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Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Handbook by Robert Hamburger

2012-01-26T19:10:00.000-05:00

70%

A bit too juvenile.

Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio

2012-01-09T20:59:00.001-05:00

Foundation and Empire by Issac Asimov

2012-01-09T20:58:00.002-05:00

25%

Burning Chrome by William Gibson

2012-01-09T20:57:00.002-05:00

55%

Foundation by Issac Asimov

2012-01-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

One of the most celebrated works in science-fiction, this first part of a trilogy (or more depending how you see things) explores the notion of 'psycho-history' - the discipline that can mathematically predict large-scale future events - and how to accommodate or resist such happenings. In short, the galactic empire is crumbling and will descend into darkness for 30,000 years... unless the Foundation can act in certain ways through certain crises and make this decline last only 1000 years. I enjoyed thinking about events on such a large time scale but it Asimov wasn't too futuristic in some domains. Men still drank burbon and women were housewives or tertiary characters. Asimov created a world with galactic space travel, yet communication mediums and technology were pretty weak. Also, everything was 'atomic power', likely due to the book written in the early 50s, but still amusing.
Good stuff and I'll likely try the others.

Uncertainty by David Lindley

2012-01-02T16:05:00.003-05:00

Another exploration of the development of quantum theory. While this did offer a few new perspectives (e.g., Bohr was a more intuitive thinker), I think Manjit Kumar's Quantum is a better work.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

2012-01-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

The book that inspired Bladerunner is well-worth your time regardless of if you have seen the film or not. There is more depth, context and interesting events (like 'dialing desired cognitive states).
I enjoy explorations of robots and the future interactions between humans and machines.
The title now has multiple meanings because in the book live animals are prized and expensive possessions. Those who can't afford the real thing sometimes buy robotic versions, like sheep. So, humans dream of aquiring real animals, machines might desire something analogous (and, of course, there is the link to counting sheep while trying to sleep).
Great book.

The Life and Death of Superman by Roger Stern

2011-12-04T23:27:00.000-05:00

Novelization of the comic series in the 1990s that I read so many years ago. A nice little escape but might as well stick with the pictures.

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin & Robert B. Cialdini

2011-12-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

Great little book examining psychological/marketing research about influence. I burned through the audio version and thought it was a good refresh on Cialdini's earlier work, Influence. I do recommend it.

I thought this review on Amazon.com summarized everything nicely:

Houman Tamaddon "Rational Investor" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (Hardcover)

If you haven't read "Influence" by Robert Cialdini then I would strongly recommend skipping this one for now and starting with that one. Cialdini's original book was one of the best psychology books I have ever read. This one is more like a sequel and like most sequels, it is not as good. In Cialdini's "Influence", he talks about 6 weapons of influence:

1) Reciprocity
2) Liking
3) Social Proof
4) Authority
5) Scarcity
6) Commitment and Consistency

This book consists of 50 short chapters where these weapons are at work. Very entertaining and insightful, but I felt that the authors violated some of their own advice by having so many chapters and not organizing them in any particular way. For example, the chapters each demonstrated one of the weapons of influence at work and perhaps the book should have been organized more formally into 6 parts with each part representing one of the weapons. I was very entertained but I am not sure if the book will have any long lasting educational value unlike "Influence".

This is a quick read and I highly recommend it AFTER you have read Cialdini's "Influence".

New New Rules by Bill Maher

2011-12-02T20:09:00.000-05:00

A collection of short, satirical social commentary culled from his tv show. Bits on politics, US foreign policy and America's excess were highlights. Maher's disdain and smarmyness are mostly amusing (but rarely off-putting). Great light fodder for the lefty.

Attached by Amir Levine & Rachel Heller

2011-11-30T01:02:00.006-05:00

There is a reason I don't usually read self-help books and it is mainly because I don't find them helpful. More so, they are often filled with obvious statements, inaccurate drivel or faulty metaphysics/psychology. (The subtitle of this book is repellant to me.)
This only had some of the first and neither of the other two, so I gave it a shot. It should have been a one page document.
People have different attachment styles, these can change over time, and the different styles lead to different relationship dynamics.
Highlight for me was how people with an avoidant attachment style can pair with those with an anxious attachment style and how the behaviour of the other reinforces the beliefs of both. A bad situation.

I, Robot by Issac Asimov

2011-11-30T01:02:00.005-05:00

A classic that deserves its fame. I had long been curious about this work (and I still haven't seen the movie) and I thought it quite worthwhile. The book is a series of loosely connected stories about robot and human interactions in the future. That I found them to be parables might say more about me than Asimov's intent.
All the stories center around the three laws of robotics and how things can still go wrong.
The Three Laws are:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

The first one is quite interesting to me due to the 'through inaction' part. Does this mean a newly minted robot must immediately start working on feeding the starving or trying to reduce malaria, TB, AIDS?

The Big Short by Michael Lewis

2011-11-23T22:15:00.000-05:00

Superb telling of the collapse of Wall St. in 2008. Lewis wisely makes it a compelling narrative by following several people who bet against the system. One ends up learning about (and/or confused) by the complexities in the financial market but there is still much to gain even if those parts are not fully absorbed. For example, I don't know exactly what a CDO is, but then again, it turns out almost no one did either! Even those who were buying and selling them!
Lewis certainly makes the case that the American taxpayer got screwed by immoral people who should have known better.
Highly recommended.

Things I Learned from the Women Who Dumped Me by Various Authors

2011-11-23T22:12:00.000-05:00

Supposedly comedic, I can only say this was luke-warm. There were one or two hilarious pieces (mainly in the latter half) and one or two that was sufficiently interesting, but otherwise a bit of a disappointment.
Can't recommend this one.

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

2011-11-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

A fantastic book that explores popular misconceptions and specious propaganda about macro-economics. I thought it might be a lefty rant, but Chang believes the capitalist model is still the best thing we have. The problem is that so many people (including supposed 'experts') believe and promote false ideas that have little supporting evidence, or in some cases, actual counter-evidence.

Highly Recommended.

Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of our Traditional Ethics by Peter Singer

2011-10-30T22:00:00.000-04:00

Excellent, accessible and usefully structured by mixing narrative with argument, and then restating implications/conclusions again.
Main things: Are omissions of action that different than overt actions? By what metric should we judge 'being alive' and which capacities should be valued. As usual, comparisons to animals are initially surprising but logical coherent (if still emotionally problematic).
Highly recommended.

The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche

2011-10-30T21:55:00.000-04:00

Decent and informative, but disjointed and more narrative the relay of factual content or structured argument.
Main thing: it would be pretty hard to make and use nukes.
A newer version seems to have a more appropriate subtitle: Dispatches from the Underground World of Nuclear Trafficking
Only partially recommended.

Years of Words

2011-10-10T11:48:00.004-04:00

Inside Jokes by Hurley, Dennett and Adams, Jr.

2011-10-10T11:30:00.001-04:00

An enjoyable work of popular but sophisticated science that, as stated in the subtitle, uses 'humor to reverse-engineer the mind.' As usual, Dennett and Co. present a theory sketch, combining and extending other theories, offering their own insights and providing testable hypotheses and challenges to researchers. Given this is a book about cognitive science and humour, if you're into both topics, you'll like the book, if just the former, then you'll probably enjoy the fresh angle, and if just the latter, then you might find this a bit too detailed.

Inside Jokes is full of jokes, some hilarious, many not, but all used to illustrate their analyses of humour and why we have it. Their many thesis is that humour (or mirth) is a result of the realization of a false belief and this process is 'paid for' in evolutionary terms as the fitness advantage rewarded to the organism that (generally) maintains more accurate belief structures. Secondly, there is nothing intrinsically funny of humourous in stimuli, but in the brain of the person who is amused or laughing. They draw the parallel to the lack of intrinsic colour in the objects around you as well as in your head when you 'see' colour, as the perception/experience is a combination of outside stimuli being coded/decoded in a certain way by your brain.

Although I would recommend the work, I'll reiterate the aforementioned caveat that it might be a bit thick and not the easiest read if you haven't had much prior exposure to cognitive science/psychology.

Everything is Obvious by Duncan Watts

2011-10-10T10:58:00.001-04:00

What a great book! No mere Freakonomics or Gladwell style coverage of interesting discoveries, Watts presents an excellent defence of sociology and how its many topics are critically important to public policy discussions. I often thought those types of works could use more theory foundation so I was pleased to see this in Everything is Obvious. The premise of the book is that most people think a lot of sociological findings are obvious when in fact they are not, and further, that they only seem this way due to psychological biases we have. For example, hindsight bias (related to creeping determinism) is the tendency to see events that have already happened as more predictable than before they occurred. People claim that x happening was obvious, when it never was. Similarly, plausible stories can often be spun to explain a phenomenon, but the problem is that equally plausible stories can be spun to explain the opposite. By only focusing on the actual outcome, it is forgotten how important actual evidence is to arbitrate between competing narratives.

The personal highlight was the analysis surrounding how we try to understand anything, from past and present to future. For example, to comprehend history we like (need?) to input narratives but this involves omission and working backwards from knowledge of the outcome the seemingly overly important events. Additionally, luck plays a large role in many events, but it is often unacknowledged by most. Everything is Obvious presents a deeper discussion than just 'omission and luck matter' so do not be put off by my cursory coverage.

Highly recommended.

Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

2011-10-10T10:31:00.000-04:00

Similar to the the three previous Woody Allen works I've reviewed in the past month (with each review becoming shorter than the last), it is an amusing collection of quirky perspectives and sketches that blend banality with absurdity. Not as good as the first two but there are definitely some gems in here. I was quite impressed with the one using physics terminology near the end. All in all, I have a new respect for Allen - a brilliant comedian.
Recommended.

Side Effects by Woody Allen

2011-09-25T23:53:00.002-04:00

Once again, Allen succeeds at blending high-brow intelligent set-ups with banal punch lines and a straight delivery to amuse and delight. The style and short comedic parts are similar to Getting Even and Without Feathers, perhaps not as humourous as the former but similar in funniness to the latter. That said, it is hard to say because I enjoyed them all. It's been wonderful to discover such gems.

Recommended.

Seven Years of Highly Defective People - Scott Adams' Guided Tour of the Evolution of Dilbert

2011-09-23T19:38:00.007-04:00

The title pretty much says it all and if still uncertain of the content, the back of the book states "Scott Adams tells where the characters came from, why they do the things they do, and just what the heck he was thinking during the creative process." Often, I've found that I enjoy the daily Dilbert strips more than the collections*, but I really like getting inside the creative process so this was a great book.
Recommended for Dilbert fans and those who are interested in creative process and/or how comics strips turn out the way they do.

*One collection I read earlier in the year was absolutely hilarious, likely because it focused on the inept manager.

The Code of the Woosters, Jeeves to the Rescue by P.G. Wodehouse (read by J. Cecil)

2011-09-22T22:44:00.000-04:00

Yet again, another delightful adventure of Jeeves and Wooster by Wodehouse and read by the always delightful and talented Jonathan Cecil. It was a decent story, amusing and worthwhile, with some great parts (I shan't say much else to avoid spoilers).

There have been better tales, but it's still good stuff!

Kant: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton

2011-09-22T18:51:00.002-04:00

To say the writings of Immanuel Kant are complicated stuff is a significant understatement. Known for a duty-bound existence, charismatic lectures, and changing the course of philosophy with his Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason, his moral categorical imperative, his thoughts on beauty and many other things, Kant is a force to be reckoned with. I have thus far been happy to avoid them but I had often felt a deficit in understanding from my second hand encounters. Thus the impetus for reading Scruton's primer. In short, it's good stuff. In longer I first must say that while I read every word (and re-read many of them), I cannot do much evaluative justice as I don’t have the background to assess if: a) he covered all the bases; b) he did so appropriately; and c) he gave the correct weighting to disagreements and other interpretations. It seemed so given that even an admirer of Kant, Scruton does criticize and specifically state there many interpretative disagreements, but I don’t know.

Metaphysics and morality are tricky topics, let alone when the writings are hundreds of years old in a different language containing many terms invented or redefined by the author making the argument. Who doesn't love philosophy?

Here is the example sentence that overtly displays why people don't read this stuff (and this is Scruton's helpful summary): "[Transcendental Idealism] implies that the laws of the understanding, laid down in the subjective deduction, are the same as the a priori truths established in the objective deduction.”

Obscure? Yes. Obstuse? I don’t think so. Yet… so much new stuff is hard to assimilate without repeated references to previously defined words and phrases.

At least it seems Kant and I are interested in same questions: What can you know and how can you know it? What is a self, how might selves act in the world? Do we have freedom or must we just act as if we do?

Morally, shouldn’t we try to have a universal perspective that should appeal to all rational beings? Who deserves more credit: The person who is naturally inclined to be ‘moral’ or the one who has to struggle to do so? As well, how are we to describe and analyze the different selves within us, given the frequent occurrences of part of us desiring something while another part or self imposes our duty to restrain?

That said, much of Kant's writing appears to rest on many assumptions about how the mind works and even hopes of how the world might be. Thus he can slip God in there and some morality and freedom. That said, one must give him credit for trying to use reason regarding religion and eschewing any anthropomorphization or simplistic following of dogma. That Kant highly valued the aesethetic is interesting, but how he supposes much of experience can occur without concepts is muddy. What is doing the thinking? I often think of what great minds of the past would think if they had the current information provided by the modern scientific method.

Once again, I’m dependent on Scruton’s interpretation but I found a passage of his near the end helpful:

“There is no description of the world that can free itself from the reference to experience. Although the world that we know is not our creation, nor merely a synopsis of our perspective, it cannot be known except from the point of view which is ours. All attempts to break through the limits imposed by experience end in self-contradiction, and although we may have intimations of a ‘transcendental’ knowledge, that knowledge can never be ours. These intimations are confined to moral life and aesthetic experience, and while they tell us, in a sense, what we really are, they can be translated into words only to speak unintelligibly. Philosophy, which describes the limits of knowledge, is always tempted to transcend them.”

Happily, I am more informed about the work of Immanuel Kant. Happier still, I feel no compunction (duty even) to go through hours of mental and emotional strain to read the Critiques. For both those reasons, this was a great book.

Memory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan K. Foster

2011-09-21T21:50:00.001-04:00

While this work will likely serve as a useful introduction to most, it turns out that my formal education in psychology actually taught me something so almost none of the content was novel to me.

The book covers the basics of the history and development of how we have learned about memory, studies by Ebbinghaus and Baddeley, episodic, implicit, declarative, short term, long term, working memory and the like (but I thought it odd Aplysia wasn’t mentioned at all, with Kandel’s pioneering work on sensitization and habituation).

The key take away: try to understand memory as a process, or even more significantly, as a series of processes. Memory is not one thing, but many different activities working together, overlapping and combining with each other.

Should you read it? If you haven’t had much exposure, give it a try. If you have, you needn’t bother.

Without Feathers by Woody Allen

2011-09-17T12:52:00.001-04:00

Much like Getting Even this collection of short works from a few decades ago is overflowing with 'smart-funny.' Very entertaining and intelligent, with ingenious material and amusing deadpan. While both excellent, I think I like Getting Even more due to some philosophically oriented jokes. That said, Without Feathers' has The Whore of Mensa (where a man solicits not sex, but intellectual conversation, from a call-girl), which is famous for a reason.

Highly recommended.

Getting Even by Woody Allen

2011-09-13T21:14:00.002-04:00

Hilarious and brilliant. It is one of the funniest books I've finished in quite some time.* Getting Even is one of three early collections of Woody Allen's short humorous articles, 17 in total, which appeared in various magazines decades ago. Some of the material may seem dated, but I did not find that to be the case.

Allen excels at "smart-funny." Sometimes I'd laugh out loud but more often I would think to myself "that's so funny" after some wry and wise remark or line. Granted, his dialogues and observations involving philosophy or various intellectual arcana may not appeal to all, but it was fantastic for me.

