Book Review: "Hume" by James Harris

I've recently been able to read the book Hume: An Intellectual Biography by James Harris. This is an "intellectual biography" in the sense that rather than focusing on the particular details or daily life of the Scottish philosopher and essayist David Hume, it delves into his philosophy and writing in the context of what he read, the people with whom he corresponded, and the political history of the Great Britain in which he lived. This is extensively sourced from Hume's very brief autobiography, his more extensive works, and correspondence with and writings by other people; Hume's own will requested that his personal papers and unpublished works (apart from those he wished to see published posthumously) dating prior to the 5 years leading up to his death be destroyed, and this seems to have happened, and Hume's autobiography is far too brief and sparse to serve as the primary resource.

I am not in the humanities, so I come at this book as a layperson. This being an intellectual biography makes it a longer and weightier book than a biography that would focus on Hume's personality and daily life. Moreover, the author feels free to introduce contemporaries of Hume, often by last name only, without much more context to their own lives and thoughts. However, to the author's great credit, the prose is clear and engaging even to a layperson like myself, and the author takes care to outline the philosophies of Hume's contemporaries to the full extent that they relate to Hume's readings, correspondence, and overall philosophical development. Additionally, the author makes clear the historical and political circumstances surrounding Hume's life, so that even someone like myself without that background can reasonably follow.
The author's main goal in this work is to show how Hume approached all of his work and interests with an eye toward philosophical examination of the broad principles governing them, without trying to claim that all of Hume's work sprang from a single unified moral philosophy, nor that Hume turned away from moral philosophical treatises toward essays on politics and religion purely in pursuit of fame. The latter refutation is made clear enough by Hume's avowed disdain for histories that were written in a very superficial way purely for mass popularity. The former refutation comes out over the course of the book: the author points out, where appropriate, and respects Hume's own wishes that his essays be read as independent entities from each other and from his other work, and the author further seems (from my rudimentary perspective) to follow Hume's own moral philosophy of interpretation via human experience. It's clear that other philosophers will use their own perspectives to try to ascribe a broad unified philosophical foundation to all of Hume's work, but I think this author does a good job of making and justifying his overall goal in this biography. It is a fairly long book, but I think anyone who is interested in philosophy and is ready for a work that is a bit more densely packed with history and politics would enjoy this book. Follow the jump to see a few more musings that are not directly related to this book.

Book Review: "Atomic Accidents" by James Mahaffey

I've recently read Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey. It's a fairly long and detailed exposition into accidents involving civilian nuclear power or military nuclear weapons in the US, UK, [former] USSR, Japan, and elsewhere. The author goes into quite granular detail with respect to the history of a certain weapon or civilian site, the timeline of the accident, and the aftermath; with each, he summarizes the lessons that were learned (or should have been learned but were not). After an introduction showing how nuclear accidents are quite similar in many respect to railroad accidents, the first few chapters go into the development of nuclear technology through WWII and the accidents along the way. The middle section of the book goes into knowledge gained about the occupational hazards of employees at power plants, the risks of transporting nuclear material by airplane, and related ideas. The last few chapters are about more recent accidents in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, ending with an assessment of the current state of nuclear power.

As a layperson with respect to the field of nuclear engineering, I think this book may be best suited for experts and other people with a serious interest in the field; for laypeople, the first few and last chapters are interesting, but reading through the middle sections became somewhat tiresome, as the technical details and jargon were a bit hard to follow, and the structure of the stories of the accidents became rather repetitive. The author does discuss issues of fear/hysteria in the general public with respect to nuclear accidents, yet the [seemingly contradictory] combination of the overall discussion of nuclear accidents in gritty detail along with some relatively cursory words of support for the safety and efficacy of nuclear power at the end means that this really is for experts who rationally understand the full historical & current contexts underlying nuclear power. Additionally, as a side note, the author briefly mentions India's nuclear program twice, noting that the Indian government broke a promise to Canada to not turn an imported reactor design toward weapons development, and that nuclear power plants there have had spotty safety records; while I am all for calling out entities that are cavalier about these issues, I found the author's word choice to be unnecessarily condescending toward India in a manner reminiscent of British imperialists justifying the subjugation of India in order to "civilize" the "savages". That aside, as noted earlier, I would recommend this book to those with a serious interest in this subject.

Statins in Hot Water

This comes from a discussion I was having with my family about the UK's National Health Service proposing putting statins in drinking water to combat the widespread problems of high cholesterol and triglycerides resulting from widespread obesity. While the idea was floated as early as 2004 (it may have been even earlier, but that was the earliest BBC.com news story I could find about it), as far as I know, it came up again just a few months ago.
Follow the jump to read my take on it.

Thankfully, the US isn't the UK

I'm referring to this (Slashdot) piece on the White House releasing open-source code relating to Drupal.
I fully admit that I really have no idea what Drupal is. However, what is more significant is that the White House has released this code to the public for unlimited viewing, modification, and distribution.
I've read many articles and blog posts by Glyn Moody (e.g. this article here) describing how the UK government has essentially viewed open-source as blasphemy. I feared that, with ACTA and all, the US government would generally follow suit. Thankfully, my fears can now be (at least partially) assuaged. In fact, in that article (on Slashdot) itself is a link to a British observer's opinion piece on how the UK absolutely rejects open-source while paying lip service to the ideals of openness.

I Won't Be in Chicago

because that city is rigged.
There seem to be over 1500 security cameras in Chicago.
Why so many?
I can understand a bunch of traffic cameras, but this seems like overkill.
In general, I'm pretty wary of this level of government monitoring of citizens; I'd hate to be in the UK (especially London), where this sort of camera system is prevalent and everyone must have an ID card on them at all times.
Now, one might say that they have nothing to hide so they have no problem with these actions.
What if something previously legal becomes illegal? What if I do something that's legal but not fully accepted by society at large? What if for whatever reason the police has a grudge against me? What if I just want my privacy?
This sort of monitoring is ridiculous, and it can only stop with an outcry from affected citizens.
Otherwise, get used to some more Big Brother.