Review of “Raft” by Stephen Baxter
This is a review that I’m glad to write because, despite my often scathing criticism of what I consider half-finished books, Stephen Baxter finished the job. I don’t particularly like science fiction that borders on fantasy, but he keeps his wildly speculative physics consistent to the end; of course, he has a lot of leeway. The cover photo gives the reader a hint of what’s coming–flying trees?
The story that unwinds checks all the boxes: simple plot with plenty of action; good character arcs that aren’t too extreme; exposition written into dialogue in a very believable way; no extraneous characters or side plots confusing the story; a romantic subplot; a surprising ending, despite the reader knowing what’s coming; and, best of all, he does it in 245 pages.
The writing style is solid and the story is easy to follow. Furthermore, the author doesn’t seem to grow tired of the story after the half-way point, probably because he kept the length reasonable. Science fiction doesn’t have to require 400 pages to be understandable and believable. This reminds me of books written in the 60s and 70s; tell the story with enough background to make it comprehensible, but don’t share all of the notes that went into the final draft.
I recommend this novel to anyone who is willing to see what others can imagine.
Stormwater Project: Planting some grass
We stopped by the PNW garden at Pt. Defiance to see some local plants in the wild, but the gate was locked; so we went to Portland Ave. Nursery to view a wide selection of good base plants for the rain garden. We resisted temptation and only selected a few large grasses for now; I dug some holes and we got them in the ground with a quality planting soil.
I better record the names of the plants as I go or I’ll forget them for sure. The one closest to the camera is Sundowner New Zealand Flax (Phormium ‘Sundowner’); it is an evergreen plant that grows 5 ft. tall, 4-6 ft. wide, and blooms in summer. The two in the middle of the photo are Pampas Grass (Cortaderia ‘Silver Feather’); they grow 5-8 ft. high, 2-3 ft. wide, and bloom in summer to winter. The plant in the background is Cabaret Japanese Silver Grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Cabaret’); it will grow 7 ft. high and 4 ft. wide; coppery plumes appear in early fall.
This view shows our new plants, with some potted flowers we found earlier in the summer. They fit in well and should make the back yard look good in the near future.
Wing Luke Museum: A Guided Tour of an Immigrant Hotel
Wing Luke was a pioneering Chinese American lawyer, civil rights advocate, and the first Asian American elected to public office in Washington State. When he died in a small aircraft accident in 1965, the community formed the Wing Luke Museum in his honor. It celebrates Asian-American history and culture, and owns a hotel it purchased to display the lives of early immigrants.
The Yick Fung Corporation was formed by a group of Chinese immigrants because they were legally forbidden from owning property in Washington. This store served as a supplier to restaurants throughout Washington.
South Weller Street led directly to the tidal flats where the church steeple stands today. As part of a downtown reshaping, several hills were flattened and the soil used to fill in the nearshore area.
In addition to supplying regional restaurants, you could buy a third-class ticket to Hong Kong (or maybe Shanghai) for $1500 in today’s money. The store remained open until 2008.
To circumvent some of the financial restrictions, the Chinese immigrants formed associations of people from the same villages back in China. This is the meeting room of one such group. They assisted newcomers and planned civic activities. It was kind of like the YMCA.
This is the game room, where people played mahjong and other games.
The hotel contained about 180 apartments, but some of them had up to three rooms. This was the home of a family with eight children. The hotel remained a center of immigrants until it was closed in 1974 because of updated fire codes (after the deaths of twenty or so inhabitants in about 1972). The Wing Luke Museum purchased it and is renovating it as part of the display.
Every room was required to have a door and window. Most of the rooms were small. That is the light shaft out the window; it didn’t lead anywhere and only extended to the second floor, just for light and air.
Living out of your suitcase?
Here’s the light shaft. During reconstruction the building was modified and reinforced.
The museum also had exhibits displaying artwork and pictorial histories of many Asian immigrants, including Hawaiians. Overall, it was very interesting and worth the price of admission. I think it was $22 for a senior like me.
Fort Steilacoom Park and Lake Waughop
After spending the last five days walking around the back yard, digging the rain garden, I drove my FJ40 to Lakewood to take a look at Fort Steilacoom Park.
This play area was the only fort I saw.
But there were several old barns in various levels of disrepair. Apparently, Fort Steilacoom was the first U.S. military post in Washington, built in 1849 during the dispute with Britain over sovereignty. These barns are remnants of agriculture and the Western State Hospital, a psychiatric facility. The hospital superintendent from 1880 to 1897 was Dr. John Waughop, who turned the site into a botanical garden for non-native plants as part of his rehabilitation program.
The Coast Redwood isn’t native to the Tacoma area, along with many other ornamental species planted by John Waughop.
Lake Waughop was named after the hospital’s most popular superintendent. It is a kettle lake, created from the melting of a huge block of ice after the last ice age while sediment collected around it.
This invasive species is common to Washington. It is bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare). I also saw several thriving thickets of Himalayan Blackberry along the trail. These plants were not part of John Waughop’s ornamental plant garden.
Another ecosystem within the park is the oak savannah. It is the remnant of a native woodland that has been altered for thousands of years by the indigenous people of the PNW. The trees are Garry oak (Quercus garryana), the only native oak species in Washington. This area would have become a conifer forest if not for controlled burning by the local people.
After a three-mile circumnavigation of Fort Steilacoom Park, I finally made it back to my vehicle; unfortunately, there wouldn’t be AC for the ride home on this warm afternoon.