Faves were the philosophical stuff, Hitler's Barber, the chess game by post and the Rabbi. I certainly have a new-found respect for Allen's comedic prowess.

Highly recommended.
*Get the audio with his narration if you can find it.

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar

2011-09-12T22:51:00.004-04:00

Quantum is an excellent historical overview of the development of quantum theory and the personalities and people involved in addition ti providing useful explanations of complicated concepts involved in quantum physics.

The book is generally accessible but it would likely be beneficial to have read a quantum primer, prior to reading Quantum, to get more out of the work (and perhaps the rest of this brief review).

At the heart of the book, and emphasized in the title, is the debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein about the nature of (quantum) reality. Bohr did not really believe in a quantum world per se, but frame quantum theory as an abstract description of reality - particles do not have properties until they are examined and forced to have properties (i.e., the Copenhagen interpretation). Bohr had his theory drive his philosophical position.

Alternatively, Einstein had a deep-seated belief in a causal, observer-independent reality. As such, he disliked quantum mechanics and sought to undermine it in some way. He first attempted to demonstrate it was inconsistent through ingenious thought experiments that taxed Bohr and friends for days, weeks or months. When that failed, Einstein attempted to show that quantum mechanics was not a full description of reality (i.e., Einstein would concede it was 'correct' but not that it was 'complete').

While Quantum centers around Bohr and Einstein, it provides sufficient detail on the usual suspects such that one learns of great rivalries, like between Heisenberg and Schrödinger, and even conflict within individuals as Bohr was initially reluctant to follow quantum theory down its rabbit hole of peculiarities, but then became one its greatest proponents.

What else? Maxwell, Planck, Born, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac, EPR paper, Bell's Theorem, Von Neumann, Young's double-slit, particle-wave duality, entanglement vs. the speed of light (locality violations?), Germany and German scientists affected by the wars, the difficulty of a demarcation line between the micro and macro worlds, how it took painstaking years of math and hard work to figure any of this out and how everything is so extremely complicated. It was fascinating to think of all these exceedingly brilliant people disagreeing with each other, and further, to hear of one having a mathematical insight that the others could not have had (e.g., the maths Schrödinger and Dirac were critical).

Additionally, I appreciated learning that the Copenhagen interpretation became dogma for decades, likely because Bohr and his students spread out over the world and advanced their interpretation (and many younger physicists thought the matter was settled and it was waste of time to revisit philosophical musing that are not easily resolved). Yet, the newer generation doesn't feel the same as the pioneers and the Copenhagen interpretation doesn't have the same majority support. What does? Perhaps no one interpretation but several and many simply saying they do not know or are unsure. The point: one of the most verified and useful theories of science does not resist on a generally agreed upon interpretation of reality. Isn't that interesting?

Anyone with a curiousity in the historical, scientific, philosophical and personal issues surrounding quantum theory will enjoy this book.

Highly recommended.

Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You by Marcus Chown

2011-08-29T23:50:00.006-04:00

A superb primer on the quirky phenomena/theories of quantum mechanics (1st half) and relativity (2nd half). If you are going to start on these topics, this book is probably a great first step. Chown has made some very complicated topics a lot less so while still presenting the important experiments, people and thinking that under-gird these incredible theories in physics.

While I enjoyed the latter exploration of special and general relativity, I found there was more novelty in Chown’s framing of various quantum phenomena. (Note: I expected the work to be primarily a review and only secondarily an extension, and this extension happened more with the quantum content.)

Chown emphasized the importance of having particles/systems isolated, which is easier to do when things are small, thus why quantum mechanics is thought of as the physics of the very small. He stresses how things just are the way they are, with experimental data and math as support for the validity of results, but so much of interpretation and other theories are just words (I already shared this view so I might be biased). Additionally, wave-particle duality, decoherence and uncertainty all get excellent coverage. Unfortunately, as quantum theory is so complicated, I can’t quite recall as many of the insights as I would have liked… guess I’ll have to listen again and take more notes (which should be taken as a sign of my failing memory and the complexity of the topic rather than of poor presentation).

Highly recommended.

Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci

2011-08-26T21:23:00.006-04:00

Nonsense on Stilts is a decent exploration of the scientific method(s), recent topics in the world of psuedoscience and some philosophical foundation for the entire scientific enterprise. The book consists of two halves: the first about science and psuedoscience, and the second about science, philosophy and knowing. Unfortunately, I think Pigliucci would have been better served writing two books instead of two halves. One reason is that much of the examination of science (or non-science) topics in popular culture is dated - books and movies reviewed are more than 5 years old. A second reason is that the audience that would typically be interested in the content of the first half wouldn't be in the second and vice-versa (although I am, and think others should be).

Part I:
Nonsense on Stilts provides an important service when it explores different aspects of what science is and the different types of scientific methods, as well as how some disciplines are more amendable to precision or similar results, but face differential amounts of variance due to what they measure. It is a good review of the main topics in the skeptical community, as well as a look at some areas of science that may have less rigour than commonly believed.

Topics convered include: Quantum theory; Evolutionary psychology; SETI and the Drake equation; Astrology; UFOs; "What the bleep do we know?"; Intelligent design (Dover trial, Behe, Irreducible complexity, media misleading); Responsibility of intellectuals; Anti-intellectual themes in American history and life (isn't it interesting that sports stars are venerated while intellectuals, whose abilities are also beyond those of the average person are sometimes disdained?); Anti-rationalism; Gould and Sagan as case studies of public intellectuals in science; and Global Warming.

Part II:
Pigliucci successfully presents an intellectual-philosophical overview of some key minds in the history of the development of science and rational thinking. I quite enjoyed this examination of the path of scientific and intellectual ideas forward throughout time, especially the Renaissance (and I was less familiar with this content than that of the first part). Additionally, it provided a much needed rebuttal to the absurd position of Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking who argue that philosophy is useless or dead.

Topics/People covered include: Plato; Aristotle; Hume; Kant; Empiricists and Rationalists; Induction and Deduction; Bacon; Descartes; Galileo; Newton; Darwin; Scientism and Post-moderism, Sokal hoax; Notions of truth (correspondence theory and others); Kuhn; Perspectivism (objectivism and social construct); Bayesianism; and the nature of expertise.

Given all of the above, you will know if this book is for you. Personally, I was hoping for more.

50 Impressions

2011-08-21T10:29:00.002-04:00

Below is the list of impressions I did on this YouTube video. Brackets attribute sources where appropriate, with my own content labelled original.

1. Schwarzenegger (Predator; misc; original)
2. De Niro – (Taxi Driver/original)
3. Abominable Snow Man (Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes)
4. Steven Root (Milton from Office Space)
5. Mike Tyson (Misc; original)
6. Wall- E
7. John F. Kennedy (original)
8. Nixon (Misc; original)
9. Henry Kissinger (original)
10. Reagan (original)
11. George Bush Sr. (Dana Carvey’s; original)
12. Bill Clinton (original)
13. George Bush Jr. (Jon Stewart’s; original)
14. Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond’s; SNL Celebrity Jeopardy)
15. Marlon Brando (Godfather)
16. Peter Lorre
17. Gollum (Lord of the Rings)
18. Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite)
19. Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven; Dirty Harry)
20. Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump; original)
21. Benicio del Toro (The Usual Suspects)
22. Howard Cosell
23. Muhammad Ali
24. Burgess Meredith (Mickey Goldmill in Rocky)
25. Stallone (Rocky)
26. Don Hertzfeldt Rejected Cartoon (Man with big spoon)
27. Don Hertzfeldt Rejected Cartoon (Banana Guy)
28. Christopher Walken
30. Kevin Spacey (As Walken auditioning for Han Solo in Star Wars in SNL sketch)
31. Bruce Lee (Enter the Dragon)
32. Ringo/Beatles (Simpsons)
33. Jimmy Stewart (Misc; original)
34. Jack Nickelson (Cuckoo’s Nest; Batman; A Few Good Men
35. Keanu Reeves (original)
36. Hugo Weaving (The Matrix)
36. Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire)
37. Chewbacca (Star Wars)
38. Dr. Claw (Inspector Gadget)
39. Patrick Warburton (David Puddy on Seinfeld)
40. Michael Richards (Kramer on Seinfeld)
41. Mike Myers (Dr. Evil in Austin Powers)
42. Mike Myers’ Scottish Voices (So I Married an Axe Murderer; Austin Powers 2; Shrek)
43. Eddie Murphy (Shrek)
44. Simpsons - Snake
45. Simpsons - Captain Quigly
46. Simpsons - Italian guy
47. Simpsons - Mr. Burns
48. Simpsons – Guy who said boo urns (?)
49. Russell Peters (Chinese Store Owner bit)
50. Stewie (Family Guy)
51. Brad Pitt (Snatch)
52. Mickey Mouse
53. Jim Carrey (In Living Colour x2; Truman Show)

The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self by Thomas Metzinger

2011-08-16T19:54:00.005-04:00

What is consciousness? What is a self? How did it come to be? What types of selves exist?

If you like thinking about these questions, you will probably enjoy The Ego Tunnel — an excellent exploration of the philosophy and recent science of consciousness and the nature of the self. Personally, I find these issues fascinating, but also so complicated that periodic revisitations are required to integrate the associated facts and arguments into one’s worldview.

Metzinger argues for the self as a process, as something that comes together from the combined action of brain areas activated at similar times. Although it is a radical idea, I already agreed with this, but the uninitiated might find it startling. If you open up the brain, there is nobody home, so where are “you”? Most of our brain's processes are so automatic that we do not have access to how our perceptions are formed. Simply put, you can’t. If you could, the perception itself would crumble. For example, if you are holding a red apple, you have a sense of its weight, but you do not have first-person access to the processes that enabled you have to that sense of its weight. On a related note, the redness of the apple isn’t "out there" in the world, but a creation of your brain being affected by electronic impulses sent from your eyes, which are processing different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Many sciencey people know this last point, but I would argue that while such facts can be understood on some level, they are incomprehensible from a subjective standpoint.

Metzinger provides a good introduction and overview of his model, and how it fits with neuroscientific findings. There are decent chapters on lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences, and some interesting interviews at the end of a few chapters — my favourite being the one with the theoretical artificial advanced self we create in the future. The Ego Tunnel raises some important ethical issues surrounding the creation of artificial selves and Metzinger cogently proposes a new field of ethics — consciousness ethics — to deal with it. For example, if we can create conscious selves, it is likely our initial versions would be greatly diminished in capacity (compared both to us and to future versions of themselves). Would such diminished creations, which we’ll be experimenting upon, be similar to a retarded human baby, or something more like a cat, or something entirely different? Complicated issues, indeed!

I found the entire work quite enjoyable and, if pressed, my only criticism would be to say I found the middle third ‘only’ interesting as opposed to first and last thirds which were very interesting. The self and consciousness are not what they seem. If you are curious to investigate further, The Ego Tunnel is a decent place to start.

I experienced the work as an audiobook, which was narrated at the perfect pace to challenge my ability to understand the content. The Ego Tunnel is supposedly a more accessible and condensed version of Metzinger’s Being No One, but since I only have that behemoth on my shelf and haven’t read it, I can only say that is likely true based on the table of contents and length alone.
I highly recommend this work (and hope this will be a useful primer for Being No One).

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

2011-07-25T20:59:00.000-04:00

Wodehouse and Cecil delight once again! Yet another in the Jeeves and Wooster series that I enjoy and I was not disappointed. The audio presenter J. Cecil is spot on and I had missed Wodehouse’s words in Bertie’s mouth, as well as the situations he ends up in. Jeeves, as usual, is smart from all the fish, helps Bertie out of the soup and, as such, stands alone. :)

I think I liked this one more than the last because the story was more straightforward (fewer characters) and it had been a longer duration between Wodehouse works.

Highly recommended.

The Company of Strangers by Paul Seabright

2011-07-24T22:12:00.005-04:00

Intelligent and well-sourced, The Company of Strangers presents a decent overview of economic issues mixed with evolutionary & historical perspectives. The main theme, stated in the title, is that everyday we trust our lives to strangers and we have (mostly) made peace with this. In fact, our tendency to do so is so great that we don’t even notice the myriad ways in which we live in, and depend upon, the company of strangers (e.g., traffic, food preparation, health care). This “trust” isn’t entire (as we know there are cheaters) and we still have caution in many situations, but Seabright does an excellent job at highlighting this phenomena.

The downside of the work is that it was too much of an introduction (to me). Additionally, the work is more a collection of related essays than a sustained argument, which detracts from persuasion.Each chapter seemed like it would explore an interesting economic concept as it related to policy or personal issues, but the exploration was usually too shallow to satisfy. That said, there were interesting pieces of information throughout the pages, such as the examination of the recent financial collapse, the lives of various people in various times, and how we end up in competition with each other. At times I found it quite an enjoyable read, at others the writing was uneven and there were not enough new ideas for the length (not enough “useful thoughts per minute”).

Decent with some excellent points and an important perspective, but neither captivating nor extensively detailed. You might like it but, looking back, I probably needn’t have read it.

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West

2011-07-13T21:56:00.002-04:00

Everyone can complain, but few do it as well as Cornel West. For example, speaking about democrats caving to republicans [in the early 21st century] instead of following their conscience and the will of the American people:

“Unlike their idol Bill Clinton - a masterful neoliberal communicator, who subordinated his conscience to the exigencies of re-election strategies but was able to conceal his opportunism with his charisma - the vast majority of democratic party elites are rendered impotent in their timidity, and paralyzed by their cupidity, their courting of corporate donors.”

Democracy Matters is West's critique of various democratic failings and his sincere appeal for greater awareness and action. The broad-ranging work examines deep democracy and race in America, Israel-Palestine issues, Christian identity and the importance of engaging youth culture (i.e., hip-hop/rap). West is a master rhetorician, not sophist, that delights with his deconstructions, denunciations and deliberations on our deep democracy deficit.

West is a very knowledgeable man and advances interesting theses like the tripartite necessity of Socratic challenge, Jewish prophetic wisdom and tragic comedy for democracy to persist in America. He is very persuasive but there is so little objective data to actually evaluate, such is the nature of the humanities, I would have to explore the issues in much more detail to feel confident in his assertions (despite their plausibility upon reading). That said, I enjoyed the examination and I appreciated his pro-Palestine AND pro-Israel stance, his notion and actualization of what it is to be an intellectual and hearing his side of the Larry Summers issue - a saddening event all around.
I experienced this by audio and his personal presentation likely had a lot to do with my enjoyment. Oh, and I don't think I've heard the term 'plutocratic elites' so often in one book.

Recommended.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

2011-07-06T23:18:00.001-04:00

What an enjoyable book! I say that because I truly enjoyed this autobiographical comedic work. I find Fey intelligent and endearing. I liked her self-deprecating style and enjoyed the behind the scenes info about Second City, SNL and 30 Rock. It was also useful to have her perspective on women in comedy.

