Interesting history of birth that explains how we got to what we consider normal now, and how we got away from things that were normal in different erInteresting history of birth that explains how we got to what we consider normal now, and how we got away from things that were normal in different eras in history. Some of the older ways were awesome (and many people are trying to go back to them), and some were horrifying or weird or superstitious or crazy. It's a helpful context for people who want to know how we got here and why we do some of the things we do.
You also learn more about some of the big names in birth - who was Lamaze, Bradley, and was there really a person named Grantly Dick-Read?
Yes. Yes there was. And he was pretty neat....more
Extremely helpful recommendation from a friend. Scientist gives a helpful distillation of what the research actually says about pregnancy, family, raiExtremely helpful recommendation from a friend. Scientist gives a helpful distillation of what the research actually says about pregnancy, family, raising a child, and how to parent. He also synthesizes it all into basic recommendations that aren't obvious. I will be referring to it for years to come....more
Read this book, whether you're an introvert or not. Even if you don't know any. Especially if you don't interact with them very often. It explains whyRead this book, whether you're an introvert or not. Even if you don't know any. Especially if you don't interact with them very often. It explains why it's important why you should be....more
Apparently the book was full of crap. So that's nice.
[Really, really interesting exploration of different (I was going to say forms) methods of creatiApparently the book was full of crap. So that's nice.
[Really, really interesting exploration of different (I was going to say forms) methods of creativity. Sometimes it's best to let your mind wander, other times it's best to keep pounding the mental pavement until you reach a solution, while some problems are best solved alone and others are easily handled in a group.
Really, just the same sort of excellence you've come to expect from Jonah Lehrer. I recommend giving it a shot. He's providing some competition for Malcolm Gladwell, which is awesome.]...more
Finally got to the end, and there's so much good advice I may give it another listen. So good, we're already using some of it. Her voice is interestinFinally got to the end, and there's so much good advice I may give it another listen. So good, we're already using some of it. Her voice is interesting even when she does or worries about annoying things. Parents always worry about annoying things! The French seem to parent in a serious, semi-detached, independent, no-bullshit-allowed-but-still-loving way that preserves their identities. I think that a more moderate balance on breastfeeding (it's apparently rare in France?) would do them good, especially since they tend to follow the science so well in most other areas....more
I picked up The Well-Dressed Ape a little randomly in the library, and don't really regret it. Her writing is a little corny, she's obviously incompleI picked up The Well-Dressed Ape a little randomly in the library, and don't really regret it. Her writing is a little corny, she's obviously incomplete in a full description of the human body (that would be impossible), and sometimes the research felt either incomplete or repetitive. However, through those flaws, I definitely enjoyed the book. The premise is a field description of the animal homo sapiens. She goes top to bottom, describing brain, senses, posture, reproduction, locomotion, eating, homeostasis, and all kinds of behavior. She uses the homunculus analogy in her description of brain real estate, but the same analogy could be used in her page real estate. Most of her focus is on the senses, sexual behavior, brain usage, etc - I would have loved to be regaled with anecdotes and information about the organs, the bones, the muscles, the circulatory system, etc. Some of these get small mentions, but I wanted more. For someone who's not read a lot of books about human biology/psychology/evolution, the research she goes through won't be repetitive, but I tend to like that sort of book. Her approach on a familiar topic is unique enough that I stayed interested even through parts I found boring. Definitely recommended. ...more
Eating Animals starts out with assurance that it will not be a manifesto for vegetarianism, and Foer does his best to present a measured, scholarly, iEating Animals starts out with assurance that it will not be a manifesto for vegetarianism, and Foer does his best to present a measured, scholarly, informed, and compassionate report on the way we get our meat - which is 99% obtained through factory farms, slaughterhouses, and industrial fishing. It ends as exactly what he said it wouldn't be: a manifesto for vegetarianism.
