Finished: Rosling's 'Factfulness'

Just when you think you know it all, along comes a book like "Factfulness" to set you straight.

A guy in our office liked this book so much he bought a copy for everyone a couple months ago. I knocked off a chapter here and there and finally finished it. Oddly enough, the author, Hans Rosling, suggests later in the book that is the way to read it. So information is absorbed and considered.

Keep in mind, this wasn't written by some goofy cable talk show host. This guy has cred: Hans Rosling was a medical doctor, professor of international health and renowned public educator. He was an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, and co-founded Médecins sans Frontières in Sweden and the Gapminder Foundation. His TED talks have been viewed more than 35 million times, and he was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Hans died in 2017, having devoted the last years of his life to writing Factfulness.

The full title of the book is: "Factfullness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are". He starts with a short multiple choice quiz that most likely will prove how uninformed you are. Coincidentally, of the subgroups of people he gave the test to over the years, journalists did the worst. It might behoove them to fork over the 15 bucks.

It's a book I think everybody would benefit from, but especially journalists. It's not overly optimistic, but shows that things are not as bad as usually presented by the media. Things aren't perfect, but they are getting better. From poverty to disease to women's rights, they are all going in the right direction, many with remarkable improvement in a short time.

I was stunned at the end to learn the Rosling was terminally ill while writing most of the book. So if a guy had reason to be negative, he had it, but wasn't. So he wasn't around to do the media tour and cash in like Jordan B. Peterson and his "12 Rules for Life". But it's received raved reviews. According to Bill Gates, it's "one of the most important books I've ever read - an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world."

Yet it doesn't read like a textbook. It's interesting, woven with humor, sadness and reality.

Amazonians gave it a 4.6 out of 5. The Haugenometer doesn't work on nonfiction books, but if it did would tell you to read it. You'll be smarter and look at things a bit differently. Or don't. Your call.

It's one of the more heavily marked-up books I've read, but here's just some tidbits to whet your appetite:

- Today, most people, 75 percent, live in middle-income countries.
- Most people have enough to eat, most people have access to improved water, most children are vaccinated, and most girls finish primary school.
- Over the last 20 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has almost halved.
- There are three things going on here (regarding our negativity instinct): the misremembering of the past; selective reporting by journalists and activists; and the feeling that as long as things are bad it's heartless to say they are getting better.
- Critical thinking is always difficult, but it's almost impossible when we are scared. There's no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.
- If we are not extremely careful, we come to believe that the unusual is usual: that this is what the world looks like.
- Everyone automatically categorizes and generalizes. He says it's a "necessary and useful instinct to generalize. One again, (though) the media is the instinct's friend. Misleading generalizations and stereotypes act as a kind of shorthand for the media, providing quick and easy ways to communicate.
- Almost every activist I have ever met, whether deliberately, or, more likely, unknowingly, exaggerates the problem to which they have dedicated themselves.
- We have to seek to understand why journalists have a distorted worldview (answer: because they are human beings, with dramatic instincts) and what systemic factors encourage them to produce skewed and overdramatic news (at least part of the answer: they must compete for their consumers' attention or lose their jobs).
- He suggests: Be less stressed by the imaginary problems of an overdramatic world, and more alert to the real problems and how to solve them.
- When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems - and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better.

I think there's probably something for everyone to dislike in this book. He gores some sacred cows here, from both sides of the political aisle. His personal ideology is liberal but, again, seems very thoughtful, provides examples, and most importantly provides facts. Argue with him if you want. My guess is you'll lose.

Tomatogeddon

So I figured out the secret for a good garden - rain.

Seems you can water to your hearts content for four months with unremarkable success. But let it rain 18 inches in one summer and it's the Garden of Eden. Some smart guy told me there's nitrogen in the rain that makes the difference. I'll take his word for it. The rain also begets humidity which, well hello, rain forest anyone?

My little garden plot is in the foothills of the Black Hills, a semi-arid climate, where until this year I'd forgotten what humidity was. Also, the clay soil is better for making pots than growing anything.

But, that was then, this is now.

I've been dumping kitchen compost, rabbit poop, grass clippings, bags of soil and peat into foot-high raised beds, the last 12 years and that's helped. I've always managed enough tomatoes to keep wifey happy and to can just enough to get us to the next season.

But one of the problems of the past few years since I've begun starting heirloom tomatoes from seeds is that I've had a wide range of harvest dates. They ranged from 65 day varieties to 85. So I always had tomatoes but not like that big boatload where you could just set aside a day to can forty jars. It was a half dozen here, a half dozen there.

This year my boat came in. The planets aligned and all my plans came to fruition.