Was it great? Hard to say. Would people who don’t know Fey’s work get much out of it? Perhaps, but a lot less than those who know her and watch 30 Rock or SNL. Personally, it was a wonderful break from the more serious content I tend to consume. I laughed out loud more than a few times. :)

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

2011-07-06T23:15:00.001-04:00

(To be revised)
An excellent book that provides insight and rigor regarding the lives of the poor and interventions designed to assist them. This broad work by two developmental economists covers malnutrition, health, employment, microcredit, microsavings and many others. The general approach is to p. 252 and I couldn’t agree more. They prioritize randomized control trials and think good intentions are not enough. This book covers very similar ground (even many of the same published studies) as More Than Good Intentions which came out within days of each other. This makes sense as one of the authors of Poor Economics was the mentor to Karlan. As I had just read More than Good intentions it was impossible not to contrast them. Poor economics provided more depth and detail, but at the expense of readability. Both works present stories of the lives of those in extreme poverty, but More Than Good Intentions seems to have better narratives. I think the two works were trying to achieve similar things but also slightly different things. Poor Economics made a greater contribution to the Sachs v. Easterly (and Collier and Moyo) debate while More Than Good Intentions tried to make things as accessible as possible. In both books the chapters on microfinance flow the best, likely because the content is closest to their economic background. Also, microfinance started More than Good while it occurs later in Poor Economics.
Recommended?
Yes, but if you are a layperson just read More Than Good Intentions. Alternatively, if you want a little more depth, only read Poor Economics. If you are in the field, you should probably read both but can likely get away with just Poor Economics.

pretty stellar supporting website http://pooreconomics.com/

It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken by Seth

2011-07-04T23:29:00.003-04:00

A quirky and interesting 'picture novella' about a cartoonist in search of a cartoonist from the past with an emphasis on introspective musings and observations about the human condition. A quick and endearing read, although intermittently lugubrious, that tries to find the light in a darkened perspective.

Recommended (while at the same time realizing this won't be for everyone).

And Another Thing by Eoin Cofler

2011-07-02T23:27:00.004-04:00

For the 30th anniversary of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Eoin Cofler (of Artemis Fowl fame) was commissioned to write a 6th instalment of the trilogy. Given the delightfully, unique zaniness of Adam’s originals and the massive cultural impact of the work it was definitely a tall order to fill.
Does Cofler succeed?
I would say he does, in that the work feels a lot like Adams, and if you have missed the characters and adventures you will be happy to see them once again; Arthur seems like Arthur, Ford Ford and the others act similarly. There are some nice twists and winks and many throwbacks to the prior content. The overall story is decent and perhaps just as probable as any of the others.
It isn’t flawless though, but it isn’t entirely easy to pinpoint just where things go wrong. I felt there were too many “Guide note” asides for one thing. Another might be the Cofler’s book is almost twice as long as most of the original five books, so it is understandable if things felt a bit more drawn out. Finally, it has been years since I read the originals and we know memories are fallible so nostalgia and vague smirks of intellectual happiness might be all that remain and it really isn’t fair to compare something to that.
Do I recommend it? (See your category below)
For fans: yes
For die-hard fans: you’ll probably never be happy so you needn’t bother unless you want to complain about it on a message board.
For the unexposed: go read the originals first.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

2011-06-27T20:00:00.003-04:00

An excellent and interesting ‘biography’ of cancer.

A friend did a succinct and informative review, so I have copied that below.

Though at 592 pages (or 21 hours of audio, as I experienced it) The Emperor of All Maladies may seem daunting, it will be well worth your time if you are at all interested in the topic. I absolutely loved it. This “biography of cancer” is well written, engaging, and extremely informative on a broad spectrum of factors relating to cancer and human society’s struggle with it, from the point at which it appears in the historical record up until today.
In addition to presenting a fascinating medical history, this book really showcases the interplay between research, clinical practice, corporate and political interests, activism, and patients themselves. It also delves into the lives and careers of many pivotal figures in the endeavour. Importantly, the author does not shy away from covering the unfortunate turns as well as the breakthroughs, thereby exposing the ethical issues that inevitably arise when imperfect humans confront matters of life and death with incomplete knowledge. Perhaps the most sure sign of the book’s success: I again find myself wondering why I am not pursuing a career in medical science.

I would like to add that in addition to enjoying the various forays into people, politics, medicine, tobacco and HIV, I felt that the primary benefit of the work was a greater understanding of how things have come to be and how science has progressed. Once upon a time it was thought four humors caused illness; now we know there are cells and genes, and various biological molecules. The randomized controlled design of scientific experiments is less than 100 years old. At one point it was thought nicotine was good for you. It is fascinating to think about all the things that had to happen to have things as they currently are. The book suggests such analysis throughout but also more specifically near the end.

I highly recommend it.

More Than Good Intentions by Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel

2011-06-20T20:39:00.002-04:00

More Than Good Intentions is an outstanding overview of microfinance and other development programs that is both informative and highly readable.

Many works on international development focus on an inspiring personal story at the cost of presenting more rigorous data indicating whether a program or project has actually worked. Kaplan, an economics professor at Yale, and Appel, a field researcher, wisely achieve the near opposite by presenting honest and critical accounts of interventions while using personal stories to highlight the complexity of people’s lives and their concerns. They believe in using science to critically evaluate programs and projects and combine it with psychology to learn why people do what they do. This passage sums up their perspective: “To make a difference in the fight against poverty, we need more than good intentions, more than what sounds good, more than what looks good anecdotally. The answer isn’t always what we want it to be, and frankly that does not matter.” (p.276)

At the core of their methodology is the randomized control trial (RCT). To truly understand if an intervention or treatment works, one must compare it to a similar group that did not get the treatment. Science has used control groups for many years, most popularized by medicine, but development programs rarely do such a thing. Kaplan presents study after study that used RCTs and honestly describes what works and what doesn’t.

After setting up the methods, More Than Good Intentions explores microcredit in detail and then presents chapters on microsavings, farming, health, education and sex. Their exploration of microloans suggests caution to those who have seen them as a panacea: sometimes loans help and sometimes they harm. Beyond microcredit, every chapter has case studies to provide the reader with some insight into the complexity of development projects and a personal story indicating just how complicated and frustrating the environment can be. Sometimes the program works and sometimes it doesn’t. Or, sometimes it works for a certain part of the population and not at all for the others.

For example, it was thought that a lack of school uniforms may be a reason for children’s absences, so a program provided a uniform to one group and none to another. It seemed to have no effect, until the numbers were broken down further. It turns out that if a child already had one uniform, it didn’t make a difference, but if the child did not already have one, it did increase attendance. Further, and to demonstrate what I mean by complexity, if one is truly concerned about increasing attendance, then it might be far cheaper to provide deworming (worms can cause abdominal pain, anemia, malnutrition, and extended malaise). This is because generating an additional year of attendance from deworming costs $3.50 per student while generating an additional year of attendance with the uniform giveaway program costs $100 per student. Of greater concern are the programs that cost much more but do not increase attendance more than deworming. Of course, it depends on what one wants to achieve. Rarely is it just one variable (i.e., school attendance) that should be of interest. What happens when you try to compare the effects on family dynamics, a child’s self-esteem, etc. Can you glimpse the complexity?

The authors are quick to urge caution about extrapolating any one success (even through RCTs) to all other contexts. This is wise and far too infrequent. Brief reflection and minor knowledge indicates that “no size fits all,” yet we often hear of the same intervention supposedly being applicable in many contexts whereas it is probably only applicable in some (and then altered to fit the particular environment).

The excellent charity evaluator site GiveWell thought highly of the book but also had some valid criticisms. See the whole review here, but I’ll just mention that they think basic RCTs are not enough and there should be a third comparator group—cash transfers equivalent to the cost of the program. Additionally, they think More Than Good Intentions focuses a bit much on interventions/programs that are proven through microevaluation (e.g., mircosavings, chlorine dispensers for clean water) instead of those that are proven through both microevaluation and macroevolution (e.g., immunization, bed nets and TB treatments).

I very much enjoyed reading this educational and engaging work. It can be useful for many types of readers but would particularly be a great introduction for those who are interested in learning more about international development but have been skeptical about a lack of rigour. I found its perspective a welcome breath of fresh air. In short, people are irrational, even poor people. But since we want to assist them, let’s figure out the best way to do it using science and compassion.

I highly recommended More Than Good Intentions.

Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction by Andrew Clapham

2011-06-20T20:33:00.004-04:00

A useful and informative work that examined the history and development of human rights and the human rights perspective. Although off to a structurally slow start, I found it quite worthwhile, especially the chapters on torture and the economic, social and cultural rights.

In addition to the general discussion, I also appreciated learning that often the supposed historical landmarks in human rights were just the result of appeasing shifting power balances instead of sincerely intended notions of equality or dignity (i.e., the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights).

A handy introduction and reference.

Explain Pain by Butler, Moseley and Sunyata

2011-05-29T23:22:00.000-04:00

An very informative and accessible introduction to the nature of the body's pain system and how different pains are processed throughout.You'll read about pain receptors, nerve transmissions, neurons firing and the social/environmental/psychological aspects of pain.Finally, it has some excellent advice for how to manage pain and the effects on one's life.

A good introductory work.

Ancient Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Julia Annas

2011-05-21T19:04:00.003-04:00

A decent overview of both the content and interpretation of several of the key players and ideas in ancient philosophy (defined as the ideas of the Greeks instead of Eastern thinkers). In some way, every book is an opportunity to realize one’s ignorance; this one even more so as that was Socrates’ claims to fame.

You’ll read about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans and many others, on issues of happiness, epistemology, logic, nature and the scope of inquiry. A cautionary theme was that we should be wary of assuming words meant the same thing to us now as they did to the Greeks then (how could they, being English words?), but more important is that there was disagreement among the Greeks as well. To illustrate, ‘happiness’ was not seen as a temporary experience, but something that could only be evaluated after a life lived. Similarly, ‘physics’ and ‘sceptics’ had different meanings, and 'virtue’ was a general way of being, not a practice to cultivate one thing. Additionally, and unsurprisingly, the popular perception of the Sophists, Epicurians and Stoics is not entirely accurate.

Annas does a good job discussing how a suggested interpretation of a work biases the reading of it. For example, if you have read Plato’s Republic were you told it was political philosophy or philosophical history or ethics or… ? Further, people and groups project onto texts and there can be interpretative battles over the centuries. Such disagreement is useful, but if one interpretation becomes dominant and then become institutionalized, new readers may end up with unfounded ideas about what a text is. She uses differing views on The Republic to support this point.

Annas knows her stuff, but I didn’t like the less-than-clear-cut structure of the work. Also, I went into this work seeking more historical knowledge than ideas that are currently thought to be valid, but even with that mindset I still found myself thinking, “but this is just a bunch of thoughts- where’s the science?” Granted, many questions and ideas discussed will not be arbitrated by data, but there are still contributions to be made by science. For example, science has much to say regarding what emotions are, how brains function, and our evolutionary past. But I do know that every book can't be all things.

Other tidbits:
-Interesting to hear about how Aristotle couldn’t imagine a Darwinian process as he didn’t have the time scales and thought things immutable, but I’d like to think that, given his brilliance, he would have come around if he had had access to the evidence.

-Epicurus went against teleology, which was a difficult position to hold as it was deemed implausible and the world was thought to be created for man.

-It does seem that Plato systematized things, making philosophy an object of inquiry. Previously, discussion and debate was mainly ad hominem, and refuting and criticizing instead of proposing.

-Propositional logic beyond Aristotle existed long before Frege and Russell (re)discovered it. Such are accidents of history.

-Proposing a dichotomy between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism creates a false contrast. However, it is common because many Eastern philosopher's emphasized the differences with Western thinking even though there was diversity within Eastern ideas and, as such, a similarity to many Western perspectives.

Recommended for those curious for a decent primer.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

2011-05-21T18:40:00.003-04:00

A masterpiece. I do not often use such language for two main reasons: (a) I rarely think a work deserves such a descriptor, and (b) I believe managing expectations is key to enjoying experiences, so I don’t like to them too high. Yet, I think Slaughterhouse-Five deserves it. I’m a huge Vonnegut fan and I’ve often thought that I was drawn more to his ideological bent and observations than his prose. In this work, he excels in both domains. The writing is still his simple style, but the flow of the work, as well as the frequency of interesting situations or quotable lines, brings a richness and sophistication beyond most of his books. For example, chapter five has something noteworthy on almost every page.

I realize I have gone this far in the review without even describing the basic plot, as I had inadvertently assumed that you have either heard of it or already read the novel. In short, it is about the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany in WWII and the absurdity of war. Beyond that, I would say it is about perspective and appreciating moments as they happen. I shan't say more about the story to avoid spoiling the experience, but I will say that I have a minor structural/presentation issue: the first chapter should be labelled 'preface.'

Vonnegut fans will enjoy seeing some usual suspects appear (Trout, Rosewater, W. Campbell Jr.) and any reader will find it hard not to adopt the refrain of “So it goes.”

There is a reason this book is taught in schools.

Highly recommended.

Treat Your Own Back by Robin McKenzie

2011-05-16T23:37:00.002-04:00

This is a great little book (under 75pg) that will provide a basic understanding of acute lower back issues and offer exercises to treat them. The book usefully reinforces advice that we all know but infrequently follow: posture is important, lift carefully, don’t sit for long periods with poor back support…etc. It also provides basic exercises to get the spine back to a preferred ‘natural’ curve. While useful in many cases, this is not for those with severe or chronic problems. If interested, you can probably just Google the McKenzie method and find material that way.

Jeeves and the Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse

2011-05-15T22:17:00.003-04:00

Another delightful adventure of English gentlemen Bertie Wooster brought to you by Wodehouse and master audio-presenter J. Cecil. This is the 6th Wodehouse for me and it was an enjoyable listen, as I had missed the style and Cecil’s voices. It wasn’t as good as The Inimitable Jeeves or some of the others, but it was worthwhile all the same. The problem with this particular work was the sheer number of relationship dynamics, both overlapping and duplicative, as some characters were pretending to be others. Intermittent confusion aside, there were several good laughs, and I found the latter half to be the more enjoyable chunk.

Recommended for Wodehouse/(Cecil) fans.

Humanism: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Law

2011-05-15T22:14:00.002-04:00

An excellent introduction to humanism, primarily as it contrasts with standard religious beliefs. Law concisely and smartly covers a brief history, the arguments for existence of God, the arguments against existence of God, religious vs. humanist morality, the meaning of life, and other related social and cultural issues. Humanism is rigorous on the philosophical arguments and logical implications of different beliefs as well as related complexities, despite the brevity of the work.

That said, it wasn’t quite what I was seeking; most of the content was well-worn territory given my other readings, so there was some disappointment. I wanted more about humanism itself, a history of actions and people and its changes over time. The work was not without merit as I appreciated having some nuance added to my argumentative repertoire. For example, Law provides a deeper examination of the ‘Evil God’ hypothesis and contrasts it with the refutations the religious often use to support the notion of an Omnipotent, Omni-benevolent God. By showing one could make a (still-flawed) case either way, he highlights the problematic nature of the entire argument. Further, the idea of not being able to be good without God dismisses hundreds of millions of Asian people who are not atheists proper but who have a conception of God that similarly disqualifies them from typical assumptions of Christian Goodness.

Law was right to point out the whole ‘meaning of life’ question is often a category error (i.e., is ‘life’ such a thing that can have ‘meaning’) but I thought his treatment could have been better.

This would be a great introduction for those with less of a background or perhaps even as a gift to that religious friend who wonders how the non-religious can be moral or why they may not believe there is a god.

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

2011-05-10T21:31:00.001-04:00

A great book! As this was a re-read, I can say that I thought it was great last time and I still do now. One would be hard pressed to find a more readable and comprehensive overview of the field of social psychology as it relates to happiness. Haidt occasionally presents an over-simplified view of things, but more complexity can be found in the references.

The main analogy used throughout the book is that of an elephant and a rider. The elephant represents our subconscious disposition and inclinations, while the rider is our conscious mind. The rider tries so hard to control the elephant, but can manage only little change. This fact should bring peace and a realization that we only have so much control.

As our “elephant” is a creation of evolution mixed with culture, it often has different ideas of how things should be than our “rider” and this leads to a conflicted self, one that unjustly criticizes others and finds it hard to not pursue less-fulfilling positional goods (bigger houses, fancier cars…etc.)

Haidt does not promote apathy regarding one’s development of greater happiness, but meditation, cognitive-behavioural therapy or medication. Additionally, it seems that people’s happiness is improved by having less disturbing noise, having a shorter commute to work, having greater autonomy in work/life, minimal shame in appearance and action, and an extended social network.

