Still absorbing this. Extremely well done. Given everything else happening in the world, it was both some nice perspective, and also depressing. But IStill absorbing this. Extremely well done. Given everything else happening in the world, it was both some nice perspective, and also depressing. But I think the perspective was more important. She also just does a great job with the reporting and the writing makes it feel like a novel. Read this....more
Really excellent interweaving of fiction and philosophy and again such clear writing. His Status Anxiety was good enough for my to buy my own copy andReally excellent interweaving of fiction and philosophy and again such clear writing. His Status Anxiety was good enough for my to buy my own copy and this one is likely to be on my shelf as well, since my wife and I will be wanting to reread parts of this over the years. So many extremely useful and thoughtful things, communicated in such clear writing. ...more
Really interesting book we chose for our book club. Expansive but also very thoughtful and informative. His writing is clear and engaging, and even whReally interesting book we chose for our book club. Expansive but also very thoughtful and informative. His writing is clear and engaging, and even when he went off on tangents they were usually interesting ones. One quibble was that he often would explain and articulate positions that were not his (imperialism was a good thing on balance... successful religions evangelize).
I also found both his explanation of what Buddhism is, and why there's a moral case against industrializing the consumption of animals to be much more compelling than I have read in previous books, essays, and films. Certainly changed my thinking on that....more
Explains very well how you can most successfully approach having a natural birth in a hospital, easily readable, and varies between the philosophy/minExplains very well how you can most successfully approach having a natural birth in a hospital, easily readable, and varies between the philosophy/mindset you need to approach this adventure and more practical aspects like the biology behind it and the logistical checklists you might want to keep in mind. We'll see how it goes!...more
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
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
After reading this, I understand how big banks think about their role in the world a lot better than I did before. It's a tick-tock of the fall of LehAfter reading this, I understand how big banks think about their role in the world a lot better than I did before. It's a tick-tock of the fall of Lehman, and then the crisis that unfolded in the summer of 2008. Really helpful to know so you understand what happened and what's happened since....more
Excellent primer for those who don't understand finance which uses the history and development of currency/stock/bonds/insurance/housing/globalizationExcellent primer for those who don't understand finance which uses the history and development of currency/stock/bonds/insurance/housing/globalization to explain what everything means in order to understand what you read about every day in the paper. I didn't really understand what a bond or stock or insurance was (beyond self-created simple workaday definitions) until Ferguson told me their genesis. His writing is clear and interesting and it helped me understand what Aaron Ross Sorkin was talking about in Too Big To Fail. He pulls in a lot of current events to make things understandable. Highly recommended....more
Glad I got through it! The pacing was a little off, but otherwise it's an excellent book about some cool elements of shark biology and behavior, but mGlad I got through it! The pacing was a little off, but otherwise it's an excellent book about some cool elements of shark biology and behavior, but mostly about our relationship with them as a species. People are scared of them, but they should be scared of us, etc. You learn about the disgusting practice of finning - where sharks are caught, killed, de-finned, and cast back into the water. This is only because a lot of Asian cultures will pay a lot of money for shark fin soup, which doesn't add taste or nutrition to food in the least. It's just a status thing. So sharks, which are a critical part of ocean ecosystems, are being decimated so Chinese middle class couples can be seen to serve shark fin soup at their weddings.
It does make you want to swim with the sharks, she does capture the majesty and power of these really cool creatures. Also, shark babies will eat each other in the womb. Whoa....more
Because you're reading this on a computer, you should read this. It's about the personalization of our web experience - when I Google something, I getBecause you're reading this on a computer, you should read this. It's about the personalization of our web experience - when I Google something, I get different results than the results you get Googling the same term. This is so much information on the web that some kind of filter, or personalized viewing experience is critical, but how that filter is created, maintained, and applied is of vital interest to how we interpret the world. Pariser doesn't just stick to a primer on the Google web, he also manages to look through the history of information to explain how things used to be (pamphlets, newspapers, editors, ombudsmen, radio, TV news, etc). He also offers some solutions, but just knowing more about how the web gets filtered is very important for all of us, even those not as Google-dependent as me.
