The Making of Incarnation

By Tom McCarthy

Knopf. 336 pp. $28

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If you've ever tried counting sheep and found yourself, rather than dropping off, wondering if there might be some kind of design underpinning the leaps and bleats of your woolly friends, Tom McCarthy's new book might be for you. "The Making of Incarnation," the British writer's fifth novel, is an investigation of pattern and connection set in the world of motion studies. And lest that sound dry, rest assured it also asks such big questions as how can you fake zero-gravity love-making onscreen? and what happens if you put a bobsled in a wind tunnel?

"Incarnation," for those stumbling over the title, is the name of a movie "a grand space opera in the Star Wars mould, with princesses, kidnappers, pirates, smugglers." The design of its special effects is the ostensible subject of many of the book's chapters, vignettes in which bodies both human and machine provide the blueprints for mega-budget illusion. The company consulting on this work is Pantarey Motion Systems, a high-tech outfit whose motion studies have had applications not only in medical, military and sporting simulations but also in CGI. (The name presumably derives from "panta rhei," a phrase usually attributed to Heraclitus that means something like "everything flows.")

While these long motion-capture sequences crackle with thrilling technical argot and are pretty interesting in themselves, the real plot lies elsewhere. Stripped back, "The Making of Incarnation" is a thriller, an international caper about the search for a missing box. Somewhere putatively buried deep in a research institution in a former Soviet country, is an archival carton containing a cyclegraph, a wire frame model of a movement that, we're told, "changes everything."

The box in question, Box 808, appears to be missing from the papers of Lillian Gilbreth, a brilliant American psychologist whose experiments in time-and-motion studies ushered in the ergonomic efficiencies of modern industry. (She's real USPS put her on a stamp in 1984 and McCarthy does a great service to readers in resurfacing her story, notwithstanding his embellishments to it.) Gilbreth, in the course of her career, "attempted to amass a general taxonomy of act and gesture" in an effort to find "the one best way" of performing basic actions. In McCarthy's telling, it seems she may have found it but her archive at Purdue lacks the crucial jigsaw piece (it is "perdu," or "lost," as McCarthy punningly observes). Cue much intellectual globetrotting and arcane pontificating as the novel transforms into a road trip of ideas.

Though twice a nominee for Britain's Booker Prize, McCarthy isn't a mainstream novelist. In his public pronouncements, sometimes under the auspices of the International Necronautical Society a "semifictitious avant-garde network" he founded in 1999 he's disdained the notion of writing as self-expression and the tendencies of middlebrow fiction toward what he sees as uninteresting humanism. As the narrator of his 2015 novel, "Satin Island," exclaims: "events! If you want those, you'd best stop reading now." Events or character, he might have said McCarthy is simply not interested in emotional development, besotted though he may be with other arcs.

His rejection of the standard props of realist fiction will alienate some. The prose here is complex and largely free of lyricism; instead, McCarthy opts for the precision of scientific or instructional language. Many sentences read like verbal description or the alt text used by screen readers to help blind computer users, as if there might in fact be one best way of transcribing the world. McCarthy doesn't see panes of glass so much as "soda-lime-silica-constituted, batch-mixed, tin-bath-poured, roller-lifted, lehr-cooled and strainlessly annealed, machine-cut rectangles displaying a regularity, indeed a sharpness, of light propagation with refraction kept right down at

As you may surmise, the book can be fascinating but at times a hair tedious. McCarthy's voluminous research is everywhere on the page and, yes, very impressive but you may find yourself stopping to look up supercavitation, acetabulum or festination only to turn back having forgotten what's happening.

But difficulty is also part of the pleasure of reading McCarthy. In both his fiction and nonfiction, he seeds patterns and ideas that, taken together, gesture grandly (if disingenuously) towards a Big Theory. Devotees will be delighted to spot old preoccupations resurfacing, from etymology and the philosophical implications of repetition to the significance of Queequeg's coffin in "Moby-Dick" and the idea from "Remainder," his first novel that everything leaves its mark. Like all his fiction to date, "The Making of Incarnation" is a novel of motion rather than emotion; imagine an even chillier J.G. Ballard. But that's not a criticism this excursion into what McCarthy might call the "source-code" of behavior is a rich and fascinating exercise in observation.