We all have a genetic set-point, with some generally happy people winning the cortical lottery. The rest of us should try to change the things we can, make some effort at changing the less mobile structural restraints, and attempt to accept our dispositional nature.

Highly recommended.

Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich

2011-04-30T22:21:00.003-04:00

This is an excellent overview of how positive thinking without a firm grounding in reality can have negative and even disastrous consequences. Ehrenreich discusses how she was ostracized for not adopting a positive attitude during her battle with cancer. We learn that having a positive outcome appears to have no effect on mortality time lines. The patient might feel better, but will not live longer. From there, there is a history of how American’s love of positivity came to be, a sharp criticism of The Secret, the business world and its motivational speakers that are spewing so much emptiness, the problems with religions and positive, and then a critique of the positive psychology movement. Ehrenreich isn’t anti-happiness or against positivity, just the kind that doesn’t have a grounding in the facts of the world and the real consequences of actions. For those interested in a popular examination of the positivity movement in the United States, this book will bear happy fruit. Personally, I found it mostly superfluous save the examination of the positive psychology movement.

Consequently, partially recommended?

Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

2011-04-30T22:18:00.003-04:00

This excellent series of lectures, essays and articles explore events in the Americas that, although recent, are presented through an analysis of history and power. For those who have never read Chomsky, this wouldn't be a bad place to start.

Noam's usual topical suspects are here: Power, imperialism, hypocrisy/different standards for 'them,' what is printed in the news vs. what actually happens, Vietnam, aggression, American public opinion vs. elite opinion, NPT, Israel, siege of Gaza, nature of democracy promotion, Iraq, torture memos, Obama's support of the corporate elite, Latin American struggles (e.g., the first 9-11 in Chile), Haiti and so much more.
I cannot deny that much of the content is disheartening but such is the price for being aware of injustice. It is hard to refute the phrase "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

Highly recommended.

Love and Sex with Robots by David Levy

2011-04-26T21:17:00.002-04:00

For those of you who think that people will not eventually have love and have sex with robots, you should read this book. For those of you who already think that people have sex with robots and will continue to do so and love them, you can probably skim this book.
The first part of the book examines why humans love at all and then provides arguments to persuade that we will also do this with robots. A similar approach is taken to the second part, which deals with sex. In the love section, examples of how people become attached to electronic objects and toys, as well as the affection and anthropomorphizing of animals, are mentioned frequently. In the more interesting sex section, the reader gets a history of sex toys, their various uses and how artificial sex technologies are only increasing in sophistication and realism. The most surprising thing I learned was that there are escort services in Japan and Korea that use dolls instead of humans. And that information is now 4 years old! It is also fascinating to think of how homosexual acts (and oral sex) are accepted by the state as part of a marriage in the same places where years ago would have been crimes punishable by death. The long view can certainly assuage pessimism on occasion, a tactic further validated by absurdity of the state of Virgina only removing a law prohibiting relations between unmarried, heterosexual couples in 2005!

Barring economic collapse or an inability to extend computing technologies beyond the current transistor system that will be exhausted in 8-10 years, I think robots and nanotechnology will create incredible experiences, hopefully more wonderful than terrible, in the following decades for those privileged enough to have access. In an otherwise worthwhile overview, Levy fails to give sufficient attention to the potentially dramatic implications of human-robot romantic and sexual relations.* For example, what will happen to communities and families if members of the human race no longer need to impress, engage or compromise with other members for their relationship needs? To be fair, in the conclusion he does raise many interesting questions/concerns (e.g., should the age of consent for sex with a robot be the same as it is for a person? Will sex with a robot within a marriage be constructive or destructive? Can a human rape a sexbot?).
Levy might also win for having the most interesting sentence I've read in a book this year: "Think back for a moment to Net Michelle's orgasmic experience, created by Thrillhammer via teledildonic interface."
In summation, people will love and have sex with robots. This book will convince or elaborate, depending on your current state of agreement.

*Think of the Futurama episode if you’ve seen it! If not, you really should watch this clip

Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction by A.C. Grayling

2011-04-26T20:15:00.001-04:00

If you are seeking a primer on Wittgenstein, you probably cannot do much better than this work. In 140 pages, Grayling provides a brief biography, an analysis of Wittgenstein’s early work (the Tractatus), an analysis of his later work (mainly the Philosophical Investigations), and then a look at Wittgenstein’s influence. This book did exactly what I had hoped it would do: provide an understanding of what Wittgenstein argued and if it made sense. In fact, Grayling did this so well that I no longer feel compelled to read any Wittgenstein as it seems like I disagree with the main themes of his work, as well as the fact that the ideas weren’t always presented clearly (and that Wittgenstein disagreed with his early work makes the Tractatus even less intriguing).*

Wittgenstein’s main concern is with language and how our use of language leads to philosophical problems. He has/had some quirky ideas about what could be discussed and some assertions that just have be agreed with intuitively or not at all. Finally, although impactful, Wittgenstein’s influence does seem to be overrated.

Although this overview is not all that is the case, it is highly recommended.

*As I have not read the primary sources I am choosing to place some trust in Grayling even though I know it is one philosopher’s opinion.

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

2011-04-17T17:06:00.001-04:00

What would you do if a you had the power to kill others with a thought? That is one of the various themes explored by Palahniuk in Lullaby. Typical of Chuck's style, the plot moves quickly, characters are quirky but not deeply developed, absurd situations abound and social commentary is strewn about like enticing trash. Although the content was a bit morbid, as usual, I found it to be a light read, as usual. Decent but I liked Choke better.

Palahniuk fans will enjoy it, but it is a bit of a departure in that it is more of a murder mystery than just a life imploding.

African History: A Very Short Introduction by John Parker and Richard Rathbone

2011-04-17T13:06:00.000-04:00

This was a decent overview of African history but it is just as much as a brief examination of the validity of doing history about Africa. In fact, the process of history and how histories are compiled was a large chunk of the work. Useful to be reminded of the diversity of Africa, its peoples, languages and geography, while considering if "Africa" even makes sense as a descriptor beyond a continent.

The book discusses complications of primary sources, the slave trade and colonialism. It was useful to be reminded how those in power often have more in common with each other than other lines of demarcation.

A good start for those interested in the topic.

Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body by Kim Toffoletti

2011-04-07T13:23:00.001-04:00

(Unfinished @ ~ 30%)

This book wasn’t what I thought it would be, or perhaps it is better to say it isn’t what I had hoped it would be. I thought it would explore how new technologies are leading to different types of humans and ways of being in the world, and how that would relate to feminism and popular culture. I thought it would probably look a lot at enhancement as it relates to beauty and perhaps even robots as surrogates for sexual desire. I was wrong as evident by this sentence:

“Although this book takes as its starting point images of the posthuman – representations that depict the fusion of the organic and the informational – its primary concern is with posthuman images." (p.31)

Further, the work, admittedly more academic in nature, seemed to use the stereotypical post-modern language style that I do not find appealing. There seem to be useful points within the book, but I was frequently frustrated by how things were phrased. For example, “We find that the ambiguity arising from technologies that collapse the distinctions between nature and artifice, mind and body, organism and machine, offers the potential for new forms of subjectivity beyond oppositional frameworks.”

I think I agree with that statement, as I dislike dichotomies because they are usually false, and I do not see much validity in essentialism. Consequently, evaluating how things come together, how we categorize and what that means for our experiences is fine with me.

Alternatively, I was hostile to some stances taken on the nature of science (a biased, male enterprise that isn’t objective) and found it very odd that some authors argue that women are associated more with “the body,” “nature,” and “irrationality.” Exactly the type of absurd statements that I hear about second hand but don’t usually read. I will admit science is mainly done by men and it isn’t as objective as it would like to be… but it is more than any other area of study.

So… given that the content and style were not jiving, I took a loss. Perhaps a more patient, future Darren will revisit this work. Present Darren cannot recommend it.

Marx’s Das Kapital – A Biography by Francis Wheen

2011-04-07T13:19:00.001-04:00

This superb little book is exactly what the title indicates – the gestation, birth and afterlife of Kapital. Of course, to tell such a story Wheen usefully contextualizes both ideas and personal circumstances. We learn of Marx’s vast knowledge base and literary explorations, his continued health problems and mostly dismal living conditions. The book is well-written and the audio version I experienced was well-spoken. On more than one occasion I thought, “What an excellent phrasing!” and other content was dryly humourous as well. Wheen seems balanced in his assessment and even in his pointed critiques of Marx and others.
Highly recommended for those with an interest in the topic.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

2011-03-30T23:36:00.000-04:00

Soulful. That one word is the best descriptor I can come up with to describe this incredible book. That I am using even though I have reservations about “soul” words should further indicate just how deeply meaningful it is. This is a book about people being bought and sold. It takes place some years after the US civil war and follows the lives of several former slaves as they try to grapple with recently won freedom in a society that still sees them as disposable property. Slavery still exists but we don’t hear about it much and slavery as an institution has been long removed from developed nations. Morrison’s descriptions of the tragic but quotidian events of being owned by others are staggering and important. I now understand why she is so well regarded and why this book has received such acclaim. That said, I don’t know if Morrison had to follow the exact plot she chose to communicate her worthwhile messages.

The book is rich in metaphor and meaning, so I found I could not read it quickly even if the content did not appear challenging. It was, in both injustice and descriptive beauty.

I highly recommend this book.

Spoiler Alert (and minor quibble)

Beloved is supposedly the dead spirit made flesh of a child that was murdered to prevent it from becoming property. This process was never explained but the reader is lead to believe that a child died and that somehow it came back to life and into the mother’s life at the appropriate age if she had never died. This is the plot path I wondered about being necessary. Morrison could have presented the issues, even the faithful dispositions and supernatural wonder of the characters, without having to use such an unbelievable character.

Solar by Ian McEwan

2011-03-30T05:16:00.000-04:00

Well-written, interesting and sciency – what’s not to like? I should note that McEwan excels at writing fiction that contains science, which is a much better framing than ‘science fiction’ with its connotations of weak character development and prose. There were numerous sentences I read aloud to a friend and that is one of my metrics of a quality book. If something is well-written, it can be about anything. The presentation was atypical in that there were not so much chapters as three sections. It is rare to have about 90 pages between full breaks, but it worked nonetheless. Without giving much away, the book is about a physicist who ends up involved in environmental issues, and eventually solar power (as the title implies) and has various relationships with women and other characters that are sufficiently entertaining. I think Saturday was a better book, but that is possibly because I could relate to the content even more.

Oh, and Solar primarily took place in London and referenced locations I had visited for the first time just days before.

Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman

2011-03-28T18:51:00.000-04:00

Concisely, I found this collection disappointing. I had hoped to learn more about the subject but I mainly acquired an understanding of Goldman’s position and presentation (which was lacking). To be fair, the work is quite old so that I have come across the ideas before isn’t surprising, nor is it just to criticize her for statements that related to a different time and social structure. My personal tastes run against hyperbole in writing and speech, a style that Goldman appears to enjoy and embrace. Many of the conditions she rallies against were (and are) indeed criminal but she wins no favours from me by using unqualified speech, though it was intermittently entertaining. I think she has a misunderstanding of human nature - a common complaint about anti-capitalists, and one less forgivable as the years since Darwin published Origin of Species increase.

Unfortunately, I cannot say I learned much, but I was reminded how terrible things were in factories a century ago (and might still be elsewhere in the world where our goods are made). An amusing factoid was Goldman’s exclamation of the rise of divorce from 1880-1909, where it was a staggering 1 in 12. I can only imagine what she would say now.

Worthwhile as history and exposure to different presentations of ideas, but not as useful as Chomsky discussing anarchism in 50-min interview available online.

The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook

2011-03-23T18:28:00.001-04:00

Cook's book is a decent introduction of the Koran as book/codex and as a sacred object. Aptly named, the emphasis is about the Koran, not Islam (even though I think I was hoping it would be more about Islam). Cook intended to work backwards, by discussing the Koran as it is used and seen in the present and proceed (recede?) to discussions of the book and its followers in earlier years. A decent enough idea, but not entirely successfully executed. There were many interesting bits and I learned many things, but I don't think he managed to pull it off.

Part of what I learned was about how any text would have to be reproduced and preserved over time, both in terms of accuracy, translation and different concepts of accessibility. An example of the last point is when Cook described how a preface to an English translation of the Koran said something like, "Make sure not to confuse this with the real Koran." Cook said how odd it would be to see something similar at the beginning of the King James Bible. On a related note, some of the most interesting parts were about how the book/text is seen as sacred so it should not be held below the waste, nor be on the bottom of a stack of books, nor read aloud (reciting is okay though), and that some die-hards think that non-muslims shouldn't even touch it.

I would still like to learn more about Islam but this work seemed to be sufficient to temporarily cure my curiousity regarding the Koran.

Peter Singer Under Fire - Edited by Jeffrey A. Schaler

2011-03-22T19:34:00.003-04:00

Any book review worth its merit is the product of difficult choices by the reviewer regarding what to describe and what to omit. This problem is proportionally increased with the size and complexity of a book. Consequently, this 600 page analysis of Peter Singer that includes a detailed intellectual autobiography, 15 critical essays and his replies to them, is quite the tricky one.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to examine the work in rigorous detail, but I will try to provide a few points so the reader has at least some notion of the work (and I'll stop describing how I don't have time to describe things).

1) I highly appreciated the 80 page intellectual biography as I had been curious to know more about Singer's life in general, as well as in relation to his work. Singer's breadth and depth of output is impressive and the fact it was sustained for so many years even more so. I always find it remarkable (and a bit amusing) when someone is known for X and even Y and Z, and then it turns out they know A, B and C. More directly, the influential moral philosopher also has detailed understandings of Marx and Hegel.

2)The book is divided into four sections that cover his work on the Moral Status of Animals, Sanctity of Life, Global Ethics and Ethical Theory. My primary interest was and is Global Ethics, but I enjoyed the first two sections as well. The Sanctity of Life section was more readable than I anticipated, likely due to the inclusion of Harriet Johnson's essay describing her personal interaction with Singer. The Ethical Theory section was one of the most important but the least readable. In general, it seems that although many authors tried, few were able to find any major weakness in Singer's arguments. Not only did I find Singer's replies to be clearer and more accessible than almost every critique, but his replies would often (unfortunately) contain a phrase similar to "I didn't really say that." One can tell that some authors put more effort into their critiques and had read more of his work than others. Highlights of critiques and replies that provided useful discussion were, among others, Judith Lichtenberg's psychological emphasis on Singer's global ethics, the aforementioned Johnson on the sanctity of life, Bernard Williams on animals and Michael Huemer on Singer's unstable meta-ethics.

3) Peter Singer Under Fire would not be a good introduction to his work but it would be worthwhile for an eager reader who has already read 2 or 3 of his books.

4) What did I actually learn? Many things of course, but mainly that Singer has some pretty tight analogies that make us examine who we are as moral beings if we want to be consistent. Additionally, I observed that his ethical theory may not be entirely sound but I have no idea what should reply it. Also, that maybe we shouldn't be using animals at all, even if we are not eating them. Finally, I was reminded once again, that it can be hard to accept that we are not who we want to be.

Socialism: A Very Brieft Introduction by Michael Newman

2011-03-13T12:28:00.001-04:00

Newman's Socialism is an excellent overview and introduction to the main ideas of Socialism, with examinations and comparisons to anarchism, communism, social democracy, feminist socialism, and green socialism. I appreciated the contrast of Swedish social democracy with Cuban Communism and discussion of the development of communist states through the 60s, 70s, and 80s (and subsequent fall in 80s and 90s.
This primer was a worthwhile and timely follow up to the introductory Marx book I recently finished.

My main complaint is that I can't remember all the important information!