You can tell he didn't want to end up there - his research and reporting are fair and somewhat detached, even as he's explaining how factory farms keep animals sick and cramped, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and then inhumanely slaughter them - too often cutting them apart while still accidentally alive; pollute the planet with poo and industrial fertilizer; serve as hotbeds of virulent diseases (bird flu, swine flu, etc); run small family farms out of business through heavy-handed Mafia-like tactics, and generally assault our consciences. Fishing doesn't escape either - the current industrial fishing system often will throw back 90% of what it catches, after killing or mangling the creatures, and we're so efficient at using 75 mile long nets and sonar to catch fish that there's very little left to reproduce. He goes from this extreme (and likely accurate) view of the current agri- and aqua-business system to farmers trying to do things better. Michael Pollan's admiration for Polyface Farm doesn't escape the criticism that Polyface Farm uses a factory slaughterhouse and Joel Salatin's turkeys are the same genetically mangled birds that the factory farms use, that cannot naturally reproduce and die young because they can't walk after a certain age due to the size of their breasts, like sacrificial Barbies. He even finds a vegan who designs human slaughterhouses (mobile so as to keep the animals from stressing out during transportation), but of course the big slaughterhouse businesses put him out of business.
Foer's reaction to this bleak but accurate view of the way we get our meat is, for him, to stop eating meat. The whole reason he began looking into the food system is because after his son was born, he wanted the answer to the question "what should we feed him?" and further, "what should we feed ourselves?" He believes that the only morally, environmentally, and economically viable answer is to eat only vegetables and not kill animals. He doesn't say you're a bad person if you eat animals, just not informed enough, and he tries to inform you. That's the only conclusion he could draw.
But I don't think it's this black and white. Foer probably made a few thousand people stop eating meat. This has admirable environmental, ethical, biological, and economical ramifications. However, what if he'd made several million people dramatically reduce their meat consumption, so that it wasn't the culinary center of every meal? What if those millions then did their best to seek out meat that was organic, pasture-fed, family farm raised, and humanely slaughtered? Wouldn't this have a larger effect of the industry and actually cause less meat to be eaten than a few thousand vegetarians?
Once we start to draw boxes around what we eat - no mammals or birds due to inhumane slaughtering, no fish due to overfishing, no non-organic veggies due to pesticides and Roundup, no non-heirloom vegetables due to the chokehold Monsanto has over plants' DNA (even soy), no dairy because of the treatment of dairy cows, no sugar because some diet says it's bad for you - what is left to eat? I have no problem with the rationale against those types of foods, but I have a problem with the uncompromising nature of drawing those boxes. You reach more people through moderation than through tee-totaling. And I think that's the conclusion I've reached after reading this and some Michael Pollan. Moderation is the best avenue down which to make the choices we wish to make. At least for me....more
I read A.J. Jacobs’ “A Year Of Living Biblically” last year, and judging by my review of it, it’s hard to imagine why I tried his other famous book. II read A.J. Jacobs’ “A Year Of Living Biblically” last year, and judging by my review of it, it’s hard to imagine why I tried his other famous book. I thought his attempt to chronicle living by the words of the bible was a little juvenile and disappointing in its lack of historical analysis. I wanted to hear more about why things made their way into the bible, how people have interpreted it over the years, what it meant to him and people in our age. It ended up being a scattershot personal journey that was more about the importance of family than his intended subject matter.
This was also a lot more pop-psych than I would have hoped for. His “investigation” into what intelligence actually is amounts to various gestures toward common clichés, rather than his opinion about what being smart means. As he reports on interesting bits from the encyclopedia, he goes for the quick yuk-yuk joke rather than absorb the info or tell you what he thinks it means. “Apparently, there’s a whole group of people – and by people I mean losers – who also comb the Britannica looking for mistakes.” Ha, ha! Ha! Sigh.
All this said, it borders on informative, and it sounds like a fun way to increase your understanding of the world. A survey course of existence, forcing you to know about things you’d never read about.
I did find the entry on Thomas Paine interesting enough to want to read more of his stuff, if only to have ammunition in a theoretical fight with a Tea Partier: “His ideas were solid – relief for the poor, pensions for the aged, public works for the unemployed, a progressive income tax. But in England, where he was living at the time, it got him charged with treason. Things worsened with he wrote another pamphlet attacking organized religion. Though he made clear in the pamphlet that he was a deist and believed in the Supreme Being, he still got charged with being an atheist.” Sounds like Glenn Beck hasn’t read Paine.
