I read an article once on how republicans were better at framing the debate than liberals ("clear skies", "tax relief", "death panels" etc.) that was quite good, and this book appeared to contain the same thoughts if not by the same person.
On reading, the book provided rather less than it promised, mainly focussing on examples of how the republicans succeed than providing real help in reframing the debate for liberals.
Skim
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Sleights of Mind
by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde (with help from Sandra Blakeslee).
Another somewhat interesting book in the mould of "The body has a mind of its own", which is not surprising, as that was written by Sandra Blakeslee.
The general thesis is that conjuring uses, consciously and/or sometimes unconsciously, tricks based on how the mind works, generally based on directing human attention around like a puppet on a string. Their final statement "In a way, we've misdirected you, the reader, at every step. You may have purchased this book to read about magicians and tricks, sleights and secret methods, but all along you've really been learning the fundamental neuroscience at the center of your being", I found, was really the reverse of how I felt at the end. I was promised to learn about the mind, but in the end, it often seemed as if the authors - to me - were simply enjoying the forbidden fruit of babbling the secrets they had learned of stage conjuring.
Nevertheless, although I cant point out anything in particular, I think this book may have stored something away in my mental files that may be useful in the future. Certainly, anyone who was inspired, as I was, by "The mind has a body of its own" will find this a useful follow-up to help fix some ideas.
Another somewhat interesting book in the mould of "The body has a mind of its own", which is not surprising, as that was written by Sandra Blakeslee.
The general thesis is that conjuring uses, consciously and/or sometimes unconsciously, tricks based on how the mind works, generally based on directing human attention around like a puppet on a string. Their final statement "In a way, we've misdirected you, the reader, at every step. You may have purchased this book to read about magicians and tricks, sleights and secret methods, but all along you've really been learning the fundamental neuroscience at the center of your being", I found, was really the reverse of how I felt at the end. I was promised to learn about the mind, but in the end, it often seemed as if the authors - to me - were simply enjoying the forbidden fruit of babbling the secrets they had learned of stage conjuring.
Nevertheless, although I cant point out anything in particular, I think this book may have stored something away in my mental files that may be useful in the future. Certainly, anyone who was inspired, as I was, by "The mind has a body of its own" will find this a useful follow-up to help fix some ideas.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The mind has a body of its own
By Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee.
An excellent book about the construction of the human mind. Jam packed with interesting details about how the organization of the brain leads to the mind.
Starting off with the finding that specific parts of the parietal lobe correspond to the human body, in that if parts of it are electrically stimulated, a person feels as if they have been touched there. Similarly, next to the touch map, there is a motor map, which, when stimulated, causes you to move various associated muscles. However this book then delves into far more interesting detail about areas of your brain that represent not your body, but the space around it, even tools and other people. In short, your brain maps you and lots of other stuff, which begs the question as to why you think that you stop at your skin and the external world begins there. As far as your mind is concerned, a golf club is as much you as your pinkie. This is demonstrated dramatically by phantom limbs, the way you can "feel" the pavement with a stick (as you would with your hand) and so on. Later, the authors delve into emotions and their correlation with visceral maps. I'm going to have to read this again, there is so much in it. Based on cutting edge research. An easy read, and thoroughly recommended. 8/10
An excellent book about the construction of the human mind. Jam packed with interesting details about how the organization of the brain leads to the mind.
Starting off with the finding that specific parts of the parietal lobe correspond to the human body, in that if parts of it are electrically stimulated, a person feels as if they have been touched there. Similarly, next to the touch map, there is a motor map, which, when stimulated, causes you to move various associated muscles. However this book then delves into far more interesting detail about areas of your brain that represent not your body, but the space around it, even tools and other people. In short, your brain maps you and lots of other stuff, which begs the question as to why you think that you stop at your skin and the external world begins there. As far as your mind is concerned, a golf club is as much you as your pinkie. This is demonstrated dramatically by phantom limbs, the way you can "feel" the pavement with a stick (as you would with your hand) and so on. Later, the authors delve into emotions and their correlation with visceral maps. I'm going to have to read this again, there is so much in it. Based on cutting edge research. An easy read, and thoroughly recommended. 8/10
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Bottomfeeder: How to eat ethically in a world of vanishing seafood
Trying deperately to finish "Bottomfeeder" before I have to return it to the library. Definitely an engaging book for anyone who is concerned about the remaining fish supplies in the world. It explains in an anecdotal fashion about the various problems that exist, how they arose, and solutions that can be tried. If you have ever been confused why the Monterey Bay Aquarium cautions against eating farmed salmon and shrimp, and for their wild cousins, this explains why. Basically, we pen these animals in overcrowded conditions, where they contract all kinds of disease and parasites, for which we add pesticides, antibiotics etc., and feed them with massive amounts of bait fish, depleting those stocks. The salmon fisheries are located at the head of wild salmon runs, so the wild stocks have to swim through a cloud of parasites before they enter the sea. Predictably, many die as a result. Norwegian companies have fouled their own coasts badly in this way, so they are now seeking other places to mess up - like Canada. If we just set up these systems away from the coast as giant aquariums, as is being done for sturgeon in Canada and the US and shrimp in Mexico, and turbot in France and Bluefin in Japan, we could farm fish without threatening the environment and wild stocks. Apparently it would add 30% to the cost of a salmon fillet. This is the problem with capitalism. Wipe out species through carelessness so your fillet can be a buck cheaper. Why conservatives cant see this, I dont know. I'm sure they will blame the collapse of pacific salmon stocks on Obama, even as they encourage him to deregulate the industry. Hannity bleats daily that the Sacramento Delta Smelt should be wiped out so farmers can continue raising crops in the desert. Of course, in his playbook, the smelt isnt food for anything. The wild fish we eat, well they eat fish pellets made by corporations. Or something. And if you havent heard of "menhaden", you need to look it up.