Half-empty by David Raikoff

2011-02-28T16:58:00.000-05:00

This well-written collection of mostly auto-biographical essays by Raikoff was thought provoking (and slightly amusing) but also not too uplifting (as warned). Raikoff’s content does seem to belie the stereotype of the New York lefty intellectual that engages in meta-analysis and critique of daily living. He is a better word smith than Sedaris but less funny (not that that was his intent).

His tale of cancerous woe is quite touching and his examination of Rent quite devastating.

Give it a try.

Djibouti by Elmore Leonard

2011-02-28T16:56:00.001-05:00

(Unfinished ~ 28%)
I hadn’t read any of Leonard work but I did enjoy Get Shorty, so I had been meaning to check out a book. When I learned that his recent novel, Djibouti, examined the world of Somali pirates by using the premise of documentarians getting into hijinks, it seemed like a good selection. I had been interested to learn more about piracy in that region and surrounding issues. Additionally, I thought it would be engaging to explore film-making. Seemed like a win-win… and yet I couldn’t finish it. It did not captivate nor delight in wordplay. Perhaps it would make a better movie, but the book is likely not worth your time unless you are a huge fan.
What a disappointing experience.

Taboo Topics and Empirical Inquiry

2011-02-25T08:05:00.006-05:00

A Facebook 'friend' (that I have never met in real life) recently posted a story about how a police officer said "I've been told I'm not supposed to say this... however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."
I had read about this last week and I thought it interesting that the police officer was in full retraction mode and was being reprimanded and the like. I found it interesting because there was never any discussion about whether it was true or not. While I do believe women should be able to dress however they like and that does give a man a right to assault or harass them, I do(did) think that their manner of dress might matter in terms of who becomes victimized.
Consequently, when I commented on the story that is the approach I took. A fruitful discussion did not happen. Even though I clearly stated "I don't believe X, can we discuss Y?" I was vilified for believing X. It appears to me to be such a clear case of confusing explanation with exculpation (to quote Pinker).
I have cut and pasted the entire exchange below so you can form your own opinion of the situation. (Note: the FB thumbnail pictures didn't paste but I have kept the boxes there for ease of demarcation.)

I believe I made one, possibly two, errors. My primary error was that I presented an intuitive belief as a fact instead of more clearing stating it as a hypothesis subject to revision based on useful evidence and information. This error is visible in my first comment which is about 16 comments in.

My second potential error would be that I tried to engage people and seek evidence on a topic that is highly sensitive and that is already the subject of many misunderstandings and prejudices.
This second one is more just a saddening and frustrating fact about our world. If I had the chance to do it over, I probably would still engage but try to be even clearer in my reasons for seeking evidence and the fact I do not support blaming the victim.

Tactically (and actually to be honest), I think a good framing is "What can I tell my daughter, sister or mother?" If the person says, "Absolutely nothing, they can do nothing" I would debate this point as it seems unlikely, but I am willing to be convinced there is little that can be done (go where the evidence and logical rigour leads).

Looking back I can't help but think this::
My perception of my actions (at the time): Concerned and curious, seeking information.
Other perception of my actions: Apologist for sexual assaulters, may suffer from mental health issues. (ouch!)

Yes, "Someone on the Internet was Irrational" is not news, but when YOU become the target of attacks based on misunderstanding, mob mentality or willful ignorance, it is certainly a noteworthy event in the day.

Note: I am currently looking into the topic and it seems the data indicates that provocative dress has little impact on a the likelihood of a woman being assaulted.

The following post was a story linked by Mia on her page.

Mia via Danny

WTF moment of the day... Misogyny alive and well in 2011

Police Officer Advises Women to Avoid Sexual Assault By Not Dressing Like a Slut

www.care2.com

At a campus safety information session at York University in Canada, a Toronto Police Service officer suggested women could avoid sexual assault by not dressing like a "slut."

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike · · Share

Don Johnson likes this.

Kris Machnicki Oh yeah, there's big controversy about that here in Toronto. Now there's an organized "slutwalk" to protest against it.

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 4 peopleLoading...

Michael Long I want to attend a "slutwalk"!

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading...

Tiffany Hatch ‎:-O

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Kris Machnicki Ta-da: http://www.facebook.com/SlutWalkToronto

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading...

Mia Wheaton Kris, I meant to ask you about it. You'll have to fill me in! Michael, that's funny. But seriously, I'd attend if I could!

7 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Mia Wheaton Kris, that's AWESOMEEEEEEEE!!!

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

David W. Potter Gawd someone needs to tell this asshole not to be an asshole! And they the primitive hominids are all extinct! All of science and evolution goes BOINK!

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 personStacy Rustia Lambe likes this.

Mia Wheaton hahahaha! "Tell the asshole to stop being an asshole!" Love it! David, you're the best :) I love that most of MY male friends see this as shockingly offensive and backward. Thanks God for the good guys (of course, I'd never be friends with bad guys)... :)

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 3 people3 people like this.

Phil Mammano In the middle East women generally don't dress like sluts but still suffer sexual assault. Elderly church ladies in this country generally don't dress like sluts but still suffer sexual assaults. This guy is a law enforcement professional? Sheez.

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 3 peopleLoading...

Mia Wheaton For starters, see above!

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Kevin Pochron I was just trying to be funny.. Bad time to try to be funny... But yeah it's uncool that some men think they have the right to do that kind of shit on just what a woman wears.

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Craig Michael Mann Thank you, Mia. Link shared

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Roger Lynn Where is that... Stupid Asshole Button (that's right, it is right next to the Dislike one)

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Mia Wheaton hahaha! Yep. We need that button ;)

6 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading...

Roy Llamas You guys need 2 "come out from underneth that rock". I like that slutty look! Lol

5 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Darren McKee He shouldn't have said it, of course, but his point is not without merit. A woman's dress shouldn't matter, but I imagine that the more provocatively a woman is dressed, the more she is a target of assault. Anyone have any data?

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Mia Wheaton What the fuck, Darren??? Old women are assaulted. Fat women are assaulted. Children are assaulted. Clothing isn't a factor, nor is it an excuse. It is NEVER a woman's fault, no matter how she's dressed! Period. End of story. End of that debate. That shit doesn't fly on my page...

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 2 peopleLoading...

Phil Mammano Absolutely not. Sexual assault is about violence, not sex. Women in all manner of dress are equal targets and must remain vigilant, especially if the quality of police protection they have amounts to a douchebag with a badge.

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Phil Mammano Thank you.

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Joanne Walsh I got assaulted today for getting somethign out of my truck. A man felt compelled to grap my ass. I have on jeans.

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Stevie Clark So if we all thought like this piece of work... does that mean i get to cure his "stupidness" by whacking him with my baseball bat!?

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 2 peopleLoading...

Joanne Walsh I'm an Arab/ French American woman. There comment in the article about Egypt a way a woman dresses in the Middle East can make her a target. I lived in Lebanon in the 1970's. As a young girl I very light almost blonde hair. During the civil war there I was targeted because of this. My mother and I were attacked and raped. I ended up killing our attacker. I will never ever travel to the Middle East. If you have blonde hair you're a target no matter your dress !

4 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Stevie Clark WOW! Joanne sorry about ur ordeal & way to fight back! I 4 an I!

3 hours ago · LikeUnlike

DiAnne Grieser Some rapists and attackers attack some symbolic meaning to a certain look but in reality most of them are all about assault of someone weaker period - can be a child, an old lady, even another man or an animal. All they want is to aggress. Remember - rape is aggression not sex.

3 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Joanne Walsh Thanks Stevie. He should of never turned his back on me. I was 11 years old. I don't even really remember doing it. Just blood everywhere and my mother pulling me and screaming and running. Until my butt was grabbed eariler today I never had another incident in my life. The man that grabbed me was a daily laborer I was using at work. He's been fired. He's lucky I did not have a flashback or freakout. I do carry a gun and have a concealed weapons permit.

3 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 3 peopleLoading...

Darren McKee

Mia, I'm quite interested in having a rational discussion if you are as well. This is the key line "Clothing isn't a factor, nor is it an excuse."
I already agreed it is not an excuse. So we don't have to have a discussion about that. What I... asked was weather dressing provocatively increases the likelihood of assault. Assault is a terrible thing and all manner of women are assaulted... but does outside appearance matter at all? Any data?

I think there is whole other discussion about whether it is about aggression or sex or both.See More

2 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Beth Elizabeth wow darren and mia .. you should open a blog board for this.. this is a good discussion

2 hours ago · UnlikeLike · 2 peopleLoading...

Mia Wheaton

It. Does. Not. Fucking. Matter.
Unacceptable! Out Of Bounds! PERIOD!

It is extremely offensive to attempt to make any connection whatsoever between a woman's attire and sexual assault.

...Only 3 points need to be made:

A) A woman should have the right to dress however she chooses and still feel absolutely SAFE; B) A man must learn to exercise self-control; and C) No means No!

Suggesting any link whatsoever between a woman's clothing and violence against her is DISGUSTING and serves NO PURPOSE whatsoever!!! Every time someone brings it up, it sends the message to sickos that sexily dressed woman are "asking for it."

I don't give a flying fig about stats, cultural bias, or even religion (blaming Eve to this day for tempting/corrupting Adam.... PLEASE!). The bible is a sick, evil, ancient, misogynistic text written BY men / FOR men, and the fact that we allow it to influence us today - ON ANY LEVEL - just shows how stupid, childish, and primitive we are. We clearly have a long way to go in term of woman's rights and spiritual evolution.See More

2 hours ago · LikeUnlike · 4 peopleLoading...

Mia Wheaton Thanks, Beth :)

I was responding to Darren, not you. You and I posted at the same time.

2 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Beth Elizabeth I understand my dear.. i agree with your thinking..
the choice to assault somebody should not be attributed to the clothing they wear.. that is a personal choice that everybody is entitled too..

2 hours ago · LikeUnlike

Mike Trethowan Misogyny? I call it moronic. That Neanderthal should be booted off of the police farce ... I mean force.

about an hour ago · LikeUnlike

Robbyn Lynn

I am a survivor of sexual assault

This officer is an unmitigated asshole and if he OR ANY OTHER MAN wants to take a position of "we couldn't help ourselves" then you need thrown in a small room with big lonely psycho Prisoner#1, dressed head... to toe totally covered, and then another cell with Big lonely Psycho Prisoner#2, dressed in a banana hammock and see if either attire will prevent either of them from beating you defenseless and ass raping you like a bloody f&cking animal. I guarantee it had NOTHING to do with your attire and EVERYTHING to do with them being a sexual predator and control psycho FREAK.

I'm so F&CKING PISSED OFF and i am SO SICK OF WOMEN BEING BRUTALIZED BY MEN AND THEN BEING BLAMED FOR "making them because they were dressed provocative and poor men can't help themselves"
Talking about being victimized TWICE!!!!!!!!! I'd like to BASH that officers head right the f&ck in
and THEN CLAIM
"HE MADE ME DO IT
FOR BECAUSE OF HIS OVERT STUPIDITY....AND HIS SUIT PANTS"

I apologize Mia for being so verbose and foulSee More

about an hour ago · LikeUnlike

Robbyn Lynn ‎@ Phil
That would be called a "Douchebadge", and I have handed them out before

about an hour ago · LikeUnlike

Darren McKee

Mia, I agree with A, B and C, like I already indicated.
It really seems like there is a confusion of explanation with exculpation. I am trying to explore and understand the problem and learn what can be done.
Personally, I am curious if ther...e are any factors involved in increasing the likelihood of assault. It is often thought a woman should walk confidently. Does that matter? I don't know.
Many assaults are by people already known to the victim, what kind of relationships are more dangerous? I don't know either.
Just trying to understand a complex issue.See More

44 minutes ago · LikeUnlike (Ed. Note - Just after I posted this I was notified Mia Wheaton 'liked it'... there is hope?..spoke too soon, see updated comments below)

Mike Trethowan Then take a criminal psych class and stop already Darren.

33 minutes ago · LikeUnlike

Mike Trethowan According to Darren's wall, he has a degree in psychology, so either he is playing a sick game, or is a psycho. Either way, I blocked him.

29 minutes ago · LikeUnlike · 1 personRobbyn Lynn likes this.

Robbyn Lynn ‎@ Mike
or a sick fetish

23 minutes ago · LikeUnlike

Darren McKee Wow... it seems some of you are not really reading what I have written, not seeing FB discussions the way I do, and/or being really rude and presumptuous.
My degree is in cog pysc, so I don't know about this issue. Since when is admitting ignorance a bad thing? I think it is a good thing.
Also, to improve things (even bad things) we have to understand them. Do you really want the clinicians and people who help people to just be guessing in these situations?
To accuse me of a sick fetish is quite cheap.
It seems we are talking at cross-purposes here so there is no point continuing the discussion.

UPDATED - 8:32 am.

Mia Wheaton

Darren, I read your comment and understand the point you think you're trying to make, but people are justifiably pissed off that you would dare "go there." Instead of just admitting that your comment was rude and apologizing for it, you k...eep making it worse.

You went so far as to mention the way a woman walks. Again, irrelevant! IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE! Even if a woman could take steps to make herself less a target, she SHOULD NOT HAVE TO! No rape victim bears any responsibility whatsoever for being attacked.

The answer is NOT to find ways a woman can change herself to be less of a target. Women are the VICTIMS. Period. Normal, healthy, moral people do not blame victims or suggest a victim's need to change. If a woman WANTS to make changes in her life - for whatever reason - that's her right, but to suggest in any way that she SHOULD perhaps make changes in order to be safer is unacceptable.

The blame/responsibility/need to change falls SOLELY upon the shoulders of the those who commit attacks and the people who continue to focus on a woman's role in the situation.

Your comment reflects the very serious problem with men's attitudes toward women. It's simply unacceptable to focus any attention whatsoever on the victim's "role." The only acceptable approach is to focus on the sickness of the men. Regardless of WHY they commit these crimes or HOW they choose their victims, they are the criminals and THEY need to change. The days are putting this responsibility on women must change!

Rape is a unique crime. Suggesting that woman dress/walk differently isn't like telling homeowners to lock their homes and add alarms in order to help deter theft. Sexual assault is far worse, and because we've lived in an anti-woman, victim-blaming society for so long, changing our attitudes toward woman and victims is where we must focus our attention. Your comments are worthless, basically, because we've tried that approach for thousands of years (focusing on women/trying to understand why men attack) and it hasn't solved the problem. It's time for MEN to CHANGE! No more excuses.See More

8 minutes ago ·

Darren McKee Mia,
Again, I'm being misunderstood. I'm not saying men are not fully responsible and that they are the ones that should change. Perhaps a different framing would be helpful: "What can I tell my daughter, sister or mother?"
Say a beloved woman says to me, "What I can I do to decrease my chances of being assaulted?" I can first tell her that it is a terrible situation and that men are, of course, responsible... But should I then be saying "There is nothing you can do" ?
Perhaps this is the true answer, as saddening as that would be, but I'm not sure about that yet. I'm currently discussing the issue with a researcher.

Marx for Beginners by Rius

2011-02-12T11:17:00.004-05:00

What a great little book! This introductory work explores both the ideas of Karl Marx as well as their historical development. The presentation is atypical in that cartoon drawings are used frequently, mixed in with copies of print images or objects or people, so that it reads as a somewhat illustrated introduction. It is half-graphic novel, half basic text. I thought this was a very useful book because I now think I understand the basic tenets of Marxism and how it came to be. It is certainly one of those books that one wishes they could have the content stored in their brain as it is hard to remember the details going from Thales and Heraclitus to Bruno, Descartes and Spinoza to Hegal and…etc.

The main ideas that stuck out were:

1. The notion that labour is what increases the worth of a product and the misalignment is when this increase is not divided between worker and owner. Obviously this is a complex topic and I wasn’t fully convinced but there are many persuasive parts to the argument. To be further considered…

2. There does seem to be an increasing liberation of various social classes. A rough guide of various states of human organization being: a) Primitive; b) Slave; c) Feudal; d) Capitalist; and e) Socialist. Poor people just seem to change masters.