What does it add up to? As one of McCarthy's characters avers during a disquisition on the three-point turn that killed Franz Ferdinand: "I'm not saying anything. Just tracing out a set of lines; a fracture network. That's all I do."

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Tom McCarthy's 'The Making of Incarnation' is a mind-bending international caper - theday.com

Larry Little| Columnist

Recently a friend of mine told me that he was in the fifth grade in 1999 at the now-closed Olympic View Elementary School in Bremerton when he helped a man from NASA move a miniature prototype of what is now the launched James Webb telescope from one school to another. My friend was in awe then. He remains a fan.

So am I.

There is something mind-stretching about a telescope 100 times greater than Hubble launched on Christmas Day that will be looking deep into space from a stationary orbit a million miles away from home. The James Webb telescope will not just be looking, it will be searching for some very distant friends of ours. I think they are not only there; but may well be seeking us as well. Some have called the James Webb telescope a time machine because it will be looking at what is long since gone, catching light from civilizations perhaps millions of years extinct.

We have a risk of extinction today. Perhaps climate change or nuclear war or something else will smother us, drown us or bake us. But our baby steps to address those challenges will remain just that inadequate and thus ineffective until we recognize that more fundamental issues prevent us from working together on life-terminating challenges.

As an example of those challenges, if we look real closely at the current saga of a Chinese tennis star who once accused a high-ranking party member of rape, we can see a glimmer of at least two issues standing in our way of collectively working on our future: a fight to the death between democracy and totalitarianism, and the unresolved age-old instincts of men versus those of women.

I wish Peng Shuai well, but fear for her and millions of others in captive situations at home and around the world. And for us, if we dont look deep like the James Webb telescope, but much closer to home.

Lets look for more evidence of gender challenges inhibiting our future beyond our 50% divorce rate.

One way to start that vital search is by looking at four other events that were in the news on or around our most recent Christmas Day. One offers a pathway; the others more challenges.

Lets start with one of my favorite public personages, Queen Elizabeth II. This Christmas she spoke with words that likely resonate with so many of us, and certainly for me:

"Although its a time of great happiness and good cheer for many, Christmas can be hard for those who have lost loved ones. This year, especially, I understand why…But for me, in the months since the death of my beloved Phillip [after 73 years of marriage] I have drawn great comfort from the warmth and affection of the many tributes to his life and work…His sense of service, intellectual curiosity and capacity to squeeze fun out of any situation were all irresistible. That mischievous, enquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him."

To me, thats enduring love and a wonderful living example of the best of Christmas. If we can take her words to heart and aspire to live them for our lifes legacy, we will advance the potential, and even the survival, of our civilization.

The other recent news stories are far more nuanced, and sobering.

Lets look first at the stories of former police officer Kim Potter and truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos.

Potter was a veteran police officer training a rookie by conducting a traffic stop. She apparently mistakenly shot the man they stopped instead of the appropriate tasering. She was convicted of both first- and second-degree manslaughter. Her sentencing is pending.

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos was convicted and then sentenced to 110 years in prison for what also appears to be a largely accidental act. He chose to continue down a slope rather than crash and potentially kill himself, after his truck brakes failed, resulting in a crash that killed four people.

Looking deeper than the technicalities at the extraordinarily long sentence given the man who made a mistake, and the likely short sentence for the woman who made a not so dissimilar mistake, a question should be obvious.

Couple that question with the fact that 93% of those in American prisons are men, and something else should be obvious: we have ignored a fundamental issue for way too long.

Examining that fundamental issue, with all of its complexities, becomes even more of an imperative when one mixes in the very recent Ghislaine Maxwell verdict of facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children

As the new year beacons, we should embrace what the James Webb telescope might see, what Queen Elizabeth has seen, and what we should see in stories such as that of a police officer, a truck driver, and a predator.