Recommend 7/10 for those who are interested in sustainability and want to know just what you CAN eat without assisting in the destruction of the ecosystem.
Another review here:
Recommend 7/10 for those who are interested in sustainability and want to know just what you CAN eat without assisting in the destruction of the ecosystem.
Another review here:
Monday, April 19, 2010
Relics of Eden
Relics of Eden, by Daniel J. Fairbanks
I read most of this book a couple of months back, although not all because the library wanted it back (I tend to stack-read my books).
Simply put, this book is a must-read for those who wish to prove to themselves and to others that Apes and Humans have common ancestors.
The book is both scientifically accurate, well-references, AND readable. First, it introduces concepts like junk DNA, then explains how some of it is created by viruses and self-splicing elements inserting themselves at random into the coding DNA. So for example, a sejunkntence might havjunke the word "junk" injunkserted at junk random places.
Now while you might think that a sentence like: "This sentences describes how to make an eyeball" could have been written by an intelligent designer in all species that have eyeballs, it is a little harder to think that an omnipotent designer would have written: "This senjunktence describesjunk how to make an eyejunkball", BUT IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to conceive how two seperate species having the same sentence "This senjunktence describesjunk how to make an eyejunkball" are not inheriting this material from each other. Why would God include the same junk DNA at the same places in both sentences?
And yes - we do know its junk, because we see this same word "junk" littered throughout our genome thousands of times, inserted all over the place.
More deeply, the word "junk" isnt a 4-letter word, but a 50-letter word, most of which have been changed slightly through the millennia, so it may read like:
"iamjunkpleasecopimealloveryourdna" in one place, "iamjunkpleasecopymealloveryuurdna"in a second place, and "iamdjunkpleasecopymealloveryourdna" in a third.
When you compare these, you can reconstruct the original junk word:
"iamjunkpleasecopymealloveryourdna"
And lo and behold, when you do this, the junk word starts acting like a computer virus, spreading copies of itself through the genome. So we see what this word is - its an infectious piece of DNA that copies itself - so no surprise that we see it littering itself through the genome.
Now when we compare Chimp and Gorilla DNA, we might see
"I am an ape, I havjunke two hands andjunk two feet" in both their DNA sequences.
But if we look at human DNA, it reads:"I ajunkm an ape, I havjunke two hands andjunk two feet"
Now its clear from this that humans have evolved from the same ancestors as chimps and gorillas, and that humans have had a new instance of "junk" added since we diverged from them.
This is all explained much more clearly in the book.
Another argument is that whereas the other apes have 24 pairs of Chromosomes, humans have 23. Now chromosomes have a definite structure:
endakdjhflsdjkfhcenter;asdkfjlsdkfjend
You can see the word "end" at the ends, and the word "center" at the center.
Now most of our chromosomes and those of apes are similar, except that whereas apes have two:
endblahblahcentertalkend and
endfunnycentergooberend
we have just one
endblahblahcentertalkeendfunnycentergooberend
It doesnt take a massive stretch of the imagination to see what has happened: the two ape chromosomes fused to create a single human chromosome.
You can see that clearly because just as you would expect, there is an "end" within the chromosome, and two "center"s. Furthermore, one side is the same as one ape chromosome, and the other side is the same as the other ape chromosome. You can even see the join: "eend". Here, two "end"s got stuck together, losing and "nd" in the process.
To argue that evolution hasnt occurred, and that all these are just coincidences - the happenstance occurrence of junk at identical places, apparent fusion events - is to say that any designer has loaded the genome with so many false leads to pretend to mankind that he has evolved from apes, and that therefore the designer is vindictive and purposefully misleading.