Ready to Plant
I amended the soil with 15 cubic feet (~1/2 cubic yard) of Tacgro compost at about 1:1. That’s the darker soil in the bottom of the pond. The original mulch was spread out 4-6 inches deep, sufficient to cover the grass and weeds; it’s ready for planting.
That’s not my department, unless a hole has to be dug in the stony, original soil.
The total time for this project was about 20 hours. The only cost was 14 bags of compost, less than $100.
Sisyphus and the Stone
I finished the surface today, and dug down about 10 inches to mix in compost for the central planting area. Along the way I encountered this boulder, which weighed a couple hundred pounds. I was able to roll it up the slope, but now what do I do with it? I’ll be using a compost created from yard waste collected by the city of Tacoma to amend the silty soil. The hole ended up deeper than I like, so I’ll need a lot more than four bags…
These are all the stones I could easily remove from the soil I removed and that to be amended by compost. Hauling them in a steel bucket may seem inefficient (it is), but carrying fifty pounds at a time is a lot easier than rolling the wagon up the hill, which is about six-feet higher than the job site. I estimate that I lost 10-15% of the soil volume, which will be replaced by compost.
Excavation Update
Five hours of digging finished the major excavation–six inches of soil removed, cleaned, and spread around the site. I’ll remove another 6-8 inches along the center next and knock the sides down to a 30 degree slope. I had to transport most of the pebbles and cobbles up the hill, but some of it filled the inflow sluice (to the right in the image).
I found this soil tamper in the shed, left by the last owner. It does a great job compacting the relocated soil and isn’t too much work to use. And it’s a lot more efficient than walking around in circles to use my body weight.
Excavation Begins
I worked four hours today and made a lot of progress. This photo makes it clear how shallow the rain garden pond is going to be; the areas that have been excavated to 6-8 inches aren’t going to be any deeper. There will be a deeper (18 inches before backfilling with compost-amended soil) thalweg along the center of the pond, and I’ll cut a slope of about 30 degrees from the edge to the center line. The piece of siding is covering the infiltration hole–a sure ankle breaker for someone like me stumbling around with shovel-fulls of soil. Better safe than sorry.
I definitely have more pebbles/boulders than I need. I’m dumping the excess in a quiet corner of the yard. I’ll figure out what to do with it later. I’ve been using this area to dump soil removed to plant a few shrubs and small trees, so the new material fits right in.
This is my version of being a sculptor, but I work with earth rather than clay.
Site Preparation
I think the job can be completed without removing any material from the site, which is now completely exposed. Excavation is hard work, but transporting soil any distance is exhausting. Now that the mulch has been relocated to the perimeter of the site, excavation can begin. The soil is sand/silt with minor clay, and a significant amount of rock in the form of pebbles and cobbles.
I am removing most of the rock fragments by raking the excavated soil with a garden rake (back and forth until it is clean enough), then collecting the unwanted material.
Plastic buckets don’t hold up well transporting rock, so I’m using a steel bucket. The pile of rock is from the perimeter ditch only; there is going to be a lot more. It is going to be used to armor the inflow, which will be where the bucket is; the rest will either be transported to a location for long-term storage, or used as mulch around the perimeter–depending on how much there is.
In a perfect world I would use a wheelbarrow to move material around, but we inherited a good dumping wagon from the previous owners, which is too bulky to use on this small site. The amount of material to be transported is relatively small, however, so a bucket works well.
I’m not on the clock, so time isn’t an issue. Nevertheless, the work goes faster than you might think. I completed the work shown here, since my last post, in less than three hours. I’m 69 and not a weight lifter, although I do exercise regularly.
Review of “Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything” by Ervin Laszlo
I’m not sure how to review this book. I bought it used because I’m interested in physics and the apparent deadlock it has reached; everyone admits that the Standard Model of Physics, as well as the Standard Cosmological Model, are facing challenges from a scarcity and plethora of new observations, respectively. The pioneers of modern physics acknowledged that they weren’t looking deep enough. We have developed a very solid model of physics, but it is based on high-energy, collisional experiments; it is very accurate in predicting the behavior of subatomic particles. Every physicists knows that particles do not exist, but are only the result of interacting quantum fields.
Cosmologists, astronomers, and astrophysicists are facing a crisis because of the incredible power of modern instruments like the JWST. Nothing adds up the way it should. We either can’t look deep enough (particle physics) or we’ve looked too deep (astrophysics). It is a conundrum. There is mounting evidence, collected by reputable physicists and other scientists, that we are missing something.
Ervin Laszlo died in June of this year, after a long career as a philosopher with a metaphysical interest. That would explain why this book reads like a wish list rather than a proposed research program. His lack of a formal scientific education could explain why this book sounds like nonsense at first glance. However, if taken with a grain of salt, it is an excellent generalization of the characteristics of a theory of everything. What it lacks is a systematic, skeptical presentation of the data; he seems to accept a large amount of paranormal data at face value.
I would caution anyone who reads this to be more skeptical than the author. Scientific inquiry requires an open mind, a trait more common to philosophers than physicists–probably because philosophers don’t have to work so hard to comprehend what has already been learned. Progress is slow most of the time, but this book and the concepts it presents is a step in the right direction.
I recommend it as a primer on what may come in the future, but don’t expect Laszlo’s New Physics to become real anytime soon.
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