​Have you ever wondered how it will all end? And by "all", I mean everything… space, time, matter, light… the works.

The author is a cosmologist. She has a good sense of humor.
First… do not sweat it. The end is not due for quite some time. When it does come, months and months from now, it might come as space unraveling. If that happens, you will not see it coming (because it is moving towards you at the speed of light), and you will not notice when it arrives. Because you, along with everything else, will be gone. 
​
I was familiar with about 70 percent of the book's content. These rest was both interesting, and opaque in the sense that the conclusions come from what I assume is very deep math. So rather than summarize it, I will simply list it as a good read. It is quite approachable, even if this is the first thing you have read about the subject.

This book addresses the biggest questions we can ask, or at least many of them.

It covers a lot of ground. The author is a biochemist (and a local), and as you might imagine, the book address physics, astronomy, the history of Earth, etc. and biology, with the emphasis on biology.

It lacks an index which is a real shame. The biology sections of the book introduces many scientific words with  non-obvious definitions. I am not a biologist, and an index would have helped me get through them.

The author is aware of this and does his best to explain complex chains of actions in simple terms. He writes in a very folksy style, likes Douglas Adams, and cracks the odd pun or four.

There is little point in summarizing a book that is summarizing literally everything.

Life started about 4 billion years ago(bya). Then came LUCA, the Last Universal Common  Ancestor at about 3.5 bya. The first categories of life were  Archaea, Eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus), and Bacteria (cells without a nucleus). We are eukaryotes. Over the eons, the Earth has been molten, and then frozen, and then hot again; has had no oxygen to having an atmosphere loaded with it; gone from low CO2 to high CO2 and back, and so on. Sex was invented and evolution took off. There have been several mass extinctions in history, The Permian was the largest, and the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 mya was the last.


I finished this book, but did struggle with biology sections…. Largely because biology is really complex. Worth reading, especially if you have a little biology in your back pocket. 

​Snyder also wrote Bloodlands which I have "reviewed".

This book deal with the geopolitical statehood issues that gave rise to the Holocaust. The book makes several points that are surprising. The main point is that being a member of a state was all important in the survival of Jewish people. If you were a German Jew, your chances of survival were far better than if you were a stateless Polish Jew...stateless because Germany and Russia destroyed the Polish state.

In Hitler's mind at the end of the war was the idea that the defeat of the Nazis was brought about by a worldwide Jewish plot and, if he had only ordered the gassing of a few thousand Jews at the start, Germany's victory would have been assured. Hitler said "A people that is rid of its Jews  returns spontaneously to the natural order." "Lebensraum" was a term Hitler liked. It meant both living space  for the German people and "living room",  as in a cozy room. Hitler's quest for lebensraum was justified by racial theories. Inferior races must be displaced (e.g.: the North American Indian population).

Poland had the lions share of Jews in Europe. Both Berlin and Warsaw supported the displacement of Jews from Europe… possibly to Madagascar or, more likely, Palestine.

Anschluss with Austria was desirable for Germany, mostly because Austria had a lot of money and Germany was in need. Austria took it out on their Jewish population. Humiliation, pain and flight had come to the Jewish people… the Holocaust had started. Neighbor states did not want them.

Jews were stripped of citizenship. Stateless Jews could be mistreated as one pleased... without consequence.

An invention of Hitler was the judeobolshevik plot. There was no such plot. If you were not a Jew, you were a bolshevik, and vice verse. Labels can be used for evil. The Baltic states used this to purge (kill or  deport)  all Jews by the end of 1941. The judeobolshevik  myth was used to kill Jews, with Soviet citizens help. This was done by the einsatzcommandos (special forces). Many people would spontaneously switch sides several times as the Soviets and the Germans exchanged territory.

Who knew? This is question that has troubled me. How many Germans knew about the mass killings of Jews? Snyder said: "It is possible that many Germans did not know what happened at Auschwitz. It is not possible that many Germans did not know about the mass murder of  Jews."  Many German families got rich stealing Jewish property.

Estonia and Denmark were much alike. Both occupied  by Germany; both Baltic states; each home to a small number of Jews, and each declared Judenfrei (free of Jews). But at the wars end, Estonia had the lowest percent of  Jewish survivors and Denmark the highest.