The alternative is to accept that we simply evolved from ape-like creatures.
I read most of this book a couple of months back, although not all because the library wanted it back (I tend to stack-read my books).
Simply put, this book is a must-read for those who wish to prove to themselves and to others that Apes and Humans have common ancestors.
The book is both scientifically accurate, well-references, AND readable. First, it introduces concepts like junk DNA, then explains how some of it is created by viruses and self-splicing elements inserting themselves at random into the coding DNA. So for example, a sejunkntence might havjunke the word "junk" injunkserted at junk random places.
Now while you might think that a sentence like: "This sentences describes how to make an eyeball" could have been written by an intelligent designer in all species that have eyeballs, it is a little harder to think that an omnipotent designer would have written: "This senjunktence describesjunk how to make an eyejunkball", BUT IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to conceive how two seperate species having the same sentence "This senjunktence describesjunk how to make an eyejunkball" are not inheriting this material from each other. Why would God include the same junk DNA at the same places in both sentences?
And yes - we do know its junk, because we see this same word "junk" littered throughout our genome thousands of times, inserted all over the place.
More deeply, the word "junk" isnt a 4-letter word, but a 50-letter word, most of which have been changed slightly through the millennia, so it may read like:
"iamjunkpleasecopimealloveryourdna" in one place, "iamjunkpleasecopymealloveryuurdna"in a second place, and "iamdjunkpleasecopymealloveryourdna" in a third.
When you compare these, you can reconstruct the original junk word:
"iamjunkpleasecopymealloveryourdna"
And lo and behold, when you do this, the junk word starts acting like a computer virus, spreading copies of itself through the genome. So we see what this word is - its an infectious piece of DNA that copies itself - so no surprise that we see it littering itself through the genome.
Now when we compare Chimp and Gorilla DNA, we might see
"I am an ape, I havjunke two hands andjunk two feet" in both their DNA sequences.
But if we look at human DNA, it reads:"I ajunkm an ape, I havjunke two hands andjunk two feet"
Now its clear from this that humans have evolved from the same ancestors as chimps and gorillas, and that humans have had a new instance of "junk" added since we diverged from them.
This is all explained much more clearly in the book.
Another argument is that whereas the other apes have 24 pairs of Chromosomes, humans have 23. Now chromosomes have a definite structure:
endakdjhflsdjkfhcenter;asdkfjlsdkfjend
You can see the word "end" at the ends, and the word "center" at the center.
Now most of our chromosomes and those of apes are similar, except that whereas apes have two:
endblahblahcentertalkend and
endfunnycentergooberend
we have just one
endblahblahcentertalkeendfunnycentergooberend
It doesnt take a massive stretch of the imagination to see what has happened: the two ape chromosomes fused to create a single human chromosome.
You can see that clearly because just as you would expect, there is an "end" within the chromosome, and two "center"s. Furthermore, one side is the same as one ape chromosome, and the other side is the same as the other ape chromosome. You can even see the join: "eend". Here, two "end"s got stuck together, losing and "nd" in the process.
To argue that evolution hasnt occurred, and that all these are just coincidences - the happenstance occurrence of junk at identical places, apparent fusion events - is to say that any designer has loaded the genome with so many false leads to pretend to mankind that he has evolved from apes, and that therefore the designer is vindictive and purposefully misleading.
The alternative is to accept that we simply evolved from ape-like creatures.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
DISCLAIMER
Dear Readers;
I have just decided to try out a popular affiliate program. Blogger recommends ["You may also want to disclose to your readers that you will earn a commission on their purchase — some readers even prefer knowing that you benefit from their business."] that I let you guys know that I will make a pittance should you purchase a book using the links at the bottom of the posts, although their partner who runs the affilate program says that I cant publicly announce my relationship with them in their agreement form. Some of you may even prefer to buy using my links knowing that I'm more likely to update this blog more regularly if it pays, no matter how small said pittance. Note that if you wish to avoid subsidizing me, just navigate away after finding the page, and then come back. I wont get a sous unless you clink on the link below the post and follow through to a purchase directly.
I doubt that the partner will mind this announcement, but just to be safe, I'm not mentioning their name.
However; I am including these links primarily as a service to you, so that you can find the books I'm talking about.
I do not endorse any particular vendors, and indeed, under the terms, I appear to be forbidden from linking to products "offered on [any] other site". I'm going to risk stating in this disclaimer that I prefer to use my taxpayer-funded, socialist local library service, and failing that, to browse second-hand booksellers.
I am never going to endorse any products simply because I plan to make money - believe me, I doubt I will get a dime off this, so there would be no point in me prostituting myself in this way.
I'm using this program primarily, as I say, as a way of linking to the material, at a site where you can read other reviews; secondarily, I'm just playing with this to test it out. Gotta catch up with this internet thingy.
