a book about us. It’s about what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we want. It’s a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in our midst.
Brookshire's research brought her in contact with indigenous people from around the world. While different cultures had different approaches, live and let live seemed to be the commonality, she said.
Brookshire told the story of a town in Canada besieged by bears (there was a salmon cannery there) that found the government approach to their problem (they shot the bears) unacceptable. So adjustments were made (the cannery was moved and garbage contained) and the town learned to live with the wildlife.

Elmwood is a small town in Illinois that had a population of 1,500 when Nelson Dean Jay was growing up. But the small-town boy went on to make a name for himself in Paris, France. 

“In my opinion, you simply can’t name anyone from central Illinois who had this much influence on America and the world, and (yet) no one knows about him,” said William Engelbrecht, the co-author of "The American Banker in Paris" along with Karl K. Taylor..

“This isn’t a book about a bank or finance but about an interesting human being who came out of central Illinois,” said Engelbrecht, noting that after Jay graduated in 1905 from Knox College (located in nearby Galesburg). “After that, he got into finance. Then came World War I,” he said.

Jay entered the U.S. Army and served Gen. Charles G. Dawes as general purchasing agent for the American Expeditionary Force where he later received a Distinguished Service Medal. No fewer than four countries decorated Jay for service during the war, said Engelbrecht.

Following the war, Jay headed the Paris affiliate of the J.P. Morgan & Co. bank in Paris from 1920 to 1941 and then again after WWII.

During the Roaring Twenties in Paris, Jay was a friend of Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, and Gertrude Stein. During that era, Jay was described in the New York Times as “one of the most civilized and authentic Americans in Paris," said Engelbrecht.

Jay was a member of the welcoming party for Charles Lindbergh when he made the first transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. “The J.P. Morgan Co. was one of the sponsors of the Lindbergh flight. The name on the business card that Lindbergh carried in his pocket during the flight was Nelson Dean Jay,” said Engelbrecht. Jay later criticized Lindbergh to his face, suggesting he reconsider some of his pro-German views, the author noted.

Jay's personal life is also part of the story, said Engelbrecht. Jay met his wife, Anne, on a blind date. He told her of his plan to marry her that night. And he did. The marriage lasted 60 years.

Along with helping Andre Citroen get the start he needed to become the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe, Jay also helped finance the work of his friend, (two-time) Nobel Prize winner Madame Marie Curie, the woman who laid the foundation for modern oncology, said Engelbrecht.

The past 20 years have not been kind to the newspaper industry. Margot Susca, a communications professor at American University in Washington, D.C. and former reporter, provides details on some of the financial dealings involving newspapers during that time.
Susca outlines the furious activity taken by private investment funds and hedge funds in the past 20 years, outlining practices such as profit overharvesting and debt-based takeovers by companies that have become known as notorious vulture capitalists--Alden Global Capital and the Blackstone Group, to name just a couple.
What these capitalists did was shrink the country's newspaper industry, she said, forcing the closure of papers in many parts of the country while establishing a new category in many other communities--ghost newspapers, papers that look and cost the same as before but have vastly reduced local content due to decimated newsrooms.
"I hope this work further helps shift part of the blame for our local newspaper crisis away from the internet to where it belongs: onto the private investment funds that for years have gutted local newspapers and grown wealthier off the backs of what is left of them," Susca noted.
Susca told Steve Tarter that while the actions taken by companies like Alden and Blackstone were legal, the fact that no efforts were made by the federal government to establish guidelines to aid an industry in distress allowed the problem to get worse.
The end result? "We can and should demand a media system that benefits democracy," she said, pointing to the 400 non-profit news outlets now active in the United States, urging citizens to visit https://www.pressforward.news/ for more information.