Computer simulation has arrived big time, in everything from movie effects to election forecasts; here's an expert's overview. Beginning with an attempt to predict the outcome of a Super Bowl, Casti (Searching for Certainty, 1991) chose a popular but fairly sophisticated computer game program to play a series of simulated games between the 1995 opponents, the 49ers and Chargers. He uses his results (which suggest either that the actual game was a fluke or that the program is flawed) to make several basic points about computer simulations and models. They can be predictive or explanatory; perfect fidelity to the real world is not the sole virtue; and they are often most useful in analysis of complex phenomena that in the real world are either dangerous to meddle with (such as the flight patterns over a busy airport) or very rare (the collision of a meteor with Earth). He then gets down to specifics, describing programs to analyze language, to generate artificial ``life,'' or to forecast the weather. A long and fascinating chapter is devoted to limitations and paradoxes that limit our ability to turn every problem into an easily computable simulation. We get close-up looks at a system modeling the traffic patterns at rush hour in Albuquerque; at neural nets, which attempt to simulate the structure of the human brain; and at ``Sugarscape,'' which extracts basic economic principles from a pure supply-and-demand environment. Casti's subject sometimes leads him into esoteric territory, but he tries to keep it down-to-earth with examples from real life. At the same time, he is not afraid to plunge into such deep waters as Gîdel's Incompleteness Theorem. There is the occasional mathematical formula, but readers without advanced math should be able to follow the argument—especially because of the excellent use of illustrations and diagrams. A very solid and useful discussion of the theory and practice of computer modeling in the physical and social sciences.
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-471-12308-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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