Happy New Year!

Contact Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.

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Hubble Telescope's observations detailed by Brian Cox

Researchers are now attempting to deploy the James Webb Space Telescope's instruments, the space observatory having launched on Saturday. In order for it to work, the barrier must successfully unpack its five-layered Sun shield. Without it, Webb cannot achieve the super-cold temperatures needed by its mirror and instruments to work properly a "make or break" moment.

Once open, Webb will be able to observe the planets beyond the orbit of Mars, satellites, comets, asteroids, and Kuiper Belt Objects.

Most importantly, it will be able to see in great detail galaxies, stars and their planets deep within our own universe, with a view to better understand the origins of existence and how time came to be.

Webb's predecessor, which served science and our desire to understand more about the cosmos, is the Hubble Space Telescope, launched into orbit in 1990, it has for over 30 years taken photographs of aspects of our universe millions and billions of light-years away.

Its achievements were explored during the BBC's cutting-edge series with Professor Brian Cox, 'Universe: Where everything begins and ends'.

Light travels very slowly on the universal scale, only 186,000 miles a second.

It takes light eight minutes to journey from the sun to the Earth; it takes four years for light to journey from the next-nearest star, meaning we see that star as it was four years in the past.

So, the further out into the universe we go, the further back in time we look.

And, because we can look way out into the instant universe through the Hubble Telescope, we are able to look back towards the beginning of time.

Prof Cox noted: "In the quest to find the origin of the universe, we need a time machine a telescope so powerful that can peer out so far into the universe that it can capture the most ancient light and carry us back towards the dawn of time."

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He noted that NASA has successfully achieved this time-travelling mission, and said: "The Hubble Space Telescope has taken us on an odyssey through the universe, revealing its gods, and monsters.

"Our universe is a place of beauty and terror, Hubble has shown us visions of sublime creation and images of awesome destruction, illuminating our journey backwards in time towards the dawn."

Between 2004 and 2005, the Hubble captured its sharpest views yet of the Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery containing clouds of gas nurturing newborn stars in the Milky Way.

Its image was brought to us by light that left the nebula 1,300 years ago.

The same can be said of the Pillars of Creation, within the Eagle Nebula, towering, delicate structures that are light-years tall, whose light has taken 7,000 years to reach us, also captured by Hubble.

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The Andromeda Galaxy, a glittering island of a trillion suns, has been brought to us by light from 2.5 million years ago.

And a Cosmic rose comprised of two interacting galaxies distorted by their mutual gravitational pull was captured in August of this year, whose light took 300 million years to reach us.

Hubble's voyage has taken us even further out into the uncharted ocean of space, glimpsing countless ancient and faraway galaxies, some of whose images have taken billions of years to reach the Earth, "lighting the way to the primordial past".

Finally, Hubble approached the farthest shore, the outermost limit it was able to achieve.

A galaxy near the dawn of time, one that came cosmological moments after the Big Bang 400 million years known as GNz11, has taken 13.4 billion years to reach Earth.

The Hubble, then, has travelled through time, one of NASA's biggest success stories.

Now, the James Webb Telescope will be able to plunge to even greater depths than the Hubble.

It will cover longer wavelengths of light than Hubble and will have greatly improved sensitivity, which will enable it to look further back in time to see the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, ones like GNz11, but in better detail.

Webb will also be able to peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.

Currently, NASA has yet to observe the era of our universe's history when galaxies began to form and so there is much to learn about how galaxies got supermassive black holes in their centres.

We also do not know whether the black holes caused the galaxies to form, or vice versa.

And while we cannot see inside dust clouds with high resolution, where stars and planets are being born today, Webb will be able to do just that.

Many scientists have heralded the launch of Webb as the next step in our understanding of space; something that will enable us to better understand ourselves and the world around us.

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Brian Cox's mind-blowing explanation of NASA's 'time machine' at depths of universe - Daily Express

There are seven stocks that investors seem to worship. In the parlance of the 1970s, they are one-decision stocks: You are supposed to buy them and never sell them. Call them the Sacred Seven.