Stellar story/history of the USA just before, during, and after the riots that swept inner cities after MLK was shot. Risen really gives you the inforStellar story/history of the USA just before, during, and after the riots that swept inner cities after MLK was shot. Risen really gives you the information you need to put yourself there and see the riots come, go, and how they affected our socioeconomic and political landscape. It focuses on DC which I found really helpful - amazing to put yourself on 14th and U the nights before, during, and after the riots. The RFK story of him visiting the destroyed streets of Shaw is told well, and LBJ's response efforts (effective and ineffective as they were) get a lot of attention. Chicago, Baltimore, Memphis, New York, and a few other cities get focus too, but DC was Ground Zero. Go read this book....more
Merchants of Doubt was a work read that covered the basics of how science gets ignored, drowned out, overcompensated, and warped to advance the ends oMerchants of Doubt was a work read that covered the basics of how science gets ignored, drowned out, overcompensated, and warped to advance the ends of the industry sponsoring the "research" effort. Essentially a few scientists that have gravitas because of past work on atomic weapons get paid to say that the research done on cigarette smoke, greenhouse gases, the ozone layer, acid rain, or secondhand smoke should be doubted. These scientists are often the same individuals across fields - Misters Seitz and Singer, etc, are called upon to doubt voluminous research finding cigarettes to be dangerous, anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, a depleted ozone layer, the effects of acid rain. They aren't experts in these fields, and yet the media reports both the conclusions of experts AND these schmucks to provide "balance." It's infuriating to the experts and to us, the laypeople who don't want to breathe air that will kill us and our children or destroy the ecosystem that's sustained so much human progress. Oreskes and Conway do a great job of showing how these unscientists push back on real science with industry support.
What I didn't like about the book, other than the slight dryness of the prose, is that they didn't tell us the status of the research done that did not side with the vast majority of established theorems. Were there studies that found we're not causing global warming, or that secondhand smoke is actually healthy for you? Tell us there definitely weren't, or if there were, that they were bunk and how. The focus on how the rhetorical war was won (or lost) was very useful for someone in my line of work, but I wanted to see if the other side had a single half-leg to stand on.
Regardless, it's a great book and I'm glad I read it....more
I read Made to Stick for a work meeting, a little afraid that it'd be a self-help, New Age-y business book. My fears were unrealized. It bills itself I read Made to Stick for a work meeting, a little afraid that it'd be a self-help, New Age-y business book. My fears were unrealized. It bills itself as an extension of an idea in The Tipping Point, and manages this without embarrassing itself. I was impressed - the authors follow their own rules as they write. Those rules are: keep things simple by sticking to one core message, shock people out of their expectations to make them pay attention, stay away from abstract fluffy ideas by being concrete, be sure to include arguers that are credible due to expertise or perspective, use emotional examples so people remember and feel your argument, and tell a story to make your point - people will remember the story and forget the fluff.
These sound obvious but most of the points are forgotten frequently by people who should know better. Aside from the good advice, it's presented well, concisely, and entertainingly. I'd definitely recommend to anyone who does communications for a living (as a refresher) or anyone who wants to make a solid point, even at a dinner party....more
This collection of interviews of Noam Chomsky in the weeks after 9/11/01 brings me back to that time and that two years following. This was when the mThis collection of interviews of Noam Chomsky in the weeks after 9/11/01 brings me back to that time and that two years following. This was when the mainstream American media turned gutless and you had to go to the BBC and truthout.org to get anything resembling a full picture of what was going on in the world. Chomsky was very much behind this idea and should be commended for being a contrary voice when so many were toeing a line that was called patriotism but verged on blind obedience.
His perspective - that America is a terrorist country in the same way that "axis of evil" countries support terrorism but is more effective and subtle at it - is troubling. He very rightly points out that the U.S. could practice foreign policy and national security more effectively and is shooting itself in the foot by making enemies and hurting innocent people when that's not always necessary. But he equates a terrorist attack like the events of 9/11 with the missile attacks on the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (trying to get bin Laden) and the covert help the U.S. gave to the Contras in Nicaragua. Collateral damage and mistaken intelligence, while awful, is not terrorism, even if Sudanese people suffer from the lack of malaria medication. It's awful, but not the same - President Clinton wasn't trying to cause those particular effects, he was trying to take out someone that was actively trying to harm innocent people. The Nicaraguan Contra example is better, but still troubling. Not wanting to get into the justification for that debacle, I'll just say he makes a good point that Nicaragua went to the UN in order to receive justice (which the U.S. blocked), and uses this example to argue that the U.S. should pursue legal remedies against the perpetrators of 9/11. I'm all for legal avenues, and perhaps that would have been a more effective way of receiving justice, and possibly would have saved lives in Afghanistan. But I doubt the Taliban and Pakistani border leaders would have tracked down al qaeda operatives for us. (An interesting side note is that al qaeda doesn't merit a single mention in this book, whether by Chomsky's oversight or because no one really knew at that point that bin Laden was operating through them.)