Denmark was maintained as a state. Estonia was not.  Denmark did not border the USSR. It was deemed that the Final Solution would not be acceptable to Denmark.  On October 2, 1943, the Germans captured 401 Danish Jews. They all survived the war.


Anti-Semitism  was baked into many countries. Romania adopted Germany's Jewish laws. France enacted anti-Semitic  laws and as educated Poles were being killed in Poland, educated Frenchmen were getting jobs in the civil service to track Jews in France.

Another cold fact: from July 1944 to June 1945, the US only admitted 4,705 Jews… roughly how many Jews were gassed at Treblinka on any given day.

Of course, there were tales of enormous heroism and bravery as well. The Bjelski brothers in Belarus (see the movie Defiance with Daniel Craig) for example. Raoul Wallenburg was the most effective rescuer of Jews. He died in a Soviet prison. The church was hard to find. Only one Christian Churchman of high rank (Andrei Sheptyts'kyi) acted to save Jews.

The Roman Catholic Church took no stand on the mass murder of Jews because they felt the Jews were responsible for kill Jesus.  

One of the major conclusions of the book is the need for a Jewish state, Statehood was the key to living through WWII as a Jew.

This book is a little dry, but hugely enlightening. It certainly changed my view of the politics of the day.  It also reinforced a  belief of mine, namely that religion poisons everything. 

This book addresses the biggest questions we can ask, or at least many of them.

It covers a lot of ground. The author is a biochemist (and a local), and as you might imagine, the book address physics, astronomy, the history of Earth, etc. and biology, with the emphasis on biology.

It lacks an index which is a real shame. The biology sections of the book introduces many scientific words with  non-obvious definitions. I am not a biologist, and an index would have helped me get through them.

The author is aware of this and does his best to explain complex chains of actions in simple terms. He writes in a very folksy style, likes Douglas Adams, and cracks the odd pun or four.

There is little point in summarizing a book that is summarizing literally everything.

Life started about 4 billion years ago(bya). Then came LUCA, the Last Universal Common  Ancestor at about 3.5 bya. The first categories of life were  Archaea, Eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus), and Bacteria (cells without a nucleus). We are eukaryotes. Over the eons, the Earth has been molten, and then frozen, and then hot again; has had no oxygen to having an atmosphere loaded with it; gone from low CO2 to high CO2 and back, and so on. Sex was invented and evolution took off. There have been several mass extinctions in history, The Permian was the largest, and the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 mya was the last.

I finished this book, but did struggle with biology sections…. Largely because biology is really complex. Worth reading, especially if you have a little biology in your back pocket. 

This book addresses the biggest questions we can ask, or at least many of them.


It covers a lot of ground. The author is a biochemist (and a local), and as you might imagine, the book address physics, astronomy, the history of Earth, etc. and biology, with the emphasis on biology.


It lacks an index which is a real shame. The biology sections of the book introduces many scientific words with  non-obvious definitions. I am not a biologist, and an index would have helped me get through them.


The author is aware of this and does his best to explain complex chains of actions in simple terms. He writes in a very folksy style, likes Douglas Adams, and cracks the odd pun or four.


There is little point in summarizing a book that is summarizing literally everything.


Life started about 4 billion years ago(bya). Then came LUCA, the Last Universal Common  Ancestor at about 3.5 bya. The first categories of life were  Archaea, Eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus), and Bacteria (cells without a nucleus). We are eukaryotes. Over the eons, the Earth has been molten, and then frozen, and then hot again; has had no oxygen to having an atmosphere loaded with it; gone from low CO2 to high CO2 and back, and so on. Sex was invented and evolution took off. There have been several mass extinctions in history, The Permian was the largest, and the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 mya was the last.


I finished this book, but did struggle with biology sections…. Largely because biology is really complex. Worth reading, especially if you have a little biology in your back pocket. 

This book is old news. The BSA (Boy Scout's of America) has been on the ropes for sometime.  I have read and written about The Roman Catholic Church ands its decades long struggle with priest's raping boys.  By "struggle" I mean its ongoing efforts to bury the story, keep its money, and protect the perpetrators. But a priest only get s unsupervised access to boys for perhaps half a day, whereas a scout leader gets them for entire weekends. The BSA makes the RCC look like novices.

