SCRUM: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff & J. J. Sutherland

There are surely better SCRUM books to buy (but this one was recommended by me by my pal and co-worker James).  The author, CEO of Scrum, Inc. (it’s his story, co-authored with his son), is a bit self-congratulatory, and his cheerleading for SCRUM often comes across like he’s plugging a miracle weight loss regimen.  That said, it did get me excited about some scrummy ideas, and inspire me to try to put some into practice.  My job is allegedly going to try to tackle its next project in an “agile” manner.  Ha.  We’ll see how that goes.

  The plot twist of the ending WAS pretty good.  I was prepared to give it nothing but scathing, negative comments; but she did pull off a good ending.
But oy, so many tangents!  Too long!  “Oh, you cannot possibly understand Clara without first knowing about Ryan Topps…”  I beg to differ.  We did not need to know one whit about Ryan Topps – it would have made NO difference to the progress of the story whatsoever.
Most of the characters were at least a bit grotesque, and quite incoherent to me.  So much inexplicable conversion to religious fanaticism (Samad, Millat, Ryan Topps).  I only liked Irie, and Niece-of-Shame – I LOVED Niece-of-Shame.  And I loved Irie’s speech telling off her family at the end – I love when annoying characters get put in their place.
But everyone else?  Samad?  Was he a good sympathetic guy, or a religious fanatic – if a religious fanatic, why did he become upset when his son also because a religious fanatic?  Millat – a bad boy, yet, joins a religious cult?  Clara – a sex bomb walking down the stairs, and then all this back history about her being ugly, and then, what of her?  She had no personality.
Things started to wear thin for me with the tangent of the Chelfins, and towards the end when Irie has sex with both twins (in succession) on one night, I decided I hated it – by that time, things felt genuinely random, and I can’t abide reading something where it seems that at any moment literally anything can happen.
Thankfully, as I said, it was tied together at the end (though I hate when pregnancy is used as a tie-together part of an ending, even a small part as here); it had a real conclusion, overlaying everything prior with SOME point.  But I’ve definitely spent a better 448 pages in my life.

  Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier

Although I had devoured three other of Lanier’s books, I originally wasn’t going to get this one, because I’m not terribly interested in virtual reality.  But having read a sample of the personal memoir section (it alternates between memoir and general VR discussion), I was hooked enough to make the purchase.  Lanier seems remarkably un-self-conscious about what an extraordinary upbringing he had.  As a young teen, he was allowed by his single parent father to DESIGN their house.  Which they then BUILT.  And LIVED IN – I think his father was there till his old age.  You have to see the picture and read the descriptions of this structure.  Moving on, Lanier also downplays what an extraordinary polymath he is; his young adult years are full of wonder and interest in almost everything life throws his way.  What an extraordinary individual!  Alas, I’m still not very interested in virtual reality; and he dwells an awful lot on the his company in the 80s, the people and the physical surroundings, which really don’t make as good a read as the multi-dome structure in the middle of the desert designed and built by a lunatic teenager.  The appendices trod over territory familiar to those who’ve read his other books, but serve as excellent summaries of his positions on AI and social media, which endear him to me.

I won’t try to summarize why you should delete your social media accounts right now; I’ve done so elsewhere, and it was the inspiration for me starting this paid-for blog.  But as for AI, and the singularity, and how AI is going to get smart and kill us all, I’d like to bring up an old joke: Son of Sam was crazy.  Son of Sam was crazy because he said he killed people because his dog told him to.  A sane person knows, if your dog tells you to kill people, you say: “NO!  BAD DOG!”

So, if AI programs start trying to kill us?  We say, “NO!  BAD PROGRAM!”

I think that sums up his take.