3. The abolition of private property. Not entirely of course, just for rich people. Of course this issue is usually dismissed by the ‘tragedy of the commons’ argument whereby if something isn’t privitized it will be overused and be ruined. This is not entirely true either… but not much is in this domain.

4. Alienation. That work itself alienates the worker. I can see this making sense for many labourers in industrial factories in the 19th century, but it seems less broadly applicable now. Those in the middle-upper class often enjoy their work or prefer to do some work compared to nothing. That comparison is important, because if you don't work and don't farm your own food, you have to survive somehow. Survival is alienating?

5. That many of the changes Marx called for have actually been implemented in modern democracies: graduated income tax, free childhood education, end to child labour, a national bank, national standards for various sectors, unions, welfare programs. Yes, the revolution hasn’t happened, but certainly things are objectively better for a poor person in many countries today than it was in those countries in Marx’s time.

I found it interesting that Marx was poor and that his family suffered because of it. Additionally, I was once again confronted by my ignorance and felt like that there is much more to learn, like just how Lenin was influenced by Marx, and then Trotsky and Stalin and Mao and… hmmmm, this might take awhile.

For all its valid points, Marxism does seem to get human nature wrong. We generally compete with each other and have trouble embracing fully egalitarian systems in society.

Marxism is not the same as Communism, but John Kenneth Galbraith’s quotation is germane: Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
Go read it.

Our Inner Ape by Frans De Waal

2011-02-07T23:03:00.000-05:00

An excellent exploration of primatological findings on chimpanzees and bonobos to provide a greater understanding of human nature.

Among the many interesting facts, De Waal cogently presents his broader thesis: human nature involves compassion as much as aggression, but we have focused too much on the latter and not enough on the former. When describing war we say that people act like animals but when we are do something nice we say it is ‘humane.’ The improper emphasis (obviously complex in origin) might be partly because the bonobo was discovered relatively recently (compared to chimps), so despite having a similar to degree of genetic relatedness to humans as chimps and humans, we have usually only looked for comparisons to chimps. This being problematic because chimpanzees are more violent and hierarchical, while bonobos are egalitarian, matriarchal and hypersexual. Understandably, looking only to chimps may lead to unwise justifications for behaviour (as any naturalistic comparison might).

Although much was review, most of the details about bonobo communities (and the extent of their sexuality) was new.

A great book.

Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut

2011-01-31T22:48:00.004-05:00

A compilation of Vonnegut’s speeches, short pieces, and some autobiographical content, introduced and presented with amusing segues.

I quite enjoyed this work, mainly because I am a Vonnegut fan, just being honest here, but also because I was curious to know more about his life and that is what Palm Sunday emphasizes. Alternatively, I liked the various short writing more than the one long biographical piece – perhaps because they were funnier and/or had that typical poignancy mixed with absurdity.

Overall, great for fans and a decent work for those just getting started (but I wouldn’t recommend it as a first or second exposure to him).

Moral Minds by Marc Hauser

2011-01-28T16:17:00.000-05:00

An impressive work that advances the idea of an innate moral grammar 'designed' by evolution and that is shaped in development by our environmental circumstances. Hauser presents numerous research findings related to human and animal morality, each time carefully parsing out valid inferences from fallacious conclusions due to potential confounds. Hauser presents different philosophical notions of how we moralize and argues for a “Rawlsian” creature, one that makes immediate moral appraisals because we seem to react before we think.

His arguments and analysis are much more sophisticated than I am likely implying (and this short review doesn't do the book justice). In fact, the final chunk of the book is such a good overview of current animal research and how it relates to different aspects of morality that it became a bit dry and detached from the main thesis of the book.

A bit of a challenge to finish, but this work is a wonderful repository of research on human and animal morality, and provides excellent analysis of the surrounding scientific and philosophical issues.

(The very astute blog follow might notice that I had planned to read this after Justice, after Rawls, over a year ago. Some things take time.)

Filthy Lucre by Joseph Heath

2011-01-26T16:00:00.002-05:00

Almost everyone I know should read this book; yes, it is that worthwhile. By examining the major economic fallacies that confuse the ideological right and left, Heath performs a great service. While it might be useful to have some prior economics exposure before reading Filthy Lucre, it isn’t necessary. In fact, it would likely make the key message – things are complicated – more salient.

For those with some economics exposure, this book will be a nice refresher as well as likely teach you an important thing or two (that annoyingly wasn’t covered in your previous classes).

Finally, if you have a great deal of experience with economics, as in you don’t have time to read this because you are working on your doctoral dissertation in economics, then you should buy it for a friend to help them better understand the economic way of thinking and avoid the common fallacies most make.

Personally, I enjoyed the reminder of complexity and how changing incentives within systems can have ripple effects within and outside of it, and how some core aspects of human behaviour are largely unchangeable. I appreciated learning about the cost of collecting taxes, the costs of transference, the importance of markets as instruments for organizing exchange, and the impulsivity of the poor. The book sometimes meta-analyzed analyze economics from a wide stance and this helped me understand the idea that government and private organizations are different ways of providing services in exchange for resources. The parts that stood out the most were (1) that if you want a more equitable society it is often better to transfer income than it is to fiddle around with prices and controls; and (2) the Second Best Theorem – (from Wikipedia): In welfare economics, the theory of the second best concerns what happens when one or more optimality conditions cannot be satisfied. Canadian economist Richard Lipsey and Australian-American economist Kelvin Lancaster showed in a 1956 paper that if one optimality condition in an economic model cannot be satisfied, it is possible that the next-best solution involves changing other variables away from the ones that are usually assumed to be optimal.

This means that pro-market ideologues cannot automatically say that even though an economic situation isn’t optimal, because it is 98% percent optimal that is almost as good. It could be that that high percentage doesn’t translate into things being nearly as good and some (usually disdained) economic correction might be necessary. Arthur Ripstein has very useful analogy to understand why 98% might not be almost as good: Say you want to go to Hawaii, would you consider a flight that gets you 98% of the way there almost as good as one that goes 100%? No, you’d end up in the ocean. In short, situations have to be taken on a case by case basis.(Why was this never mentioned to me?!)

Go read the book and try to ignore its unoptimal title and subtitle (from a marketing perspective of course).

Future Babble by Dan Gardner

2011-01-25T16:41:00.007-05:00

I predict that you will find this review informative. If you do, you will congratulate my foresight. If you don’t, you’ll forget I was wrong.

My playful intro summarizes the main thesis of Gardner’s excellent book, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway. Gardner, a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and author of the bestselling Risk, returns to the format that made Risk such a success: Find some interesting psychological research from the past few decades; describe the research in accessible and pithy prose for a general audience; emphasize cognitive biases; extrapolate the research findings to popular events to indicate why they matter; and imply that we should change our behaviours and policies.

In Future Babble, the research area explored is the validity of expert predictions, and the primary researcher examined is Philip Tetlock. In the early 1980s, Tetlock set out to better understand the accuracy of predictions made by experts by conducting a methodologically sound large-scale experiment. Gardner presents Tetlock’s experimental design in an excellent way, making it accessible to the lay person. Concisely, Tetlock examined 27450 judgements in which 284 experts were presented with clear questions whose answers could later be shown to be true or false (e.g., “Will the official unemployment rate be higher, lower or the same a year from now?”). For each prediction, the expert must answer clearly and express their degree of certainty as a percentage (e.g., dead certain = 100%). The usage of precise numbers adds increased statistical options and removes the complications of vague or ambiguous language.

After letting this impressive experiment run its course for several years and crunching all the numbers to see how the predictions bore out, Tetlock found the surprising and disturbing truth “that experts’ predictions were no more accurate than random guesses.” (p. 26) An important caveat is that there was a wide range of capability, with some experts being completely out of touch, and others able to make successful predictions.

“What distinguishes the impressive few from the borderline delusional is not whether they’re liberal or conservative. Tetlock’s data showed political beliefs made no difference to an expert’s accuracy. The same is true of optimists and pessimists. It also made no difference if experts had a doctorate, extensive experience, or access to classified information. Nor did it make a difference if experts were political scientists, historians, journalists, or economists.” (p. 26)

The big difference is in the way the experts think.

The experts who did poorly were not comfortable with complexity and uncertainty, and tended to reduce most problems to some core theoretical theme. It was as if they saw the world through one lens or had one big idea that everything else had to fit into. Alternatively, the experts who did decently were self-critical, used multiple sources of information and were more comfortable with uncertainty and correcting their errors. Their thinking style almost results in a paradox: “The experts who were more accurate than others tended to be less confident they were right.” (p.27)

Gardner then introduces the terms 'Hedgehog' and 'Fox' to refer to bad and good predictors respectively. Hedgehogs are the ones you see pushing the same idea, while Foxes are likely in the background questioning the ability of prediction itself while making cautious proposals. Foxes are more likely to be correct. Unfortunately, it is Hedgehogs that we see on the news. This is even more concerning as one of Tetlock’s findings was that “the bigger the media profile of an expert, the less accurate his predictions.” (p.28)

Gardner did such a superb job in the first chapter that you almost don’t need to read the rest of the book. Those with a background in psychology, as well as the seasoned Skeptic, will see some familiar faces: confirmation bias, hindsight bias, negativity bias, optimism bias, partisan bias, status quo bias, availability heuristic, cognitive dissonance… etc. Given that most could use a primer or a refresher on such biases, I do recommend the rest of the book for those with less of a background, as the following chapters usefully illustrate the key findings with various examples to increase understanding and provide greater depth of analysis.

Future Babble would make a great gift, and I hope that Gardner’s popularization of Tetlock’s work succeeds and the issues raised become part of a larger discussion on the validity of expert predictions.

Appendix (of sorts)

So ends the book review proper. Below I examine the book in more detail by going chapter by chapter, presenting some of my thoughts and notes. This content will likely be useful to those who want more detail, but it might be especially useful for those who have already read the work or who are looking to tease out to discussion points.

Chapter 2 – The Unpredictable World

An exploration into how many events in the world are simply unpredictable. Gardner discusses chaos theory and necessary and sufficient conditions for events to occur. He supports the idea of actually saying “I don’t know,” which many experts are reluctant to do.

Chapter 3 – In the Minds of Experts

A more detailed examination of Hedgehogs and Foxes. Gardner discusses randomness and the illusion of control while using narratives to illustrate his points à la Gladwell. This chapter provides a lot of context and background information that should be very useful to those less initiated.

Chapter 4 – The Experts Agree: Expect Much More of the Same

An interesting and almost amusing analysis of how the rise of Japan was the big fear in the US in the early 1990s, and pretty much none of it came true. He wisely mentions how the same concerns are occurring with China now. Although these concerns might be true, we should be wary of believing them. Gardner really drives home the notion that an ordinary person has about as good a chance at making correct predictions as most experts.

I found two flaws in this chapter, neither major but worth noting.

Flaw #1: Gardner uses a gross national income statistic to compare the US and other countries, but he doesn't per capita measures (p.94). This is misleading and doesn’t fit with the rigour of the rest of the book.

Flaw #2: Gardner could have had a more nuanced discussion of Tetlock’s work and how it fits into the status quo problem. The issue here is that Tetlock found that if you predict “no change,” you’ll actually do a decent job predicting things. A related notion is the status quo bias, where people assume that things will continue as they are. This is a problem because people invalidly extrapolate trend lines. There is a subtle distinction here between assuming that the present circumstances won’t change (good for prediction) and assuming that indicators in the present are valid predictors of future circumstances (bad for prediction). I don’t think it would have been too much trouble to tease this out (if only in a footnote).

Chapter 5 – Unsettled by Uncertainty

While there was a lot of interesting information in this chapter, it felt disjointed and had a few too many anecdotes for my comfort. It was mainly stories of how bad things were in the 1970s, or how dire the predictions were, and how nothing that bad came to pass. It might be the weakest chapter, but the social/intellectual history was decent. To be fair, a different reader might enjoy having the concepts elaborated upon. The problem for me is that once Gardner displayed Tetlock’s findings in the early chapters, further anecdotal information does not increase how convinced I am.

Chapter 6 – Everyone Loves a Hedgehog

More about predictions and how the media picks up hedgehog stories and talking points without much investigation into their underlying source or concern for accuracy. It is a good demolition of the absurdity of so many news “discussion shows.” Gardner demonstrates how the media prefer a show where Hedgehogs square off against each other, and it is important that these commentators not be challenged lest they become exposed and, by association, implicate the flawed structure of the program/network.

Gardner really singles out certain people, like Paul Ehrlich, and shows how they have been wrong many times and yet can still get an audience.

Minor issue: If you check footnote 56, you’ll see Gardner admit to an error that he exposes numerous others making in the body of the text. I wondered why he did this in a footnote. Was he concerned that admitting he didn’t check common wisdom for accuracy would undermine his authority as a columnist and writer?

Chapter 7 – When Prophets Fail

This might be the most entertaining chapter as it looks at prophets and prophecies, including experts who predicted Y2K chaos and calamities that never happened. There is a good exploration of Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance, which can generally be explained by saying that two or more beliefs come into conflict and they are usually resolved in a self-enhancing manner, putting truth as a lower priority. Regarding the theme of this book, “a mind deeply committed to the truth of a predication will do almost anything to avoid seeing evidence of the prediction’s failure for what it is.” (p.196)

Gardner uses a nice analogy, describing dissonance as a cognitive migraine and self-enhancing belief as a pill that makes the pain go away. Once again, there are too many anecdotes for my tastes, but it is useful as case studies illustrate the concerns and help the reader understand and hopefully apply the lessons thereof.

The chapter opened with a great quotation by John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?”

Finally, it is in chapter 7 that Gardner writes one of his best passages:

“An assertion that cannot be falsified by any conceivable evidence is nothing more than dogma. It can’t be debated. It can’t be proven or disproven. It’s just something people choose to believe or not for reasons that have nothing to do with fact and logic. And dogma is what predictions become when experts and their followers go to ridiculous lengths to dismiss clear evidence that they failed.” (p. 236)

Chapter 8 – The End

Gardner really pulls it all together in the last chapter with a good flow and summary of aforementioned themes and facts without it feeling repetitive or awkward. Helpfully, Gardner provides specific examples of better ways to think about issues (the Fox approach). One can only hope that these tactics will be appropriate and humility will increase along with accuracy of predictions.

Once again, there are nice phrases throughout and he knows how to write quotable prose.

So, was my prediction correct?

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse

2011-01-21T15:58:00.001-05:00

This is yet another entertaning story about English gentleman Bertrand Wooster and his gentleman’s gentlemen, Jeeves by Wodehouse (see past reviews for other Wodehouse works). Feudal Spirit is similar to Thank You, Jeeves in that it is full novel, and similar to all the others in that J. Cecil performs the audio presentation wonderfully and Bertie gets into hijinks of which Jeeves is eventually able to bail him out.

Although enjoyable and worthwhile, I don't think it was as good as some of the four works I've read (but that could have been to being less in the mood for it at the early stages of the work).

The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy by Yves Engler

2011-01-07T16:28:00.001-05:00

This book is incredibly important and incredibly frustrating, but overall it is worthwhile. Engler's mission is to describe incidents where the Canadian government or Canadian business engaged in illegal, immoral or suspicious activity. He does this for over 50 countries. Using a sentence from the last chapter (edited for concision), his general thesis is that "Canada's role in world affairs has been consistently pro-empire, pro-colonial and serving narrow corporate interests."

After reading page after page of sketchy dealings in various countries, it is hard not to agree with him. It certainly seems there have been numerous and various dealings that are unjust and wouldn't be tolerated in our own country. The problem is that the content could have been far more contextualized, with better background events and opposing arguments being presented and critiqued. Additionally, his referencing, although abundant, was done in an annoying style. The book wasn't a happy read, but the content is just so important, if only to prompt further investigation and examination of Engler's claims.