The blessed septet are Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL, formerly Google), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Meta Platforms Inc. (FB, formerly Facebook), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and Tesla Inc. (TSLAJ).

I personally own only two of these seven stocks. Ill list them in order of my preference.

Alphabet

Im not completely objective about Alphabet, since my oldest daughter works for the companys Deep Mind division in London. However, I try to be objective, and I still think Alphabet is a good candidate for the most innovative company on Earth.

It owns the ubiquitous Google search engines, the promising self-driving car project Waymo and the popular video sharing platform YouTube. By price/earnings ratio, it is the second-cheapest of the Sacred Seven, with the stock selling for 28 times recent earnings and 26 times estimated earnings.

Apple

Apple Inc., lord of the iPhone, has nearly $17 billion in cash and more than $113 billion in marketable securities. It has earned 20% or more on invested capital in 12 of the past 15 fiscal years, and last years figure was above 35%, the best since 2009.

Customer loyalty? Most people I know own iPhones, love them and cant imagine life without them.

Apples stock price is up 1,114% over the past decade, including a 29% gain in the past year. The stock price is 31 times earnings.

Microsoft

Once best known for dominating the personal-computer software field (Microsoft Office, Excel), Microsoft is now a big provider of cloud services to companies. Earnings growth, which averaged about 12% over the past decade, shot up to 44% in the past year.

My hesitancy about the stock relates to valuation. It sells for 37 times recent earnings, a bit pricier than Alphabet and Apple. The price/book ratio (stock price divided by corporate net worth per share) and price/sales ratio (stock price divided by per-share revenue) are quite high at 16 and 14, respectively.

Amazon.com

I first heard of Amazon.com around 1995, when a friend who owned a bookstore complained that the company was eating his lunch. From books, Amazon gradually expanded into selling every type of merchandise.

Computer power always has been the key to its success and, lately, it, like Microsoft, provides cloud services to many large companies.

I think Amazon will continue to grow. Home shopping jumped because of the pandemic, but it was growing steadily even before that. However, the stock, at 66 times earnings, discounts a lot of future success.

Netflix

Netflix deserves immense praise for pioneering the streaming model of home entertainment, in which consumers can watch almost anything they wish at a time convenient for them. But success always breeds imitation in other words, increasing competition.

Streaming services now competing with Netflix include Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, HBO Plus and Paramount Plus. Return on invested capital, recently about 15%, had weakened prior to the pandemic and still is below the levels of 2006-10.

The price/earnings ratio is steep at 55 times recent earnings and 47 times estimated earnings.

Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, has some major competitive advantages. Because so many people use its sites, they are useful for finding people or staying in touch with friends. And because the company has detailed information about people, it can target ads something that advertisers relish.

There are clouds, however. Use by younger people is edging downward. Politicians and regulators in Europe and the U.S. are pushing the company to give users more privacy protections. Meta also has problems in policing unacceptable speech on its site, including hate speech and malicious political propaganda.

Because of these issues, Meta sells for the lowest price/earnings ratio in the Sacred Seven, 24 times trailing earnings and 22 times estimated forward earnings.

Tesla

Elon Musks manufacturer of snazzy electric cars broke into the black in 2020 and improved its profits a lot in 2021. Musk has flair, charisma and boldness and strikingly bad judgment at times, for example when he feuds with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Teslas valuations defy the old saying, Even trees dont grow to the sky. The stock sells for 345 times recent earnings, 147 times estimated forward earnings. Anything other than perfect corporate performance could trigger an enormous drop.

Disclosure: I own Alphabet and Apple personally and for almost all of my clients. My wife, Katharine Davidge, who is a portfolio manager at Dorfman Value Investments, owns Microsoft and Amazon.com personally and for clients.

John Dorfman is chairman of Dorfman Value Investments LLC in Newton Upper Falls, Mass., and a syndicated columnist. His firm or clients may own or trade securities discussed in this column. He can be reached via email.

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John Dorfman: Why I own only 2 of the Sacred Seven stocks - TribLIVE