Finished reading Dan Brown‘s Digital Fortress last night. Good book! At first I was somewhat skeptical, and I’ve never read his later, more famous novels (Da Vinci Code, etc.) nor seen those movies. But this tale of spies, the NSA and cryptography moves right along up to the end, and has several good twists in it. I’m not going to delve into the plot, save that if you’ve read any Tom Clancy novels, this reads a lot like one, and that’s not a bad thing, if you like these types of books and don’t take them seriously.

Written in 1998, naturally it has a bit more ‘NSA are good guys’ tone to it – as opposed to THESE days. Not terribly unlike the Cliff Stoll book I read last December in that respect, really – but sadly quaint to think they used to act responsibly like that.

At any rate, Mr. Brown sets up multiple discussions about ‘who is watching the watchers’ at key points in the novel, but wisely doesn’t editorialize at length – this is a thriller, after all, not The Thin Blue Line. I’m actually surprised they haven’t tried to make this a movie like his later books, although given its central focus on the NSA, i’m sure they wouldn’t like that, especially now.

At any rate, it’s a fast, entertaining read and I recommend it!

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Recently read the nonfiction book The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll. Not sure where I actually found the book, but it’s definitely an interesting read, despite dating from 1989. The book details Mr Stoll’s experiences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he signed on as an astronomer, but worked also at a Unix systems administrator in the IT department. One day in managing his systems he noticed some anomalies, and over a short period of time, identified what he believed to be a hacker in his system. From there the trail simply kept getting more complex and weirder by the month. Despite the age of the book I won’t spoil it for you – if you are a nerdy type (or like a long, drawn out mystery) – this is it. And it’s hard to believe in some parts of the book that this is an actual true story, given what happens to Cliff’s quest and interactions with his boss, the government, and others who become involved.

Other things about the book I found interesting include all the computer talk – reading this book is like taking a trip down memory lane, although much of what he’s working on here predates my use of computers too, really. The Mac had barely appeared at this stage (we were using them for Biology lab graphs and statistical testing during my college experience at this time) and as noted in the book, the other predominant system was the Digital VAX (our computer lab had them too) – PC’s were even newer than the Mac at this point. The level of detail and monitoring he had to engage in to track the hacker kind of boggles my mind – but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.

It’s also neat to read a bit of the NoCal lifestyle he was living at the time (he lived near Berkeley, didn’t have a car, rode his bike everywhere, lived with his girlfriend and another woman, and generally had a ‘free range’ lifestyle probably considered stereotypically Californian, especially when looking back. Rough. 🙂 But it sounds like despite the nauseating end of the Reagan years at the time, it was a fun time to live near and work at Berkeley.

Cliff’s interaction with govt. agencies in numerous cases I suspect is a dramatic difference than it would be today, and that’s sad. While I suspect many of them have the same ‘do right by the American people’ sense of justice they did back then – many others sadly do NOT, that’s patently obvious, even if 9-11 hadn’t dramatically accelerated the process while doubling down on privacy invasions and creating a long-term police state mentality from which we have yet to recover. Very, very sad and alarming.

But finally – Cliff himself is interesting. His mental struggles with what was going on, why or why not it was important to continue, and his long-term quest to figure things out through multiple creative means are engaging and often amusing to follow. And he persists in many cases on simple naivete and curiosity – while maintaining a healthy skepticism and sense of right and wrong. But he keeps a dogged focus on his objective and a positive attitude despite many obstacles, and that’s probably why we’re reading about the story instead of having suffered some dramatic consequence instead.

Piqued your interest? Check out the book!

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Over the past few years, many movies have been pretty hit and miss. For every 40 Year Old Virgin, there are multiple horrible movies like Superbad. For every Inception, there are middling sci-fi attempts like Tron:Legacy. And there are few action/thrillers that offer up much beyond the same old car chases and Matrix–action ripoffs of late. Except the Bourne series.

I just watched the third Bourne movie again this Sunday – The Bourne Ultimatum. And for a second sequel, it’s pretty dadburn good. Despite there being some unbelieveable stuff in these movies (how many times can Matt Damon blast through major cities in small(er) cars, crashing them into/being hit by nearly everyone else, and emerge alive? Apparently always, even if banged up :). And I sure hope our own ‘intelligence’ services aren’t near as cynical (or corrupt) as most of the main actors are in the portrayal of the CIA and similar here (but as these movies came out during the Bush years, I suspect they were making a LONG-overdue ‘statement’ on Bush/Cheney’s corrupt foreign policy, no?).

Anyway, I really like these movies. They are a well-balanced mix of action and plot, with things always moving along fairly well – no real dead spots. They don’t rely on obvious devices of sex and pointless violence to advance the plot (not to say they aren’t violent – they certainly are). And despite many bad things that Bourne ultimately does (or in some cases, is forced to do) you really end up rooting for him throughout. Plus I like that Joan Allen‘s character tries to be the sane one amid all the mayhem – she is given the role of questioning her own agency and its ‘black’ ops (within which Bourne was a key player). The movies don’t answer the many tangential questions they raise about all this, but (again) I sincerely hope much of it is simply Hollywood and not reality. They make effective use of (and if not real – implied commentary on) the ‘Big Brother’ society we are increasingly forced to live in – not fun.

Plus great bad guys! Each movie has at least one, by the end there are several. Especially Albert Finney in the third one. Having seen him now in Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s 12 and this third Bourne movie – like the chameleon Gary Oldman – AF is never the same thing twice!

And yes, Bourne ends up with a (sort of) happy ending by the end of movie 3. Which if you’ve watched all three movies, he damn well deserves, methinks.

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