If someone were to complaining that the book was full of half-truths, I'd be sympathetic and say that that might be true... but add that his half-truths were just the opposite of the half-truths to which we have become accustomed.

Recommended.

Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore

2011-01-07T11:14:00.000-05:00

A light and zany novel that follows a screw-up pilot on his adventures with a cargo cult and missionaries who may not be helping the islanders as much as harming them. I haven't read anything by Moore before and I was looking for some vacation reading, but I found the book just wasn't smart enough. It seems I was looking for something more like Tom Robbins, which is zany and quirkly and intelligent, instead of just zany and prose which wasn't noteworthy.

I can't say I recommend it unless you want something without almost any social commentary or provocative ideas.

LOGICOMIX by Doxiadis et al.

2010-12-30T17:17:00.001-05:00

LOGICOMIX is an entertaining and compelling graphic novel (of historical fiction) that explores Bertrand Russell's quest for certainty and mathematical truth. I found it stimulating, amusing and hard to put down. The subject matter is fascinating (Is there Truth? Can Math be a foundation for it?) and it was nice to see the usual suspects: Whitehead, Hilbert, Poincaré, Wittgenstein and Gödel. Initially I didn't like a meta-perspective about the creation of the book, but I came to see it as a useful device to discuss the angle that was being taken.

In summation, I liked this so much and the format was so accessible, that I wish it just kept going, that I could keep reading about truth, limitations on knowledge, logic, reason and human relations and the work was far longer than several hundred pages.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

2010-12-29T12:23:00.000-05:00

(Unfinished ~ 18%)

Disappointing! After hearing so many wonderful things about Franzen, Freedom was quite a let down. While it started off decently, I didn't care about the plot or the characters, and I didn't find the writing noteworthy. I know it is supposed to be satirical and paint a dark portrait about (or hang a useful mirror to) American life, but the work was not sufficiently interesting for me to even finish it.

xkcd: volume 0 by Randall Munroe

2010-12-23T14:02:00.004-05:00

For the uninitiated, xkcd is "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" that quirky, smart, occasionally touching and quite popular. The drawings are usually stick people or larger graphs/images that explore the main themes. This book is a collection of the comic and it was very enjoyable. I appreciate the comic because I generally get all the romance, sarcasm, language and some of the math. The problem is that 'math' might be more accurately replaced by 'computer science/programming.' This problem was amplified by the collected works which have many extra goodies in them, but a large chunk are computer programming references/eggs that I just don't have the background for. That said, the commentary on each strip was a nice touch and fun to read.

My second main criticism is that it was too short! Come on, man! We know the stuff is available free on the web and your intro sounds like you don't need tons of revenue from putting out several smaller books, so why not make it thicker?

I would say buy this if you are a big fan but if you're unsure or more frugal, just read the original strips on the website

Something related to the book but not usually part of a review was the publisher. As it said on the inside pages: "The book is published by BreadPig, a company founded by my friend Alexis, and their portion of the profits will go to build a school in Laos through the charity Room to Read."

Well, isn't that great?

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

2010-12-23T14:00:00.003-05:00

(Unfinished ~50%)
After being unimpressed by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I thought I would give Through the Looking Glass a chance, both for balance and for learning about cultural references. I only made it halfway through before deciding, reluctantly, to leave it unfinished. There was more wordplay, some of which was quite enjoyable, but the story wasn't intriguing. The work seems a little more sophisticated than Wonderland as many aspects of the story are structured in reference to movements on a chess board. Yet... meh.
I did read about Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, and Humpty Dumpty saying words mean what he wants them to mean, but there just wasn't enough to justify the investment.
Can't recommend this one.

Earth (the book) by The Daily Show Writers

2010-12-17T14:48:00.000-05:00

Concisely, if you liked America (the book) and/or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and/or The Onion, you’ll like this book.

A sign of excellent comedic writing is the ability to be humourous and intelligent in 8-10 words. The Daily Show writers manage to achieve this on every page of this fake encyclopedia of Earth (with a focus on humans). Wry observations, quirky analyses and some laugh out loud social commentary fill this book.

While tempting to excerpt some of my faves, I don’t want to ruin any of the jokes.

Just go read it.

Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

2010-12-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

Wodehouse delights once again in another excellent book about English gentleman Bertrand Wooster and his gentleman’s gentlemen, Jeeves. This is the fourth Jeeves & Wooster book I’ve finished, but the first full length novel as the other three were collections of short stories. I had wondered if Wodehouse would be able to carry off a novel length tale, but my concerns were unfounded. Not only does it fulfill in the way the short stories do, but it flows quite nicely. Once again, the reader is provided with amusing situations, quirky but endearing characters, and charming yet witty dialogue.

The superb vocal delivery by J. Cecil must be acknowledged and praised. One could say, “J. Cecil, you stand alone.”

(minor spoiler alert)

A modern reader, though likely to enjoy this work, probably won’t be able to be unsurprised when part of the story involved black musicians and some white characters end up in black face. Such a thing generally wouldn’t fly nowadays so it was an educational experience to imaging this being simply amusing and not offensive to previous audiences. I believe these “signs of the times” are very useful to understanding how various societies have changed over time (thankfully often for the better).

Finally, I’ll mention that I happily have Cecil’s accents and Wodehouse’s dialogue pattern rolling around in my head. Carry on!

Highly recommended.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

2010-12-14T14:00:00.000-05:00

An insightful and disheartening, but not harrowing, description of one man’s day in a Russian prison camp (or Gulag as they came to be known). The book is not plot driven, nor about extensive personal reflections and shared introspections, but more of an exploration of the conditions of Ivan’s life, the conditions of the Gulag.

The reader comes to sympathize with Ivan’s plight, his near constant thoughts of food acquisition and avoidance of physical punishment. That said, the book is less depressing than anticipated because Ivan isn’t in agony. I imagine this could be due to a selection bias whereby the prisoners that have lasted 8 years have in some odd way, come to terms with the absurdity of their situation.

Numerous passages were significant, but here are four that stood out:

“How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold.” (p.23)

“Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he’d often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp – they were over before you could say ‘knife’. But the years, they never rolled by: they never moved by a second.” (p. 56)

“Does it bother you to wear a number? They don’t weigh anything, those numbers” (p. 60)

“He supped without bread… the bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a rascal. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday, it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.”

(p.122)

War by Sebastian Junger

2010-12-10T16:11:00.002-05:00

If you are seeking an embedded reporter’s experiences of living alongside US troops in

Afghanistan

(without much analysis of the war itself) you probably can’t do too much better than Junger’s War.

As I don’t feel like writing the summary, I’ve cut and pasted the following paragraph from the Amazon.com Review (which also has a decent interview). My thoughts are below the review:

Junger spent 14 months in 2007–2008 intermittently embedded with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, one of the bloodiest corners of the conflict. The soldiers are a scruffy, warped lot, with unkempt uniforms—they sometimes do battle in shorts and flip-flops—and a ritual of administering friendly beatings to new arrivals, but Junger finds them to be superlative soldiers. Junger experiences everything they do—nerve-racking patrols, terrifying roadside bombings and ambushes, stultifying weeks in camp when they long for a firefight to relieve the tedium. Despite the stress and the grief when buddies die, the author finds war to be something of an exalted state: soldiers experience an almost sexual thrill in the excitement of a firefight—a response Junger struggles to understand—and a profound sense of commitment to subordinating their self-interests to the good of the unit. Junger mixes visceral combat scenes—raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion—with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. Copyright © Reed Business Information

The following are points/parts of the book that I thought noteworthy:

Before upcoming combat enlisted men have less stress than officers (this is thought to be because the enlisted men are actually seeking combat more than the officers).
Portrayals of soldiers are generally positive, despite many having troubled pasts. Additionally, they are described as having little introspection, and of a sense of power/invincibility.
Junger describes how the military assesses the “human terrain” and actually superimposes this map on a map of the physical terrain, and progress in both is measured box by box on the gridlines.
One old Afghan man thought one of the US soldiers was a Russian that never left(!)
The Afghan code of protection indicates that if you come to someone or their residence, they have to take you in. (While speaking positively about this code, Junger could have mentioned that that is why they didn’t give up Osama bin Laden… but he didn’t).
Generally speaking, during a battle fear is not an issue due to surging adrenaline. The measure of courage should be those action and thoughts before combat.
Junger talks about the silly machismo about denial of exhaustion and weakness. Of course, most military operations, especially infantry, rely upon strength and endurance, so a disdain of weakness makes some sense. The problem is when this ends up denying the reality of and problems associated with PTSD (and perhaps even physical actions that may only harm the individual later in life).
Military is about units and groups, not individuals, that must function as a team to survive.
Junger had no censorship whatsoever (but he could admit that he had to be approved first so chances are they are expecting a certain perspective). He does acknowledge how entirely dependent he is on the army for everything he has and how he survives (clothes, food, shelter, protection, transportation).
Most areas of Afghanistan are/were relatively stable.
An interesting point was Junger’s observation that many in the military are engaged in collective wishful thinking. If you are on the front lines you typically don’t think about the wider war, why it happened and if it is being won. Alternatively, if you are in large base removed from frequent combat, you tend to be more optimistic as you are not watching people die nor being shot at.
War is about getting the enemy into a position where you can kill them from a safe distance.
Junger describes how all too often survival comes down to luck; the good die as easily as the bad. I think of this as a direct experience of the injustice of the world.
War is exciting, but no one really talks about this. Soldiers might end up talking to their spouse, chaplain, or shrink, but such realities are not for public consumption. A man in his early 20s getting to shoot big guns brings out primal feelings of excitement and ecstasy. Later, these feelings might turn to sorrow, but in battle, soldiers are almost like a drug user taking a hit. When the high of battle has run out, one is left one bitter and dissatisfied.
When Junger realizes that he could have been killed if a bomb was detonated a fraction of a second later (making a difference of 10 ft) he had trouble coming to terms with the near arbitrarity of his continuing existence. “The idea that so much could be determined by so little was sort of intolerable, it made all of life terrifying.”
One of my fav lines involves Junger describing a particular type of weapon that, once fired, can have its projectile guided by a user. Each “shot” costs 80,000 dollars. This weapon is fired by someone who doesn’t make that in at year, at a guy who will never make that in a lifetime.

Recommended for what it is.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

2010-12-05T13:42:00.000-05:00

I thought it would be interesting to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because I have no memory of ever reading it, although I imagine someone read it to me, and I know I’ve seen the Disney movie many years ago. Additionally, cultural references abound about the White Rabbit and the Queen and the Mad Hatter (which, amusingly, makes me think of Batman).
To be honest, I was disappointed. So much so, that I began to wonder exactly why Alice in Wonderland became one of the most popular stories of the past 150 years. Perhaps it was more radical and original at the time? Maybe plays and the movie were key aspects of its success? Anyway, while it was a fantastical world, it wasn’t as peculiar as I anticipated. There was some decent wordplay, but not that much, and it could have been more sophisticated and witty. There were some morals, but I expected a larger parable (or many smaller ones) and some endearing life lessons.
Yes, I know it is a children's book but it seems I expected a bit more, especially given its length, like what one gets from some of Dr. Seuss’s works or The Little Prince. That said, it was a worthwhile read if only to be aware of the actual text that was the source of so many cultural references. (I think I'll check out the animated movie in the next little while to see how it was presented there)

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

2010-12-05T13:36:00.000-05:00

Narrative fantasies collide with harsh realities in this disheartening play about how terrible middle-class failure and familial conflict can be. Death of a Salesman is an aversive play about how a man has been worn down by his dreary job and unattained dreams. The play succeeds in presentation, but I don’t know if I would recommend it as it is disheartening. I listened to an audio presentation and sometimes I thought “there’s just so much yelling!”
The play seems to be about the difference between who we are and who we could be, either in our mind’s or the minds of others.
Only recommend for those who do not mind depressing plays or that just want to know what this famous work is all about (which was my motivation).

What We Say Goes by Noam Chomsky

2010-11-30T23:02:00.002-05:00

This 6 hour long series of questions and answers between Noam Chomsky and interviewer David Barsamian from 2006-2007 is an excellent introduction to Chomsky’s (non-linguistic) perspective on the world. Given Chomsky’s breadth of knowledge and how he links topics, it is tempting to say that book is about everything, but that can vagueness can probably be boiled down to one theme: the discussion of power and how power influence peoples thoughts and actions.
A more specific topic list can be found from the product description: Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: Iran's challenge to the United States, the deterioration of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, and the growing power of the left in Latin America, as well as the Democratic victory in the 2006 U.S. midterm elections and the upcoming presidential race.
All those topics and more are discussed, and in each one Chomsky presents a viewpoint that is counter to what most media outlets and governments provide. A criticism is that sometimes he could be clearer about how much intention and purposeful organization is behind the calamities of justice and moral consistency that he so often describes. I also so often wonder what drives him to keep doing so much. Justice? Duty? I wonder if he enjoys it or has decided it is the right thing to do (or both)?

I highly recommend this work. The uninitiated will get a understanding of what Chomsky believes and why he is so controversial, while those familiar will get useful, rational analysis of important events and a reminder to be ever critical of the types of acceptable discourse.

Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind by Noam Chomsky

2010-11-30T22:20:00.003-05:00

This brief (under 2 hours) audio presentation gives an overview of some of Chomsky’s thoughts on various issues, primarily about state propaganda and how it influences thoughts and actions. It was as if Chomsky was responding to questions but we don’t know what most of the questions were. This would not be a good first Chomsky experience but might serve as a brief reminder for those already familiar. Both interesting and saddening was the fact that despite this being from the late 1990s, his commentary is applicable to current events (and one barely notices it's age).

Far better was What We Say Goes (reviewed above).

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

2010-11-30T21:29:00.001-05:00

An excellent exploration of the life a supposed Nazi propagandist who might really be an American spy years after the war. Neo-nazis love him, Russians befriend him and American countrymen despise him, all of whom it seems are trying to get him to or away from a war crimes tribunal.
This is one of Vonnegut’s best and given that I’ve read about 8 of his other books; I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it. In classic Vonnegut style we read about the horrors of war and witness absurd people in mundane situations or mundane people in absurd situations. The book is worthwhile, but I especially enjoyed the final fifth.

Some lines I enjoyed, paraphrased:
“You might as well look for diamond rings in gutters if you are looking for justice and fairness in this world.”
Person 1: This day will go down in history.
Person 2: Every day goes down in history.
“Corpse carries to the guardhouse” – a call that would go out in the concentration camps. Even more chilling in spoken German (this was an audiobook).

