Posted on Tuesday 29 December, 2020

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.(D.O.D.O., #1)

Neal Stephenson (2017)

Magic is dead – or is it just postponed? If a secret US military agency has its way, witches will be re-empowered (within closely controlled limits) and able to influence the past (again, within limits) in advantageous ways, But the witches have other ideas….

It’s the limits that make this book interesting. They’ve been carefully crafted to structurally avoid the contrivances that often plague time-travel novels. It also takes aim at the dangers and blindness
of a bureaucracy trying to control something that its fundamentally doesn’t understand.

This is something of a return to form (in my opinion) for Stephenson after Anathem and (especially) Reamde: back to the style of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Although having said that it’s a book that’s clearly a scene-setter for a sequel rather than in any way self-contained.

4/5. Finished Tuesday 29 December, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Posted on Monday 21 December, 2020

Paper on clustered percolation accepted

Our paper “Percolation on random graphs with higher-order clustering” was accepted into Physical Review E.

A talk on “Exploring epidemic spreading using network models”

I gave a talk by Zoom to the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications arising from my epidemic modelling book.

Co-infection dynamics paper submitted

What happens when two diseases spread through a population?

The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China

Frank Langfitt (2019)

The taxi, while an essential part of the plot, doesn’t perhaps feature quite as much as one might expect in this exploration of China and the Chinese as they start to drive the 21st century. It’s a view from part way inside: not a Chinese view per se, but from a Western journalist with deep knowledge and strong sympathies for China, who manages to get a variety of people from the city and countryside to comment reasonably candidly about their experiences. It strikes me as a balanced and important contribution to understanding the nature of the emerging “Chinese century” (as it may, but will not necessarily, become), both its strengths and weaknesses.

3/5. Finished Thursday 17 December, 2020.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)