Disclaimer over.
Now back to the books.
I have just decided to try out a popular affiliate program. Blogger recommends ["You may also want to disclose to your readers that you will earn a commission on their purchase — some readers even prefer knowing that you benefit from their business."] that I let you guys know that I will make a pittance should you purchase a book using the links at the bottom of the posts, although their partner who runs the affilate program says that I cant publicly announce my relationship with them in their agreement form. Some of you may even prefer to buy using my links knowing that I'm more likely to update this blog more regularly if it pays, no matter how small said pittance. Note that if you wish to avoid subsidizing me, just navigate away after finding the page, and then come back. I wont get a sous unless you clink on the link below the post and follow through to a purchase directly.
I doubt that the partner will mind this announcement, but just to be safe, I'm not mentioning their name.
However; I am including these links primarily as a service to you, so that you can find the books I'm talking about.
I do not endorse any particular vendors, and indeed, under the terms, I appear to be forbidden from linking to products "offered on [any] other site". I'm going to risk stating in this disclaimer that I prefer to use my taxpayer-funded, socialist local library service, and failing that, to browse second-hand booksellers.
I am never going to endorse any products simply because I plan to make money - believe me, I doubt I will get a dime off this, so there would be no point in me prostituting myself in this way.
I'm using this program primarily, as I say, as a way of linking to the material, at a site where you can read other reviews; secondarily, I'm just playing with this to test it out. Gotta catch up with this internet thingy.
Disclaimer over.
Now back to the books.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Racing Towards Armageddon
Racing toward Armageddon, Michael Baigent, ISBN 9780061363184
An interesting book, in which the author of the books that the "Da Vinci Code" is based on waxes poetic about the suicidal drive to bring about the end times by the major monotheistic religions.
In it, he describes actual moves being made by various evangelical, muslim extremist and zionist groups to bring Armageddon to reality. For instance, in order to rush across the Holy Mount and blow up the Golden Mosque, Zionist extremists would have to be ritually bathed in the blood of a pure red heifer for fear that they might be impure as they crossed the site of the holy of holies. Extremists in America are attempting to breed this cow so that the zionists can "pure"ly blow up the mosque and precipiate WWIII. I mean, if youre going to destroy mankind, you better be ritually pure, yes?
He also describes how Armageddon has already come to pass, in that a Christian General, Kitbuqa, acting on behalf of the Mongol hordes, razed Baghdad (Babylon) in 1258, then crossed the Euphrates and, having taken Aleppo and Damascus, took up position on the plains of Jezreel (Armageddon). A Muslim army was dispatched, and one bloody battle later, Kitbuqa's head was sent back on a pikestaff to Cairo. From the Muslim version of Revelations point of view, this was the prophecy come true (although most Christians and Muslims dont appear to be aware of it).
Baigent also makes an interesting point: Why didnt John mention Muslims anywhere in his prophecy? Unless the Muslims are not going to be fighting in the end times, its curious that he saw nothing about Islam or Mohammed in his dreams.
He also dissects Revelations in terms of what John actually meant: the beast with 7 heads (heads = hills) was Rome, and the 10 crowns were the 10 Seleucid kings from the east that he expected to defeat Rome.
An interesting book, in which the author of the books that the "Da Vinci Code" is based on waxes poetic about the suicidal drive to bring about the end times by the major monotheistic religions.
In it, he describes actual moves being made by various evangelical, muslim extremist and zionist groups to bring Armageddon to reality. For instance, in order to rush across the Holy Mount and blow up the Golden Mosque, Zionist extremists would have to be ritually bathed in the blood of a pure red heifer for fear that they might be impure as they crossed the site of the holy of holies. Extremists in America are attempting to breed this cow so that the zionists can "pure"ly blow up the mosque and precipiate WWIII. I mean, if youre going to destroy mankind, you better be ritually pure, yes?
He also describes how Armageddon has already come to pass, in that a Christian General, Kitbuqa, acting on behalf of the Mongol hordes, razed Baghdad (Babylon) in 1258, then crossed the Euphrates and, having taken Aleppo and Damascus, took up position on the plains of Jezreel (Armageddon). A Muslim army was dispatched, and one bloody battle later, Kitbuqa's head was sent back on a pikestaff to Cairo. From the Muslim version of Revelations point of view, this was the prophecy come true (although most Christians and Muslims dont appear to be aware of it).
Baigent also makes an interesting point: Why didnt John mention Muslims anywhere in his prophecy? Unless the Muslims are not going to be fighting in the end times, its curious that he saw nothing about Islam or Mohammed in his dreams.
He also dissects Revelations in terms of what John actually meant: the beast with 7 heads (heads = hills) was Rome, and the 10 crowns were the 10 Seleucid kings from the east that he expected to defeat Rome.
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