The book is written chronologically, each chapter moving ahead by a month or a year.  Intertwined with that account is the story of Carl Bittenbender, a serial abuser,  and Cindy Corbett, the mother of one of Carl's victims.


Carl was court martialed out of the military but had no trouble getting a gig as Scout Master. He was charged with molestation, and still had no trouble getting another Scout Master job. No one checked. They thought this sort of thing happens to other communities. They thought that the  BSA kept records, so they would catch pedophiles.  The BSA did keep records, but they were "confidential" and using them could create law trouble. The parents were happy to have the kids out of the house.

But BSA leaders wanted none of it. Checking people out costs money. They did keep files, but they would never look at them. Why? Because then they might actually know the answer to questions  like "How many records of sexual abuse does the BSA get per year?"  One person said "I do not know how many we get per year, but it is miniscule." Think about that answer. It is self contradictory.

Pedos are smart. They can spot a possible target, perhaps a troubled looking kid, or a loner, with a quick glance around a room full of boys. They are persuasive.  They work their victims slowly. They can use pot and beer to gain control ("We would not want your parents to know about this, so say nothing!").

There was always a reason why it was not the BSA's fault, or that the BSA could not afford to do this or that. When the BSA would estimate x number of assaults per year, they real number was en times that.  Other organizations like Big Brothers knew better and ran criminal checks on all their adults.


In one case, a monk (Brother Edmund) abused a boy who ultimately killed himself. Law suits followed, and two years later, he was banned by the BSA.  By 1982, a Scout Leader was being banned every eleven days.  The BSA issued a warning to its boys about mutual masturbation, saying it as wrong. They offered no such warning if an adult was involved.

One abuser was kicked out, only to let back in when a psychologist said he was cured. He re-abused.

If this book contains one message, it is that abusers cannot be cured. They need regular treatment for life. I have a lot of disdain for clinical psychology in the 80s and 90ss, but I am given to understand that the science behind it has improved a great deal since.

Carl, after years of abusing boys, was finally jailed for 30 years. He got out after 20, and died a few years later.

By the end of the eighties, the BSA was under attack. Law suits and outrage  were the harvest from years of deliberate ignorance and general all-round lying. 

I really enjoyed this book.  It is a good look at the sleazy underbelly of the snake-oil "One True Cure". And it is funny. The author has a first class sense of humor, which is rare in serious journalism.

The book has an extensive bibliography. But no index! That is weird. Computers make creating an index very easy. It is a bit of work to do it right, but it is worth it for the reader.

The narrative takes a different course than most books. Instead of telling a series of stories about seven One True Cure (OTC) promoters, the books chops each quack's tales into four pieces… roughly speaking: Getting started, the early years, the latter years, and the end. This allows you to compare each  whacko's experiences with the others over time. The down side is that is it hard to keep up with narratives like that. You lose the thread of one nut-bar and then have to pick it up again three more times.

The main players and their One True Cures are:

Larry Lytle; A laser pistol OTC
Toby McAdam: Herbal Supplement OTC
Robert O. Young: Bleach OTC
Alicia Kolyszko: Leeches OTC
Dale and Leilani Neumann: Prayer OTC
An Alien inside a human skin: MMS  (Miracle Mineral Solution) OTC

Mara-A-Lardo is mentioned many times, but only by the moniker "former game show host".

As I mentioned, I find humor injected into the serious work of journalists who are trying to get to the truth is a necessity when the truth is that these people are nuts, evil and/or self-deluded. Twenty-five  years ago (or so) I a wrote a piece on the difference between pseudo-science and proto-science. The I issues I raised in that piece, not surprisingly, cropped up constantly in this book.

Many people needlessly die in this book, and there is nothing funny about that.

Well researched, and a very fun read. But no index. If you take dietary supplements, you might find it illuminating.     

• ​

Thus is one serious downer of a book. There are examples of naked racism in BC, but they are very few. But go south and east into the US., and it is still on full display. About a year ago, I saw a reporter ask a question of a local. His answer was to refer to the "Martin Luther Coon Way", a local street . He paused after uttering the reference and said he probably should not have said it on TV. But other than that, it was what he considered normal speech.

