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Book Review – The Zookeeper’s Wife

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Thanks to Telesilla Kotsi for the guest book review!

The Zookeeper’s Wife
by Diane Ackerman, 2007

The Zookeeper’s wife is another book about WWII by Diane Ackerman. The difference between this and other books concerning the Holocaust is that it is given from the perspective of a Polish person that helped Jews escape from the Nazis. Moreover, although Jan, the zookeeper, is the one who decides to hide and help Jews, eventually all the responsibility to make sure they don’t get arrested falls on the shoulders of his wife, Antonina. In this sense, the book depicts Antonina as a woman who has a gift to communicate and connect with animals. This gift was the reason why Antonina escaped arrest many times; an interesting parallelism between Germans and beasts that the author makes obvious in various parts of the book. However, it is also clear that Antonina is not a heroine who takes her life and the life of her guests in her own hands. She is a wife who always tried her best to please her husband instead.

My feelings are really mixed about the book. I think it had the potential to say a great story, a story that almost any country under the German occupation can connect with. But, the plot falls short in describing some of the main characters, i.e. Jan who leaves every day and we only get to know him through his interactions with Antonina, and Rys, the son of the couple, whose main task is to take food to their guests and play with a chicken and a bunny that remain in the zoo. Even the life and actions of Antonina seem hidden in parts where the attention is drawn to the destruction of Warsaw and the general devastation of Poland. I believe that this is a very good first novel for a teenager who knows no historical details about the WWII and needs to be introduced to the topic smoothly.

The Zookeper’s Wife became a movie this year (2017). Although the movie doesn’t do justice to all the historical research and the verbose writing of Ackerman, it is highly recommended for anyone who wants to spend an hour to understand how a couple succeeded in hiding 300 Jews in 6 years under the nose of Nazis.

Energetic 20171005

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Will it clean the streets as it drives?

Power production costs on a decreasing trend. Cheaper natural gas, more renewables.

For Corporations Acquiring Renewables, It’s Not All About Price. That’s reasonable. This is not: “Energy and utility companies were the least likely industry to say their company would be more assertive in acquiring renewables in the next two years. Only 37.5 percent of those companies said they wanted to become more aggressive in purchasing renewable energy.”

Marginal health costs of microscopic particulate matter may be decreasing in their density in the air. This is opposite of what you probably expect. It means that the greatest health benefits (per person) may be had by decreasing PM2.5 in areas where it is already low. Taking into account the fact that populations are highest in Indian and China, where PM2.5 is high, it may still be most worthwhile to decrease levels there.

Rounding the Bases 20170929

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What Tuesday’s scandal means for the future of college basketball.

There is no obvious National League MVP.

Carson Wentz and the kicker the Bengals cut. BTW, the same week Elliott hits a 61-yd FG for the win, the Bengals kicker that they kept missed a FG in route to an overtime loss.

Interesting case of Pro Football Focus data on NBC telecasts.

PFF has invited coaches to study its process, to meet the analysts who watch that film and determine those ratings. [Chip] Kelly was so impressed, according to Collinsworth, that he bought a share of the the company.

Book Review – Elon Musk

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Thanks to Brian Bergman for the guest book review!

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance, 2015

After watching Elon Musk’s conversation with Chris Anderson at TED2017 in April, Ashlee Vance’s timestamp book on him and his various pursuits rocketed (yes, I just did that) to the top of my “To Read” list. This quick read – about 300 pages – chronicles Elon’s personal life, his involvement and success with PayPal, and his work to launch Tesla Motors and SpaceX (with greater emphasis on the latter). Through interviews with Musk, his family, close friends, colleagues, and enemies he’s made along the way, Vance does a nice job of blending these perspectives and narratives with the technical details of what Musk and his companies are trying to accomplish. The book is full of entertaining and thought-provoking stories – Musk’s anger and response when learning another US automaker took the rights for “Model E,” how the Tesla team dismantled a Lotus and Mercedes CLS to design their cars, the modular design of SpaceX rockets, the list goes on.

Elon certainly gets his fair share of praise from the press and his cult of followers. Upon reading Vance’s book, it is hard for one not to appreciate Musk, not only for his ambition, but for the very sophisticated scientific/technical command he has over what his companies are trying to do. A bit dated now, this book is still a great window into the life of a unique person building some of the most disruptive companies of the early 21st century.

Energetic 20170928

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Chance of a solar panel tariff.

Solar power to protect military installations.

In a sense, stationing diesel-fueled generators outside key buildings to provide emergency power is a start down this path. But fuel supply lines can be disrupted too, so renewable energy is best for a long-lasting solution. Solar photovoltaic systems, which generate electricity directly from sunlight, are best because they are easy to maintain, can be located almost anywhere and don’t need to be refueled.

Primer on lithium production.