Anyhow, the book didn't convince me that the U.S. shouldn't have invaded Afghanistan. It didn't convince me that the U.S. is a terrorist nation.
Did it rightly point out that U.S. foreign policy can be arrogant, dangerous, ineffective, and short-sighted? Sure!
Did it justify itself as a strong intelligent counterpoint to the direction of debate currently occurring in the country? Probably.
Did it make the point that there are complex motivations behind people that would attack civilians and while the action and rationale should never be justified, it should be understood in order to prevent such things from happening in the future? I think so.
Did it make me think? Was it a little repetitive? Yes and yes.
Did I find it a little hard to get through and glad I finally finished it so I can give the book away after all these years. Absolutely....more
I could barely finish this, and I'd say he ripped off Don Draper were it not for the fact that Mad Men was written after this book was. Is advertising really all about love? Hmph.
This book is written by Paco Underhill, who presents himself as an arrogant, simple-minded know-it-all who left (cue schlocky singsong playground bully voice) "academia" to go out in the Real World to actually apply all these "scientific" things that he learned in the ivory tower to the retail world. If you don't want to read the book, and I don't recommend that you ever do, this is essentially what it is:
'I mean, these retail simpletons were practically barring customers from their stores before I came on the scene! When I told them to get rid of the flaming spike viper pit in front of the cash registers and to move the Metamucil display from the volcano-based trapeze obstacle course to a middle shelf, sales went up three thousand percent, the store owners became billionaires, and they recommended my company, EnviroSell (tm), to all their friends. Ha, ha!'
Okay it's not that bad. Mostly. But that's the impression I got from Chapter 1 to the end. He does go through what retailers should know, and this book is ten years old. It's an interesting idea, and should have been a good book. Some retailers don't think about what would be easy for their customers, or who their customers really are, or what draws attention most effectively. But he presents this information as both a pool of knowledge only his company provides through the Miracles of Science, and also simple stuff that these stupid retailers should know, and rely on me, in my brilliance, to tell them for a fee. It doesn't work. Organizational, behavioral, cognitive, and linguistic psychology more than covers all of the "science" he trumpets as his own genius oeuvre that No One Else In The World thought of before he went corporate.
He does manage, in his headlong blind horror movie chase scene of a narrative pace, to accidentally step on some mundanely interesting insights. People watch you while you shop, locking things in glass cases hurts sales, people look at flashy things, customers like to do whatever's easiest, waiting in line feels longer than it actually is, parents will buy things to shut up their kids, women like to shop longer than men do, people fall for "deals," customers like interaction and information when making large purchases, and people like to pretend they aren't spending money. If this guy wasn't such a sad little goober, some of these insights, presented in a completely different way, and multiplied by about 17, would have made the book almost tolerable. I think he didn't quite get there.
If I needed one more thing to convince me that he's not some retailing psychology genius, his chapter on internet shopping (written in 2000), sealed it. Essentially this whole stores-using-internet-to-sell-stuff will never take off. People like being in stores too much. How can you replicate the shopping experience on a monitor with tiny images?
Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense at a time when essentially all governments in the history of the world had been monarchies, ruled by despotism, or smaThomas Paine wrote Common Sense at a time when essentially all governments in the history of the world had been monarchies, ruled by despotism, or small enough to be totally and functionally nonexistent at a societal level. His articulation of the injustice of hereditary monarchies, military dictatorships, and colonial rule (of white people) is brilliant and ... wait for it... revolutionary.
His reasoning is clear, concise, and absolutely correct. The examples he uses, which range from biblical stories to the political landscape of the 1770s are fitting when one considers that the only information most people had at the time was printed in a bible, printed in small newspapers, read to them from a bible, or told to them by people who had read newspapers. I didn't need the story of the Jews' choice of a king to show me that kings are bad, but when most people learned to read by their bibles, I'm sure it was a smart move.
What is hilarious is that the Glenn Becks of the world use Common Sense as a manifesto for the evils of government. Well yes, he does castigate monarchies pretty thoroughly, and with good reason. And yes, they are governments. Governments that overreach and are fundamentally unstable in a changing world. But Paine speaks with passion, reason, and vigor about the brilliance of an elected representative government. Democracy is good. That is his thesis. We still have a democracy, as do most "socialist" European countries. Therefore it's folly to interpret this brilliant long pamphlet is a conservative treatise that gives you proof that the Founding Fathers wouldn't like liberals.
Highly recommended if you haven't read before....more
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