I was struck again several times just this weekend by this idea that I've been having regarding levels of knowledge and learning. And when things come in batches like this, it makes sense to pay attention and think about them.

The basic example of the situation is this: When you first learn about a subject, you are by definition a novice. Depending on the topic area, there may be many books on the subject geared toward your knowledge level. As you become more adept though, the number of books on the topic that are worthwhile to you dwindle.

We were looking at books on home decorating over the weekend. There simply are no basic books. The books that exist all assume some fundamental level of interior design skill that we simply don't possess.

As an aside, these interior design books are also particularly annoying in that there is no practical guide -- all of the photos in the books are of well-designed houses that are configured nothing like the box of bricks the typical family lives in. I'm sure I'll eventually discover a book that shows how to decorate a typical American cookie-cutter home, and I'll be pleased when I do, but until then all I have to look at are books where every ceiling is vaulted, every entryway is parquet'ed, and all the woodwork is antique.

Programming is certainly this way. When I started to learn how to code, I was typing code from magazine listings and the scant few books that talked about programming. These were very basic. I don't know of any analogue to those publications these days. Where are the true beginner materials?

One of the fundamental things I discovered about people learning to program is that everyone starts at a different place. When you get into programming, you don't all get in on the "ground floor". The building certainly isn't a single high-rise, but a weaving Escher-esque nightmare of staircases that converge at odd angles, sometimes upside-down. As a result, many people are missing certain things that I find fundamental to know. For example, being able to "read" code - where you sort of "execute" the code in your head to imagine what it will do - is a fundamental skill that very few of the people I know practice explicitly.

But assuming you even obtain a basic layer of knowledge, everyone's ground floor is different. And like a concept well-described in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky", as the automation of a technology increases, the layers of abstraction increase to the point that the truly basic underlying systems are understood by hardly anyone. Take for example the workings of the web. While practically anyone with a keyboard these days can produce a web site using software they stumble upon while browsing, just because you can do so does not mean you have the knowledge of how the browser works, or how your TCP/IP stack requests the information it gets, or how the routers between you and the internet move that traffic, or how your computer is able to turn the code it receives into something readable, or how the jpeg images are decoded for display, or how the code that displays the images received from those vast distances is dissembled into bits of assembler instructions that cause the microscopic components of that machine to execute anything. What few software engineers know anything about the low level functionality of a floating point processing unit, for example?

Yet, you can pick up a magazine at any bookstore that will explain how to build whole, useful web sites.

Is it useful for a web designer to know anything about assembler? Probably not. And I don't posit that the art of compiler design is lost (yet) for all of them fleeing to build a new Facebook. But there is an interesting disparity of knowledge there. And my point here is that there's no real connection to be made between.

Sure, you can pick up the knowledge of how to build web sites, but if you wanted to learn the next thing - maybe it's how to build a browser - you'd be hard pressed to find a manual on that. And I think that's the case with a great many disciplines. After you've learned the basics, and maybe a level on top of that, things tend to either get specialized to the point of requiring knowledge that you would have to have obtained externally, or simply don't exist.

I wonder if there's a place for these in-between classes. A class you could take to learn how to get from novice to advanced specialist that is more general than jumping directly to the specialist class. Because I think that the way we learn these days is different than most formal instruction. With formal instruction, you have a path from knowing nothing to specializing. These days, you start out as a specialist, not needing to know more basics or advanced techniques to survive. But a class or some books that I don't think exist now to fill in the gaps to allow people to move laterally into related disciplines seems like something that could be beneficial.

I came upon a homework assignment on the kitchen table entitled "My Hero". While I wasn't expecting to be the subject of such a report, I was surprised by the opening sentence:

For a hero most people have their mom or dad or even their pets, but I'm different.

Now Abby's not the sort to pick some singing pop star as her hero, but explicitly calling out her parents (and pets?) as people that are not her hero was a bit unexpected. Like I said, I'm not looking for adulation, maybe just a little recognition. Or something.

It turns out that Abby's hero is Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series of novels. She credits him with showing her that reading can be fun. This is amusing to me because it was upon my insistence that Abby stop reading only the required 10-minute increments and start reading whole chapters each evening as her homework. What was once a stuttering incoherent smattering of paragraphs completed in an allotted time period suddenly became a story worth sticking with, and soon she was reading multiple chapters willingly, without incentive.

Maybe his book had something to do with that. But when we were reading the Percy Jackson series, we read it together. It was a kind of informal race. I think it was fun to be able to discuss the book with her afterwards, since we both had read it. We could share that experience. Maybe I'm mistaken in that it brought us closer together by giving us something more in common. Huh... strange...

So yes. Rick Riordan is my hero, too. Because without his compelling books, Abby and I would not have shared that experience, and she would not be the excellent reader and creative writer she is today.

It's actually been a while since the last Harry Potter film, and even longer since the 7-book series ended. While we middling Potter fans look forward to whatever The Half Blood Prince brings in July, there are a bevy of movies that are aimed to fill the space of kid-friendly fantasy.