I did have to identify with Jacobs in this respect:
“I’m wondering if – to continue Ezekiel’s metaphor – I bit off more than I could chew when I announced this Britannica project to the world. Because I have to tell you, I’m not sure I can go on. I’m not sure I can hear another one of those tissue-thin pages crinkle while turning. Or see another black-and-white picture of an old man with elaborate facial hair. Or learn about the average cubic meters of water discharged by another African river. Or crack open another volume with a spine emblazoned with the Scottish thistle – a plant with sharp thorns that serves as Britannica’s weird-looking and aggressive logo. Why exactly did I think this was a good idea again?”...more
I wish Carl Sagan was my live-in step-uncle who could take me outside and explain the wonder of the night sky, tell stories about forgotten scientistsI wish Carl Sagan was my live-in step-uncle who could take me outside and explain the wonder of the night sky, tell stories about forgotten scientists, and explain to me how to live my life. What a great guy! I loved Contact, and I also read either Cosmos or Pale Blue Dot (it was in middle school so I honestly can't remember), but The Demon-Haunted World was the kind of book I'd been wanting to read at this point in my life.
The synopsis is that he explains the wonder, utility, necessity, and awesomeness of science. The book in dense, and I would have taken out some of the middle chapters where he compassionately, carefully, and thoughtfully debunks paranormal theories from faith healing to alien abduction. But who am I to tell him how to write a book? My copy is now so dog-eared I'll be going back to it for the rest of my life.
I'll be absorbing this one for a while, so I'll leave this review with just some thoughts in scattershot bulletpoints:
-Science is both utterly human and difficult for us to absorb. When hunter-gatherers first learned how to track prey, they had to learn many physical laws in practical terms. Older tracks became more eroded due to wind, heavier animals had deeper tracks due to weight, injured prey moved differently than healthy prey. They must have tried theories and either proved or disproved them, and this became knowledge, which was passed on through generations. The same with gathering plants - how much trial and error before our ancestors settled on the foods we tend to enjoy? And not to mention agriculture. Science, skeptical thought, curiosity is what makes us human.
-Subsequent cultural pressures to explain the unknown through faith or paranormal causes pull us away from where our minds naturally want to go. So those who castigate science as a malevolent force, or immoral tool have only to look at witch hunts and other dogmatic explorations for truth to see that it's not science, but those who would abuse it, that we need to fear. For instance, did you know that a man named Trofim Lysenko managed to convince Stalin that genetics was a philosophically incorrect field and should be banned from the USSR? He chose to believe in acquired characteristics - not that evolutionary forces caused adaptation, but that if you worked out a lot your offspring would be strong too. His theories lacked experimental controls, his conclusions flew in the face of a large body of contradictory data, and when smart Soviet scientists disagreed with him, he managed to have them deported. His recommendations messed up the Soviet agriculture system so much, waiting for an extra crop of wheat due to his theories, that farmers actually produced less than the otherwise would have. Amazing!
-People writing science curricula should read everything he's ever written. His anecdotes, lessons, stories, and essays made me want to go back and study physics, chemistry, and math.
I can't say enough about this book. I'll leave things, for now, with a typical quote from the book:
"As I've tried to stress, at the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an openess to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. The collective enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking, working together, keeps the field on track."
For the fun anecdotes and warm jokes and fascinating arguments, you'll have to pick it up for yourself....more
This was a helpful book club selection given the 2016 election, which has used and inspired a whole new set of emotions in lots of people. It was inteThis was a helpful book club selection given the 2016 election, which has used and inspired a whole new set of emotions in lots of people. It was interesting to see the author's mindset prior to Obama;s successful primary campaign, and where Democrats were back then. There's a lot that can be learned from the ideas Westen explains back then, as well as what has changed now. The personal responses Westen imagines giving to GWB etc may actually be used in the Clinton/Trump debates. The consequences are potentially dire, though. Here's hoping Democrats have come even further since 2007....more
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