I chose my best varieties from over the past five years and kept them mostly in the 72-78 day range. Purple, red, pink, yellow. And I planted more of them (squeezed about 70 in). And the rains came. And the heat and humidity hit. And the tomaters exploded.

We've "put up," as my grandma used to say, about 42 jars of tomatoes, 10 of a tomato soup recipe the wife likes, and another seven quarts today of pretty hot salsa. And two flats of tomatoes are still sitting in the garage and more almost ripe ones waiting to be picked. (The big one in the photo went to today's salsa.)

As opposed to my years gardening East River, I've never really had extra to give away, because I kind of hoard my tomatoes. Want zukes or cukes and I'll hand them out on the highway. But tomatoes, take a number.

Looks like this will be the year where the tomato scrooge turns nice.

As the song says, rain is a good thing.

Sticking up for the little guys

Two concerts last week led me down a rabbit hole where I eventually ended up at the old motto of “shop locally.”

Wifey and I went to the town celebration in Wall for the express purpose of seeing a Sioux City band named 35th and Taylor. I heard them last year at Rapid City’s Summer Nights concert series and really liked them. They are young kids (20s, which are kids to me) who are a step up from the local bar bands, of which I have my favorites too, but on the cusp of breaking out to the bigger time. They opened for Bon Jovi in Chicago last winter.

They are a hard rock band, but not heavy metal. They have a great lead female singer with the raspy voice I like, a bass player with an excellent voice too, and above-average guitar players and drummer. They played Summer Nights in Rapid City a couple days prior and were headed to Sturgis to play a few gigs at the Rally. This was a nice schedule-filler for them, and they’d played in Wall the previous year.

They rocked the rodeo grounds in Wall. Unfortunately, not many people were there to hear them. I don’t know if they get paid a flat rate or a percentage of the gate, or both, but either way, if people want them back, they need to support those kind of acts.

Sure, everybody (but me) seems to want to attend Garth Brooks concerts. But Garth didn’t get to be Garth by people not supporting him when he was a no-name.

The concert was 10 bucks ahead of time or 15 at the gate. Sure, it might not have been your stereotypical western South Dakota, rodeo grounds type of music. But what the heck else was there to do within a 30 mile radius of Wall that night?

More people need to attend those things so: A, that band will come back again; or B, the event is successful enough so they will continue to bring other bands every year.

Then, a few nights later a friend of mine was among a small crowd who attended the Casey Donahew Band in Sioux Falls. I’ve been to two CDB concerts in Rapid City and Sturgis. Both pretty well attended. Not sure why they didn’t draw better East River.

CDB is a big deal in the Red Dirt Texas sound. They tour up into Canada. They too are on the cusp, if not closer, to the big-time than 35th and Taylor.

If you want to help young bands, attend their concerts, buy a CD for 15 bucks. Even if it’s not quite your brand of music, one ticket and one CD will mean more to those acts than a pair of $80 tickets to hear some aging rock band on a reunion tour. And there’s no reason not to support both.

I love local bands. They have character and characters and are hidden jewels of talent. Our favorites include Crash Wagon, Tie Dye Volcano and Pumpin’ Ethyl. Hardly household names outside of their areas. But they put themselves out there for you; put yourself out there for them.

So that thought then led me to a similar argument for buying books and supporting little-known authors (you know there had to be a self-serving component somewhere here, right?).

Again, whether it’s me or any other no-name author or retiree writing his memoir of life on the Plains or his time serving in the military. Buy a dang book. Or spend 99 cents for a Kindle version. James Patterson isn’t going to feel like you are cheating on him and it will mean more for that young, or not-so-young, author. Worse case scenario, you are out a couple bucks and couple nights’ reading time. Best case scenario, you enjoy the book and made the author’s day. Then, take two minutes and leave a short review on line. It will encourage that writer to write more and get better at what he or she does.

And shop your local book stores! Sure, I buy books on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble every time I go to Sioux Falls. But I buy just as many books at the two used book stores in Rapid City and the book store in Wall.

If you want those places around, it’s not like you have to drop 100 bucks. Buy a $5 book and be on your way. It’ll make the owner’s day. And come back the next month.

I compare all that to when I owned a weekly newspaper. Every $20 ad I sold, I appreciated immensely. A $40 or $75 ad made my day. It also made the electricity payment for the month. When you don’t buy an ad or a subscription, you don’t have a local weekly paper anymore. Then the beauty salon and local bar have one less (very valuable) place to promote their business. Then they close too. When the newspaper is gone, the post office won’t be far behind, because odds are the newspaper is the biggest mailer in town and post office’s get judged by the quantity of mail they deliver. When the post office closes, the town won’t be far behind.

So support the little guys now. Then someday they may be the big guys whose next appearance you wait in line to see.