Caste is baked in in the southern US, but it is rarely referred to as such. It was thought of as a way to keep the inferior black man "in his place". Most people would refer to it as an issue of race, but rather it is an issue of tacit caste. When one thinks of caste, India leaps to mind. Their caste system is complex and alive and well.  The US was the first to carve out an entire group of people from the human race.

Here is a typical headline from the day: "Two men and two women and three Negroes were killed in a car accident…".To solidify the castes, teachers and the like would never refer to a black person  as "Mister", "Mrs.", or "Miss". They would be referred to by their first names or by catch-alls like "boy", "girl", or "auntie".   One black man got so annoyed by all this bullshit that he decided, if he were to ever have a daughter, to name her "Miss"… which he did. One day, she (Miss) was called to the school  principles office. The principle asked her name.  "Miss Hale" she replied. He repeated the question several times in different ways and got the same answer. He looked up her records, and found himself hoist on his own petard.  He could not refer to her by name without embarrassing himself. He asked where she was from. She named a neighboring state. "That explains it… colored folks around here would not behave like this".

Race is a social construct. When immigrants came to Ellis Island, they were asked "Are you black or white.". They did not understand the nonsensical question, but the their lives and the lives of their children would be deeply affected but the answer.

Another famous state that indulged in caste and racism was Nazi Germany. They were only in power for  about 15 years, and they had some pretty harsh views with regard to Jews, Gypsies, and many other groups. They were forced to create racial purity laws, which included rules on miscegenation. The Germans were rookies at this, so they turned to the US where similar laws had been in place for centuries.  

Fun fact: the babble (aka bible) justifies slavery because Ham, Noah's son, saw him naked.  Makes sense, right?

The US did not ditch its last endogamy laws (laws restricting interbreeding)  until the year 2,000. Thanks Alabama!

One minister (Lichlitter of Pennsylvania in 1910) argued before a congressional immigration panel  that "oriental scum" was diluting American blood.  Governor Vardaman said negroes were designed by god for menial tasks.  Thanks, god! A 16 year old girl pondered what might be an appropriate punishment for Hitler after the war. Her solution: put him in black skin and let him live the rest of his life in America.

Castes are supported by caste members. One thing every white man knew was that no matter how bad he was, he was better than the best black man. Each person had a caste below them that must be held in place. This kind of logic cemented the various castes in India and the US.  In India, the Dalits (untouchables) are on the bottom of the heap. They do not like it there and created a group called the Dalit Panthers (patterned after the US's Black Panthers) to fight back. 

In the southern US, it was easier for a white felon to get a job than for an honest black man.  The best predictor of whether the death penalty should be applied was not the color of the skin of the perpetrator, but the color of the skin of the victim. You would be 11 times more likely to be executed if your victim was white. In the US, it  is best to avoid saying you are Danish, or Irish, Polish or any other group, especially when it comes to race and caste. Best to say you are Nordic. This seems to be the carte blanche (no pun intended) of castes. So far, no one has implied that "Nordics" were anything other than the perfect people.

The US continues to lead in racism. States are purging your voter registration if you miss one year; voter ID cards are being required and, at the same time, barriers are being put up to get one. Voting stations for the people that Republicans do not like, like students and black people, are moved without notice, possibly reappearing in a farmer's field. 

Robert E. Lee said "The blacks are immeasurably better off  here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically." Sound familiar? Similar ideas are still popular with politicians today.

After WWII, Germany paid restitution to survivors of the holocaust. After the Civil War in the US, The US paid restitution to the slave owners.. How messed up is that?  Einstein was sickened by the treatment of the Jew (and blacks) in America, infinitely better though it was than the fate of European Jews.

This book is hard to read. It made me sad to be a member of my species. Race is a social construct without scientific meaning.  Caste is best term.  The worst example of caste is the  US, with India a close second. The US civil war ended more than 150 years ago, but the caste system is still alive and well today.