There is, of course, the classic Chronicles of Narnia, also based on books, but dredged up from C.S.Lewis' writings in the 1950's. The two movies so far are nice to look at, and have the same characteristic qualities of the books. As an adult, the story doesn't quite hold up in a few places. There are just a few too many strange moments where I'm left asking, "Why would that be?" And it's hard to avoid the religious undertones.

My kids really liked like A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is not a fantasy in terms of magic and monsters, but is itself somewhat fantastic and fits into this grouping if only because it's a movie based on a popular children's book series. We didn't read the books, but friends have, and I'm told that the movie has condensed several books into the single film. What irritates me about this movie is that there are so many high-powered stars in it, but all of them seem to pander their roles to children. Meryl Streep is the worst of the bunch, making me cringe just thinking about it. Nonetheless, the whole movie is worth the price of admission just to see the end credits and hear the soundtrack, which are amazing.

I saw City of Ember in the bookstore long before the movie came out this year. The book sounded interesting, but not quite interesting enough for me to buy it, instead going onto my mental "one day, when I have no other obligations" list. City of Ember is also based on a series starting with the book of the same name, and seems to have four books to the set so far. I will be watching this movie soon, and if it's worthwhile, I'll write more. Still, even without having read the book, I'm disturbed by having both Bill Murray (bad?) and Tim Robbins (good?) in the movie.

Eragon came out as a movie after the Harry Potter series finished also. My goodness, that was a terrible movie. It wasn't the movie quality that was terrible, but the story. The story was simply awful. I really hope - and must assume - that the books were simply not translated well, because there are three books in the Inheritance trilogy.

The problem as I see it, is that there is a lack of good fantasy story in general. When you really look at it, Harry Potter isn't all that great of a story. In particular it tends to explain away all of the weird stuff that happens in the last five pages with some unknown knowledge. They're kind of like the Scooby Doo episodes where the guy who "done" it is someone you've never seen before.

Is the problem even more basic in that people have forgotten how to craft a plot? Writing good kids' plots is hard. You can't talk down, but you don't want to be too complicated. I can see how that would be difficult. Still, with all of the writers in the world, you would think that there would be some new epic children's novel to get excited about at least every year. Keep an eye out.

Over the past weekend, we took the usual summer pilgrimage to Johnstown. This time, Berta's sister Therese was in the process of moving, so while they packed up some of their things, I watched the kids. This turned out not too unpleasant. During the time going out and while the kids were entertaining themselves amicably, I was able to do some more reading.

When last Pat as in town, he loaded up my Kindle with a few sample books. I started reading one by Vernor Vinge called "A Fire Upon the Deep". It was both interesting and strange. We also started listening to an audiobook prequel to the Tales of the Otori trilogy, "Heaven's Net is Wide", by Lian Hearn.

A Fire Upon the Deep is, as I said, strange. It's been a while since I've read true space sci-fi, and this certainly qualifies. It will be difficult to explain some of the many layered characteristics of this book, which set to establish axioms by which Vinge's world operates.

The book happens in two general spaces. First, there is the near crashlanding of a ship on a world of medieval rat-dog beasts. The rat-dogs have somewhat long necks, and share a pack mind using these sound transceivers (tympanum) in their head and shoulders to send brain waves as sound. These "tines", as the creatures are come to be called, have certain restrictions in being close to each other in order to keep the mentality of their persons separate from each other.

In the crash landed ship are humans. There is a family of humans, the adults of which are killed early in the book, and the remaining awake children (there are many in a sort of cryo-sleep) are separated to two different Tine camps. A good remainder of the book is dedicated to these two factions using their claimed technology and human children to gain a combative advantage over the other. Meanwhile...

The reason the ship crash landed in the first place is because they were fleeing a human-run lab at the edge of the Transcend. In Vinge's space, there seems to be strata of ability related to how far you are away from the galactic center. So you have a range between the Slowness and the Transcend called the Beyond, which itself is broken into three sections, the Top the Middle and the Bottom of the Beyond. The significance of this? You can only travel faster than the speed of light outside of the Slowness, and the closer you get to the Transcend, you faster and smarter your machinery can get.

In the Transcend there exist unseen Powers that can reprogram organisms or perhaps even whole civilizations. They may be the creators of what is known to exist in the book. They are not all benevolent, and during the lab's excursion to gain knowledge from findings in the Transcend, they discover/create/awaken quite a powerful Perversion, a kind of Power that creates a Blight of large swaths of the Beyond.

It's one of those deals with science fiction where you just have to say, "Ok, sure."

In the Beyond, is a woman who receives the SOS transmission from the crashed ship, and finds herself aimed straight at the Slowness in an effort to retrieve what small bit of recovered and smuggled lab artifact might save the universe from the Perversion.

Like I explained, the book has two fronts. The toggling between the two was the usual harsh, "Aw, man, I wanted to know what would happen," at every other chapter or so. The aliens of Vinge's world were strange. I had the most difficulty imagining the skroderiders, a kind of plant-beast affixed to a mechanism that gives them the ability to think at a greater speed.