Finished: McMurtry's 'Anything for Billy'

This was another I picked up off the legendary Wall Drug Bookstore bargain rack. I'm not being very original when I say Larry McMurtry is an awesome writer. His characters are unique and layered. I knew I couldn't go wrong for five bucks, and was correct.

"Anything for Billy" is kind of a travelogue where you don't expect much of a plot, just am East Coast guy following Billy The Kid around because he's bored; but it ends up being a tightly woven one that comes together with a bang at the end. If you read this, as you should, play the fun game of asking yourself: "Who kills Billy?" I'm not ruining the ending for you, because everyone knows Billy dies at the end. But there's some controversy over who actually did it.

From Goodreads:

The first time I saw Billy he came walking out of a cloud....Welcome to the wild, hot-blooded adventures of Billy the Kid, the American West's most legendary outlaw. Larry McMurtry takes us on a hell-for-leather journey with Billy and his friends as they ride, drink, love, fight, shoot, and escape their way into the shining memories of Western myth. Surrounded by a splendid cast of characters that only Larry McMurtry could create, Billy charges headlong toward his fate, to become in death the unforgettable desperado he aspires to be in life. Not since Lonesome Dove has there been such a rich, exciting novel about the cowboys, Indians, and gunmen who live at the blazing heart of the American dream.

Billy has some great lines, like:

After learning what a butler is and does: "If I was ever a butler I'd probably shoot the whole family the first day."

On seeing his spurned girlfriend riding into town: "Oh, dern! This is gonna give me a headache."

Some lines from Sippi, the well-off writer tagging along with Billy: "No doubt it's always the unkissed girls you remember when you're about to be killed."

"I suppose what united Billy and the other gunmen was their determination to defy any order, no matter who it cam from, or what the consequences."

And there's the unique vivid descriptions McMurtry provides: "... on a day so hot and still you could hear a watch tick from thirty yards away."

After being shot, he's told by the killer: "Hurry and die, chapito. I've ridden a long way and I need to water my horse."

I'm giving this one an 8+ of 10 on the Haugenometer. High praise. I loved it. Amazonians were on board with me, giving it a 4 of 5. Goodreaders where less generous with a 3.5 of 5, but most of the complaints where that it wasn't historically accurate. Well, duh. It never claimed to be. It's fictional, loose historical fiction at best. Why would you want to read the same historical account anyway? There'd be no twists, turns or surprises. People can be so persnickety.

Billy would've shot 'em.

Two articles worth reading

The Wise Do Not Always Weigh In

“When one has too many answers,” Merton wrote, “and when one joins a chorus of others chanting the same slogans, there is, it seems to me, a danger that one is trying to evade the loneliness of a conscience that realizes itself to be in an inescapably evil situation. 

Astrid Holleeder has lived in hiding since becoming the star witness in a murder trial against her brother

The threat to Holleeder’s life stems from a decision that she made, in 2013, to become the star witness in a mob trial. She agreed to testify against the most notorious criminal in the Netherlands, a man known as De Neus—the Nose, a reference to his most prominent facial feature. This was a risky choice. 

Finished: Hunter's 'G-Man'

Stephen Hunter is one of my favorite authors because it seems he takes his time and gets it right. It appears he's not on some deadline to turn out two books a year. It's most obvious in the detail he puts into his book, almost a bit too much for me; because I like guns, but I'm not a guns and ammo nut (in the best sense of the word) like some people are. But those details are something that makes Hunter's books so unique and interesting, as well as the masterful plotting.

From Amazon:

The Great Depression was marked by an epidemic of bank robberies and Tommy-gun-toting outlaws who became household names. Hunting them down was the new U.S. Division of Investigation — soon to become the FBI — which was determined to nab the most dangerous gangster this country has ever produced: Baby Face Nelson. To stop him, the Bureau recruited talented gunman Charles Swagger, World War I hero and sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas. 

Eighty years later, Charles’s grandson Bob Lee Swagger uncovers a strongbox containing an array of memorabilia dating back to 1934—a federal lawman’s badge, a .45 automatic preserved in cosmoline, a mysterious gun part, and a cryptic diagram—all belonging to Charles Swagger. Bob becomes determined to find out what happened to his grandfather— and why his own father never spoke of Charles. But as he investigates, Bob learns that someone is following him—and shares his obsession. 

Told in alternating timeframes, G-Man is a thrilling addition to Stephen Hunter’s bestselling Bob Lee Swagger series.

This is book 10 in the Bob Lee Swagger series and is good stuff. I gave it a 7 of 10 on the Haugenometer. Amazonians a 4.5 of 5. 

I could've gone higher but was worn out after 464 pages of shoot-outs.