​Joe Rochefort  won WWII.
OK, that is a bit of hyperbole, but if any one man deserves that tag line, he is it.  He actually fought two wars: one against the Japanese and one against the Navy. He won both, but  beating the Navy would have to wait until after his death.  He lead the Hypo (a code word) sigint (signals intelligence) group from a basement in Honolulu.  His team cracked the code just enough to allow Rochefort to predict with uncanny accuracy the time and place of the attack on Midway.  The Japanese lost four fleet (meaning big) carriers (Kaga, Hiryu, Soryu, and Akagi) to the American's  one (Yorktown).   If the Americans had lost that battle, resources otherwise marked for Europe would have been routed to the Pacific. The war might have been extended by many months. One could even imagine the US dropping the A-Bomb on its originally planned target, Berlin.

Joe Rochefort was a Navy man through and through. He wanted, more than anything, a sea command. He never really got one. Instead, as mentioned, he was assigned to sigint.  He has spend some years in Japan learning the language and that, combined with his decoding experience and quick mind made him a good fit.

There have been big two movies about Midway. The early one staring Charleton Heston is tolerable, but the latest one is much better historically. If you have seen the latter, you already know a good  bit of the story.

The new group started off badly. Sigint was not up to speed and they missed the attack on Pearl Harbor entirely, and so did everyone else, but the error would haunt Rochefort. Midway was sigint's revenge. The group was struggling with JN25(c), the Japanese code system. They were able to  break the code and win the day, but not without drama.

Joe had one albatross which he could not shake… he was a "maverick". A maverick was an officer who has had come up through the ranks but was not a graduate of Annapolis. Many, if not most, Navy officers were snobs and bigots in that respect.  Three officers stand out in this regard. Wegner and the Redmans Sr. and Jr.. They wrote derogatory reports about Rochefort through Navy back-channels. Nimitz would discover this late in the game and he was furious.      

Early on , before much of the Japanese  message traffic could be decoded, what little  data they had  came from Traffic Analysis (TA) of ship movements. This did not yield much and Pearl Harbor was the result.

It was interesting to read about the "IBM machines" that proved to be very helpful. The machines were essentially programmable punch card sorters.  Sorting was one of the early targets of computing.

When the hammer fell on Honolulu, the Americans could intercept  radio traffic but they could not tell what direction it was coming from. They could only say that the source was either at one bearing, or that bearing +180 degrees. In other words, their equipment was primitive even for the time, and it lacked direction finding capabilities.

Six aircraft carriers attacked Pearly Harbor. Luckily, the US aircraft carriers were at sea. Equally lucky was that the Japanese did not hit Pearl's huge stockpile of oil.

After Pearl, the Navy went on a witch hunt and largely blamed Admiral Kimmel.  He would face years of criticism before taking his own life. Nimitz took over the Pacific Theater. Rochefort did not escape criticism from the likes of the Redmans.

The good news for Rochefort was the increasing presence of sigint in war.

The next major battle of the Pacific war was Coral Sea. The battle was a draw, but the Japanese were, for the first time, halted.  The next engagement would be Midway where the Japanese would face defeat for the first time.

Rochefort and his team had identified Midway as the next target. The JIN's (Japanese Imperial Navy)  code for Midway was AF. Washington (the Redmans again) disagreed. Famously, the US suckered the Japanese into tipping their hand on AF. They sent a message "in the clear" that Midway's fresh water condenser was broken. The Japanese noted that AFs water condenser was down. This was Rochefort's second error… he made Washington look stupid. But he was right. The Americans used Rochefort's uncanny predictions to sink all four of the Midway bound carriers. Nimitz famously remarked that Rochefort was only off by five minutes, five miles and five degrees. The rat bastard Redmans later tried to argue that the only reason Rochefort succeeded was because of work that they had previously done. That was BS but they kept at it. When Rochefort was put up for the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM), they nixed it, arguing in part that he did nothing himself, only his people did! By that logic, no officer would ever receive a medal.

Rochefort was also able to provide key information relating to the next major contest: Guadalcanal. 

Rochefort would die before he was finally awarded the DSM (the highest military honor the US gives) by Ronald Reagan.

This book was a long read, but I never lost interest. It is the story of a naval battle that would rank up there with Jutland and Trafalgar.