The book was an entertaining read, but I'm left somewhat unsatisfied with the ending. I really thought something more or better would happen. The Countermeasure in the crashed ship was kind of disappointing in its offering.

Also, and I'm sure this is just an oddity in my edition of the ebook, there were editing notes all through the novel. The notes themselves were 1/3 of its bulk. This led to a good bit of my surprised when I turned to the next page, hoping to see more of their return to the Beyond and instead found, "THE END."

I'll probably try some of Vinge's other work. Pat has another queued in my Kindle. But I have some other things to catch up on before I get back into that high-space drama.

We have not yet finished Heaven's Net Is Wide, but we're about half way through. The audio book is a frightening 17+ hours, yet it's quite good.

I don't remember the story of the original trilogy as well as I'd like, but I do recall some of the characters who will eventually take part. This story takes place in a feudal Japan, and although they don't mention Samurai or Ninja, it has those elements. Combatants with honor, lordly families, stuff like that...

The book is mostly about Otori Shigeru, the son of the middle country's lord, trying to keep his family in power through his father's inconsistent leading and his uncles' treachery. He meets members of the Tribe, a secretive group of mercenaries and assassins with otherworldly powers that had been lost over the ages. There is also the Hidden, who strangely worship a single god and will not kill or take their own lives, but are yet courageous, which Shigeru finds uncommon. The intrigues of fealty grow through these groups and the taking of wives for marriages of alliance, and mistresses for... other needs. Of course, who knows who is a spy!

As I said, we're not done the book yet, but it does have the flavor of the other three, which we did like when we listened.

I have a few new books in, based on some conversation online. I've started The Paradox of Choice, which should be a short read, and Get Back in the Box arrived today. Both of these will hopefully lead to more insight into marketing efforts in the future.

I've also got in the Kindle the last book of Jaqueline Carey's Imriel series, which I'm quite looking forward to. Eventually, I'll get to the other 80 books in there, too. It's nice, at least, not to have an actual "stack" to represent my stacked backlog of books.

This post has very little to do with cats, except that they've been rampant distractions while I've been reading lately. They attacked a box of Rice-A-Roni in the pantry, leaving little noodles all over the floor, and also shredded a volleyball with a soft foam exterior. The cardboard scratching things are still used - I think it's just a matter of getting in there and clipping claws. But enough cat news.

I've finished reading a few books recently. The first book is Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore. Practical Demonkeeping is about a demon named Catch (what a preposterous name) who eats people, and his master, Travis, visiting Moore's fictional town of Pine Cove - the setting of many of his books. There, Travis seeks out the device that would free him from the demon that "serves" him, and Catch seeks out a new master that would free him from Travis. Of course, the interaction with the townsfolk leads to much drama, which is the crux of all of Moore's books.

I liked Practical Demonkeeping in that it was light and entertaining. It's certainly not the best of Moore's books. I preferred You Suck and A Dirty Job, as well as the Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. Still, it was entertaining. Not as many of the characters carry over in this book, and I found myself missing Theo and Molly from The Stupidest Angel. Man, I've read a lot of Moore, haven't I? Another author I'm beginning to think I've read plenty of is Philip Pullman.

I've finally finished the last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Amber Spyglass. It's an interesting trilogy on the whole, and as I've told Berta, the first two books seem only to be an introduction for the events of the third.

In this book, Lyra and Will escape from the vile Mrs. Coulter, visit the land of the dead, and take on the forces of heaven in armed combat. I can see why people might think of these books as heretical. On one hand, there are some pretty heavy ideas here. On the other hand, you can simply toss all of them aside as a work of imaginative fiction.

While I did enjoy the story, and it's probably one that'll stick with me in meaning for a while after reading, unlike the effervescent books of Moore, I think there are some elements that are just silly. For example, the Mulefa. While somewhat plausible, Pullman eludes to some evolutionary cause for their appearance, and has his characters all hang lanterns like, "Gee, isn't it strange that these creatures exist, and that all of these evolutionary events must have coincided for this to happen. I wonder how." And then never explains how. It seems like he just wanted to add these weird creatures into the book, and didn't have a good excuse.

An interesting thing about the book were the chapter quotations. Many of the quotes were from a poet/artist William Blake. His brief moments between plot have me interested enough to look into his work specifically.

I might consider reading some other work by Pullman, but I think I'll put that off for a while. I've had William Gibson's latest book on my shelf for far too long, and it's about time I got to that.

I did also finish recently Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. The things I had expected to apply from Made to Stick have been utterly useless in convincing anyone in Habari of a good way to promote the software. Which is sad, since the ideas are sound but nobody will listen. Here's an amusing thought I formed based on that whole interaction: People who are not educated are not easily swayed by educated reasoning. That's not to say I'm more educated than others, but the noisiest folk were the people with no experience or research, and their opinions - although I thought them ineffective - were the ones settled upon. Apparently what I need is a book about convincing people of things. I'm sure I have a few of those around here in a stack.

Next weekend I'm off to PodCamp, where travel will surely yield reading time. I'll probably fill this with podcasting reference material though, since I don't feel like I'm not the podcasting expert that I should be.