The other parts that stuck with me were the brief discussion on how chemicals influence our decisions (pretty good for 1966) and how the hard core racists aren’t crazy, just that some of gears have been worn down in their head. They still function, but not as they should.
Go read it!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

2010-11-23T20:33:00.001-05:00

Sedaris once again demonstrates why he deserves his fame as a wry satirist with this excellent little book of short stories about animals, which are obviously really parables that explore human foibles). The stories are anthropomorphic and unrealistic, but it was interesting to read about chickens, squirrels, rabbits or turtles acting in ways certain types of people would act. If you don’t have the minor suspension of disbelief, you won’t enjoy this. If you can go with the premise though, you’ll see Sedaris skewer bigotry, racism, pride, authoritarianism, religion and death. Primarily though, the main theme explored is that of human biases, personal and external, mostly about vanity and positive self-regard.
The stories are entertaining and I recommend the book (only 3 hours by audio presentation, with four different presenters). If I had any criticism, it would be that sometimes Sedaris wasn’t too subtle in his delivery.
(Note: out of curiosity, I just checked Amazon.com to see what others’ thought and many didn’t like this. So be warned!... the masses are displeased)

Player One: What Is To Become of Us by Douglas Coupland (2010 Massey Lectures)

2010-11-20T23:23:00.005-05:00

"Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die."
So say the characters in Douglas Coupland’s Player One: What Is To Become of Us, the 2010 Massey lectures, which were given as a five-part fictional story for the first time.
Player One was a good (almost great) but not quite excellent, exploration of human frailty and behaviour during a cataclysmic event. The story focused on four people in an airport hotel bar and their hopes and fading dreams. Coupland also tries to explore ‘what will become of us’ through bringing in technological developments, present and future, and how people are reacting to them. He also does this through one character but mainly through giving her cognitive ‘deficits’ like the inability to recognize and differentiate faces (prosopagnosia), atonality (laughter is a negative sound to her) and behaviours similar to autism. I appreciated the science, but it is unfortunate it had to be achieved in that way. Similarly, I thought he didn’t go far enough with the futuristic musings because there is a lot to explore. Currently, the line between sci-fi and actual technological research and development is often blurry.
For comparative purposes, here is the info paragraph from CBC that described the lectures:
In an airport lounge in the very near future, four people are marooned when a kind of apocalypse strikes. Sealed in, the four can only talk to each other, examining their lives and the meaning of love. Thick ash falls from the sky. Cell phones don't work. What is to become of us? In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard, Douglas Coupland locates his story and characters in an extreme situation and then pushes the implications as far as possible.
I thought the narrative style was fine, each of the four people described events in turn, but from third person omniscient instead of just first person like in Hornby’s A Long Way Down. There was a fifth voice, “Player One” but I thought this was not as well as executed as it could have been. My expectations were a little high, too.
Is it worthwhile? Yes. Fiction is probably a great way to expose non-sciencey people to these ideas. Go have a listen or read and let me know what you thought.

The Bro Code by Barney Stinson and Matt Khun

2010-11-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

This was a moderately funny book that I can’t recommend unless you are a fan of the show “How I Met Your Mother.” It is basically a list of rules for Bro-ness but most of them aren’t that funny (but I did laugh out loud a couple times). Granted, the whole thing is absurd but that does not quite make it worth your time. Listening to an audiobook version at 2x speed made it tolerable as the whole thing was over in about an hour.
I probably wouldn’t spend more of my life on it.
(It amuses me that Stinson is listed as the author as he is a fictional character)

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

2010-11-16T14:49:00.001-05:00

A decent but not impressive exploration, neither light-hearted nor detailed inquiry, on the issue of suicide. This was my first Hornby novel, although I did enjoy the films High Fidelity and About a Boy. The novel follows four people, of diverse character and circumstances, who met on the rooftop of a building where they had all planned to kill themselves. A support group of sorts begins and they are in each other’s lives for the next several months. The presentation of this novel was interesting in that it was told from the perspective of each of the four people in succession but not all at once. Each character would describe a situation and then pretty much the same situation would be described by the others, and then this would repeat for a new situation.
I do like this, as the characters were decently developed and they seemed to act true to form. One does believe the characters had reasons for acting as they would. I even laughed out loud at a couple points. Further, because it was an audio presentation there were three different British voices and amusing little expressions to enjoy. That said, this was not a great work. Perhaps the content was a bit depressing or the plot/situations weren’t sufficiently captivating as to make one invested in the story. It felt like it would end at various moments – not a good sign.
I would recommend this to people interested in the topic but less so to a general reader.

Very Good, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

2010-11-15T13:21:00.001-05:00

Another delightful collection of amusing and entertaining stories of Bertie Wooster and his gentlemen’s gentlemen, Jeeves. This was the third Jeeves & Wooster work that I’ve finished and I would say it was better than Carry On, Jeeves but not as good as The Inimitable Jeeves. The primary reason it was better than Carry On was that Jonathan Cecil was the voice actor presenting the content (like with Inimitable). Although the stories were comparable to Inimitable (holding more variables constant), they were not quite as good. I felt some of the later stories were better than the earlier ones. Of course, diminished novelty is likely a factor given that one month ago I’d never experienced any Wodehouse and now several weeks later I have finished three similar works.
Regardless, great stuff, recommended and I’d probably read another but I’ll probably wait a bit more.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

2010-11-15T10:44:00.000-05:00

A disappointing work because I now think “Kafkaesque” means “annoying.” I had anticipated reading a story about a man caught in an absurd bureaucracy that provides insight into the limits of institutions and the importance of openness in them, but instead it was a bit of a mess without clear explanations for the actions of the characters or the situation they are in. I realize things were supposed to be unclear, but actions and concerns were inconsistent in an unhelpful way.
For example, in the beginning we are lead to believe the main character exists in a world/state/city where one has the right to know the charges they face and be able to defend themselves. This turns out not to be the case but people do not react as if this is absurd or obviously contradicts how they think things should be.
(Spoilers are involved in my examples)
The main character has an opportunity to call the state’s attorney, who is an acquaintance, to find out more about his arrest, but he does not. This is not explained.
Later on in the work, the main character meets an Information man of sorts who can supposedly answer all the unanswered questions that have been so frustrating, but he is asked nothing. This makes no sense. If he kept asking and kept being denied like it was some authoritarian police state it would make more sense.
At the very end, when he is being escorted off to die (for reasons we never know) he doesn’t seek the assistance of a police officer. Gah! Such are the parts I found really annoying.
The main character is also unlikeable as he is quite arrogant, classist and is extremely fickly with women (him sleeping with the lawyer’s helper made no sense).
If the work wasn’t as short as it was (and the fact I wanted a valid opinion on at least a little of what Kafka was all about), I wouldn’t have finished this.

I don’t think it fair to blame Kafka as the work was unfinished and on his deathbed he asked it (along with other works) to be burned. I’m not saying it should have been burned, but I don’t agree with the amount of respect this work has received.
I do not recommend this book. Instead I would suggest you (re)read 1984.

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

2010-11-10T15:34:00.002-05:00

The entertaining and sordid tale of a pseudo-recovering sex addict who purposely chokes in restaurants to give the person who saves him more meaning in their lives, as well as subsequent financial rewards to him because they care, to support his crazed mother in a nursing home. One of the main themes is that we are trying to escape our own lives, if only for a moment.
That brief summary sort of says it all. If you liked Fight Club, chances are you will like this. Grit, sex, absurdity, amusement (a couple laugh out louds) and moments of perspective.
An easy and enjoyable read.

A couple memorable lines:
"Sometimes I think I'm doing a bad impersonation of myself."
and another delightful reference to patting your head and rubbing your stomach.

Another Year of Words

2010-11-01T10:52:00.004-04:00

Books completed from late-October 2009 to late-October 2010.
* = recommended
** = highly recommended

Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer
*The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement by John Rawls
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel
I Drink for a Reason by David Cross

SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
The Rights Revolution by Michael Ignatieff
*The Universe in a Single Atom by the Dalai Lama
*The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester
Like Shaking Hands With God (with Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer)

Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
Alexander the Great and his Time by Agnes Savill
*Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be by Daniel Loxton
The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

**Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Freedom: Short Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Amnesty International)
*Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day by Peter J. Bentley
The Wayfinders by Wade Davis
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

*Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubins
TimeQuake by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
*Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku
*CBC 1967 Massey Lectures by Martin Luther King, Jr.
*Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett (again)

*Chickenhawk by Robert Mason (part of my Independent study of Vietnam. Try ctrl+f and search the title)
**The Vietnam Wars by Marilyn Young (part of my Independent study of Vietnam. Try ctrl+f and search the title)

**The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Absolutely Small by Michael Fayer
**Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand
*Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
*Atheism: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Baggini

What Intelligence Tests Miss by Keith E. Stanovich
The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction by Terry Eagleton
*The Public Domain by James Boyle
*How to Watch TV News by Neil Postman & Steven Powers
**The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris
Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

2010-11-01T10:44:00.001-04:00

An amusing and worthwhile collection of Jeeves stories but not nearly as good as The Inimitable Jeeves which I finished just a week ago. As I experienced both books in audio form, I think the primary factor for Carry On being less enjoyable was that the reader was different and not as good. Carry On, Jeeves was read by Martin Jarvis while Inimitable was read by Jonathan Cecil. Jarvis does a good job in his own right, but Cecil is more diverse, elaborate, and, perhaps most of all, I became accustomed to his presentation of the characters. When I first started the book I kept thinking “But He doesn’t sound like that!” A fiction of course, but such is how the audiobook crumbles. Consequently, my enthusiasm for Wodehouse has slightly waned, but I think the test will be to see if I enjoy another Wodehouse read by Cecil.
Although following a similar pattern, the stories were still a welcome experience.

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

2010-10-26T16:08:00.001-04:00

The Moral Landscape is an intelligent and well-researched work that engages the reader to question if notions of fact and value are really that different, but this landscape is not without its pitfalls.

On November 1st there is a book group meeting to discuss The Moral Landscape so I shall review the book in a way that makes it easier to examine different ideas and themes by presenting a list of the main positives (peaks) and negatives (valleys) about the book.
Peaks
1) Conscious well-being – Harris argues that this is the only thing one should and could care about. All notions of happiness and suffering are contained within the phrase “well-being” and we want more of the positive than the negative. It is “conscious” because that is all we experience. It is true that subconscious events affect us, but that really means that they have an effect on our conscious well-being. Although I’m not 100% convinced, there does seem to be a lot of truth to this and this is likely what we care about most often.
2) The Moral Landscape has peaks and valleys - Harris tackles head on the fact that some ways of living are better than others and we can investigate these discrepancies further to better understand ourselves and better ways to live. This message may seem obvious to some and challenging to others, hopefully more people will admit to the former.
3) Fact & Value – Many think these must be different because not everyone agrees on moral issues. Harris rightly points out that we rarely use mass consensus to determine other issues (look to polls about scientific or any other type of knowledge), but we can all admit that some ways are better than others (…so he argues). Restated, it is important to draw parallels to other areas of knowledge and ignorance and how such discrepancies don’t force people to abandon notions of objective X.
4) Clarity – Harris is quite clear about what he is arguing, what he means and what he doesn’t mean, and provides responses to anticipated criticism. While this is how all books should be, not all authors seem to agree or can write that way.
5) Interesting – For those who like philosophy and science, there are many interesting things in The Moral Landscape. Aside from the main content, one reads about different selves, (the illusion of) the illusion of free will, psychopathy, recent findings in neuroscience and various tidbits (mainly from psychology) along the way.
6) Thought-provoking – Harris forces the reader to clarify their own positions in relation to his argument. If you disagree, you should be prepared to say why.

Valleys
1) Disagree? Dismissed – Harris wants you to agree with him about his notion of well-being, and if you don’t, then he says your opinion doesn’t count. Additionally, if you disagree it is about conscious well-being, then your opinion doesn’t count. Further, if you disagree that extreme horror isn’t worse than tranquil delight, then your opinion doesn’t count. I am sympathetic to many of these points, but not to the degree that I can fully support his stance. (See below)
2) Arguing Extremes (Straw man; Slippery slope fallacies)
Throughout the book I was continually disappointed by Harris’ reliance upon an extreme example to try to prove a point. It was if he had a strategy of “One, Two, Extreme” and wasn’t afraid to use it. He begins by describing an issue, then providing some analysis which almost makes you agree with him, and then instead of further analysis he provides you with some extreme situation or example that you can’t disagree with.
The example I made up below isn’t quite the same, but it gives the right idea (Three is real content):
One: Different cultures have different practices.
Two: Some people think all these different practices are equally valid.
Three: If you agree with point two you are crazy because then you validate things like this: “Generose Namburho [is] a 40-year-old former nurse [who lives in the Congo]. Namburho is a stocky, self-assured woman who led us down a mud path, using a crutch to replace her missing right leg. An extremist Hutu militia invaded Namburho’s home a few years ago, killed her husband, raped her and then hacked off her leg with a knife. Then the soldiers cooked the flesh from her leg and forced her children at gunpoint to eat it. When her beloved oldest son refused, they shot him in front of her.”
Surely you don’t think children should be forced to eat their mother’s leg, do you?!
I think such argumentative structures are counterproductive because they do not address the all important middle case (and typically raise emotions which do not help with reasoning).
3) Science can’t really determine human values(?) The subtitle of the book is “How Science Can Determine Human Values” so one is given to thinking that most of our moral questions will be answered. The problem is that so far there are only general answers. Harris wisely admits that there can be equivalent peaks on the moral landscape, where there are alternate ways of achieving a similar good, but, problematically, there is little way to figure out which path to take. Additionally, Harris states that quite often there might only be answers in principle, not in practice. Harris believes this is an important point, and it is, but not to the degree he ascribes. To say that whatever is the most reasonable way to calculate collective well-being will be the most reasonable way to do it, is both true and unhelpful. True, it does follow from other premises about the nature of what we value and our notions of well-being, but because of the complexity of moral systems (i.e., us), how are we going to do this? Harris readily admits that it may be impossible for science to figure these things out. So then what is so new here? Near the end of the book (p. 183) Harris says we don’t need science to tell us many of the things we already know about having better lives. Cruelty and being tortured are bad; nearly all agree. What we all (probably) wanted is more detail on the gray areas, but there isn't much to be found in this book on such important issues. Knowing what is wrong and knowing what is right are different things (i.e., it is easier to point out how not to live than to say how to do so). Additionally, near the end (p. 189) he uses the phrasing “the claim that science could have something important to say about human values…” and that is far more modest than science determining them. This is exactly why the Is/Ought distinction is so important.
Harris seems to be saying that science cannot determine specific moral actions in practice. If that is true, then there isn’t much to disagree with. This particular topic probably warrants the most discussion (and has also received it thus far - see responses to his TED talk).
Perhaps the subtitle should have been "Science could, perhaps theoretically, determine human values, but not what we should value, unless you agree with my other arguments."
Granted the length makes it a poor subtitle, but something less misleading could have been picked.
4) Disagreement is met with condescension – While it is understandable that moral issues are of grave concern, I do not think that people should be denigrated (at least in public) for holding different (modest) views. Someone might disagree with you because they are informed and disagree, not because they are confused or stupid. All too often Harris sees his opposition as intellectual bankrupt or baffled (when they might be neither). Harris says Mooney is confused because he wants there to be accommodation and 'spiritual atheism' but Harris doesn't criticize Dan Dennett for wanting to reclaim the word spiritual (Dennett was a key reviewer of the book). Perhaps it is an issue of who his intended audience is.
5) Interesting, but lacking coherence. The content of the Moral Landscape was indeed interesting, but most of the bits after the first few chapters didn’t seem to flow as well, nor was a strong case made to tie the content back to the overall thesis. I think Harris could have filled things in a bit more. For example, how does our lack of free will impinge upon our ability to even recognize a moral landscape?

After all that, I guess you'll know if you should read it or not. I think it was worthwhile but I can't say I'll recommend this to many who are not already in the science/skepticism/atheist world.

The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

2010-10-25T15:14:00.001-04:00

This delightful and amusing semi-novel is a collection of 11 related short stories about the life of English gentlemen Bertie Wooster and his valet Reginald Jeeves. The stories entail Mr. Wooster’s adventures in the city, enduring life’s perceived hardships (especially his Aunt), gambling, his friend Bingo who always falls in love, and, almost inevitable, Jeeves assisting Wooster to get through it alright. I experienced the word audibly, with J. Cecil doing a bang up job with all the voices and narration. It might have made all the difference as I can still hear lovely English expressions rattling around in my brain that still bring a smile to my face (“Good egg; biffed off; rummy; stick it… etc).
The droll sense of English humour shines in these stories and one cannot help but appreciate the way in which things fall apart if only to come together (but often still in pieces).
I had heard good things about Wodehouse for awhile but this was my first. After finishing it, I can definitely say that it will not be my last.
I highly recommend you give a listen (or read).