more books

Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond, Jared.
Oldish book that Papa flipped through long ago but never really got around to reading it. No real need for Papa to review it. Good book.

Papa has been reading pulp fiction for a change, Warhammer 40,000 books. Nothing much to mention here.

To torment himself (now that for the past few weeks Mama seems to be not so explosive) [she's not dormant either, its like one of those volcanoes that are always active, no such luck for Papa] Papa has gotten into his grubby hands ,

An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, From If to Is by Graham Priest.

Looks to be VERY heavy going. The mathematical symbols strewn across its pages, are the likes of which Papa has not seen before. Papa thought that Papa should study logic in order to understand madness. But then it would appear that logic has its own, ehm madness. An excerpt from the preface appended below.

Despite this, many of the most interesting developments in logic in the last forty years, especially in philosophy, have occurred in quite different areas: intuitionism, conditional logics, relevant logics, paraconsistent logics, free logics, quantum logics, fuzzy logics, and so on. These are all logics which are intended either to supplement classical logic, or else to replace it where it goes wrong.

So when logic goes wrong, we replace it with other logic.....errrr... is that logical??

As a counterpoint Papa has started on :

Masters and Commanders (no sailing ships here), How Four Titans Won the War in the West (1941-1945) by Andrew Roberts.

Papa is on page 57, out of 735 pages. This is the first book that Papa has read where the book proper starts on page 49 , the previous pages being preface and introduction.... Too early to say for Papa, but it seems a good book to read at leisure. At any rate Papa learnt just how much the United States ascended in world domination in 50 years. Papa is fond of quotes:

The Spanish–American War broke out in the spring after Marshall joined VMI, and as he told the cadets there fifty-three years later, on what was by then called Marshall Day, ‘For the first time the United States stepped into the international picture. At that period, there was not a single ambassador accredited to the United States. We were recognized in the world largely as a country of Indians and buffalo, crude and remarkable manners, and the sudden wealth of a few. By the time Marshall himself became secretary of state of the United States in 1947, it was indisputably the most powerful country in the world...."

From not having a single ambassador on its shores to being THE superpower in two generations. There is a lesson here in how one should view China, and its leap forward in the second generation after Deng Xiao Peng.