Holiday reading, book 3: Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis (Jared Diamond)

A heavy but attractively typeset and bound tome by an author that has really influence my thinking about the world and its history a fair bit. The author is now in his 80s and reflects on 7 countries which he knows well, mainly through having lived in them and learning the language. In this respect, it is very personal and touching since the wisdom and insight proceeding from affectionate observation transmit well.

The introduction frames the study well using the psychology of personal crisis with reference to the effect of the Cocoanut [sic] Grove fire in 1940s Boston on the development of crisis therapy. The author provides a theoretical framework for the historical discussion using the psychology of personal crisis management. Since we have all at some or other point had one, this makes it seductively easy to relate to the subject material.

For me, Finland was a particularly interesting chapter and only in part since I visited the country for the first time in 2019 and have so far been only casually familiar with the history of it. Diamond shares my appreciation for language and in this respect treats the role of the unique and somewhat complicated Finnish tongue very well. I also found his treatment of the United States helpful and interesting and those not familiar with some of the partisanship currently in vogue there, might find this a useful guide. On Japan, Indonesia and Chile, he has been excellent.

If I had two wishes about the book, it might be to have Germany disappear from it. The opposite was, incidentally, my view on the first book that I read on holiday – The Square and the Tower (Niall Ferguson). Diamond treats the socio-historical development of modern Germany well and sympathetically and I think these are all things that people need to know. However, I felt that it did not fit the framework and case studies of the remainder of the book.

My second wish would be to have Israel in it since the country has faced numerous crises (not least of all, at its birth) and I believe that it has adapted culturally and institutionally in unique and interesting ways. I think it would have fit well with the rest of the book.

The book is relatively light but pleasant reading and skipping chapters at will should not be a problem. Thank you, Jared!

Holiday reading, book 2: Talking to Strangers (Malcolm Gladwell)

This is the book by Gladwell that I enjoyed the most  – by far. I read it in one day, admittedly mainly during a medium-distance trip by bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap and I would have spent New Year's Eve in the hotel room, had I not finished it in time.

It is not about how to talk to strangers but what happens when strangers communicate (badly) and how that has changed over the years. The parts about the political conflicts of the 20th century are very amusing but what I found most valuable was the way the he explains the problem of excess police violence in the US (and probably other places) in terms of the background of dubious innovations in policing and in terms of tragic individual examples. He has greatly strengthened by conviction that in an era of standardised, tabulated and dashboarded administration (in large corporates as well as by the state) we should pay a lot of attention to the consequences of the small number of cases where things do go wrong, as they inevitably do.

Please read this book!

Holiday reading, book 1: The Square and the Tower (Niall Ferguson)

I really enjoyed this book. Nevertheless, compared to the author's other compelling works the pace is quite uneven. Parts of it can easily be skipped, in fact. Where it reviews the theory of networks, for example, I was quite bored and disappointed but possibly because I know the topic somewhat well. It is really very good in the main however and most of the conclusion is excellent.

Ferguson makes the point that our era of technological advance in communication is not perhaps that novel at all.I would differ from the author on three points though, in his conclusion and general approach.

1. I am not nearly as bullish as he is about the progress of AI. It could also easily be that it all ends up, if it even happens, as some kind of intelligence living happily and separately in machines and knowing and caring about us as much as we care about the cockroaches or beings on other planets. Moreover, I do not see a great leap forward between now and 2030 although I would not completely discount the possibility that by that time (or even now) it will only be the computers reading this.

2. Tall buildings as a symbol of power do not strictly belong to the past but are still a symbol of (now) consumption power for the rich of Manhattan, Dubai, Bangkok and (lately) even Johannesburg.

3. The current American president does not strike me as of immense importance in the long run but neither does his predecessor.

The author is an admirer of the political philosophy of Henry Kissinger and here I agree with him almost entirely. He very nicely describes the dangers in the near future that Kissinger had identified and I am afraid that these are very real. Further, I think that the book pays insufficient attention to modern Germany as an economic and cultural power, instead concentrating overly much on the UN Security Council countries. I would not have placed much emphasis on France but one of the nice things about the book is that South Africa features surprisingly frequently. I really enjoyed this and think that the country is an interesting case in the history of the world over the past few hundred years. French readers might have inverse sentiments.

Medical information confidentiality – little of it at Bonitas

Bonitas medical fund has for years now been sending me loads of confidential medical information regarding one of their members by e-mail. Presumably, an address had either been given incorrectly by the patient or captured incorrectly by Bonitas. Despite the fact that I have written to inform them of this, the e-mails have not stopped coming.

A recent one deals with a claim for OTHER SPECIFIED MISADVENTURES DURING SURGICAL AND MEDICAL CARE (codeY65.8) which leaves me wondering about the code for unspecified misadventures might be and why this is not something that the medical services provider should fix for their own account. Nevertheless, the privacy of the patient is being egregiously violated and (of course) she has no way of knowing this. Both the e-mail and the letter contain the following text.

This information is confidential and only intended for the beneficiary specified above, or in the case of a minor, the legal guardian or parent. The sender hereof cannot be held responsible for what happens if the recipient shares this information with any other person.

In other words, Bonitas cavalierly indemnifies themselves and me – surely a legal impossibility – from whatever happens to this information. In any event, service providers can avoid a lot of this mess by using the Yimi or Yimi1234 systems for obtaining patient information. Bonitas might want to get their house in order.

Banks should let customers input amounts as displayed

An older lady of my acquaintance recently had to drive 20km to visit the branch of a well-known South African bank in order to make a transfer to another account at the same bank even though she uses Internet banking. It was a somewhat larger amount than usual and her mistake was using the comma as thousands' separator. Why? Since that was how the bank also displayed numbers on the same page. Very recently, I had the same problem at another bank. If you include a space in the amount, it is rejected even though the bank displays the space itself, right at the next step. Now, since we officially use the comma as decimal symbol one can understand a reluctance to allow it as a thousands' separator when using the decimal point as most banking applications do. Why the space is forbidden, I do not know as it clearly makes the number more reasonably and a few lines of JavaScript can remove it when the transaction is submitted. The same is true for telephone numbers. User Experience: fail.