Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely

Yesterday all the past. Auden, “Spain”

Ariely is a behavioral economist at Duke. This book describes numerous studies that he has done on irrationality in human behavior, including relationships, buying and selling, honesty, and the placebo effect. The book summarizes the studies in a loose and easy way–there are no graphs in the book. Writing down the Ten Commandments (as many as they could remember) made test-takers less likely to cheat. Duke students in possession of basketball tickets thought that they were worth more than students without them were willing to pay (the “endowment effect,” which also appears when home sellers want more than what buyers will pay). Ariely and his wife valued their unusually remodeled home as a treasure and priced it accordingly, but prospective buyers just found it odd and wouldn’t make an offer till some of the changes were undone.

His approach makes the book readable for the nonspecialist, but as a result, his conclusions are not very compelling. It’s hard to tell how much is really scientific and how much is just validation of Ariely’s own opinions about human nature. In order to make the book readable for nonspecialists, he avoids getting into the gritty details of numbers that, one assumes, are contained within his studies. There is a list of sources at the back of the book with citations to the published articles, if you want to look them up.

This approach really doesn’t work very well. If the author is going to persuade us that his science is good, he needs to show us the science, even at the risk of turning off those who aren’t specialists. The effect of the book is a series of anecdotes about odd little experiments, from which broad conclusions are drawn.

[Via http://georgiarambler.wordpress.com]

Celsius 232.7 Repeating

For a book lauded as one of the great commentaries on society Fahrenheit 451 was not what I expected. Before this I had never read any Ray Bradbury nor seen the movie based on his novel, so I like to think I’ve come in pure and untainted.

What I’ve left with is nothing really. The book I struggled to read, and not because it was bad but because it didn’t hold me. The point it makes is valid though at the same time hypocritical because of its own dismissal of other forms of media.

Books like television, movies, and other mediums can be dumbed down to an equal degree as well as be used to supplement free thinking, family, and other connections that we make as a society. Ultimately his argument is flawed by his dismissal of these other mediums but he still manages to get his point across.

In the end Bradbury undermines his argument further with the scholars destruction of the books and their carrying on of the memes within. What’s to say that the writers of parlor screen stories weren’t attempting to put those very ideas across but because of the way society was they had to be more subtle than some books are.

Yes books are necessary, particular since I would like to write som and really enjoy reading them, but mere censorship of them isn’t where any of it stops. Movies, TV, video games, music, art, theater – all of it gets censored and yet we don’t scream nearly as much as we do with books. I think if anything it stems from the length of time which books have been a part of our culture in comparison to the others. Books have a couple hundred years on everything when it comes to a replicable format. Books also have the bonus of being used for other purposes – pushing other memes, providing documentation, education, etc.

I feel that Ray Bradbury gets his appoint across far better in the afterword provided in the 50th Anniversary Edition in his complete railing against any censorship that people attempted to put on his own works. Read it to understand. I also think that he may have a point in whether or not an author should ever go back an edit or add to a piece of work that he/she did when they were younger – different person, different time after all.

[Via http://nomadsson.wordpress.com]

Barack Obama's first year performance

Barack Obama’s first year performance 

            Bill Adair (Pulitzer Prize) published the Obama program that included 510 promises. Promises being executed are 240 promises, 86 promises were kept, 26 were compromised, and 62 were blocked by the oppositions.

            First, let me present a rundown of the major promises according to the previous categories.

            For promises being executed we have the following:

Creating 5 million “green jobs”

Restraining eavesdropping without authorization

Shutting down Guantanamo prison center

Stopping the usage of torture

Creating CO2 emission market

Creating a universal health plan that added 30 million more citizen benefiting of coverage

Setting up new financial regulations

Repealing the tax cut for the higher incomes

Reducing nuclear arms reserves in a verifiable manner

Re-enforcing antitrust laws that favor consumers

Reducing oil consumption of 35% by 2030

Securing borders by increasing personnel

            For promises kept we may mention

Sending two supplementary brigades to Afghanistan (30,000 soldiers)

Creating a fund to prevent further Real Estates foreclosures

Reforming prison terms to clear prison overpopulation

            For promises compromised we have

Creating a tax credit of $500 for employees

Requiring transparency in the process of budgetary credit by Deputies

            For promises blocked

Extending citizenship to immigrant with no work permit

            For promises betrayed

Obama failed in his promise to hardening regulations in the Administration on conflict of interests between public carriers and private jobs.  The worst transgressors are members in the International Monatary Fund (IMF), which is a public institution but functioning as if a private enterprise.

Note: Every now and then I edit and re-publish articles that passed unnoticed.  Since I first posted this article in January Obama had decided to use his authority as President to improve on Health Care Reforms without the need of Republican support.  Obama policies in the Middle East is still undecided and agravating the situation for his lack of personal involvement.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Part One: “When we befriend death”

Part One: “When we befriend death”; (Mar. 15, 2010)

            Pierre is never afraid; he is also a fix it all at home and at his laboratory: he is a physicist in solid states.  Once, the very ancient water burner (or boiler) lacked a spare part that the manufacturer stopped producing; Pierre fabricating it and the boiler got a new life for over 10 years. Another time, his car gas pump broke down on the highway; Pierre attached an empty plastic water bottle by his window, removed a few (totally unnecessary tubes from the engine) and connected the gas directly to the engine or something to that effect. Pierre is taking to his grandfather.

            The grandfather needed a new pair of trousers and he started from scratch.  He manufactured a weaving machine, weaved the threads, then cut and sewed himself a pair of trousers.  The grandmother had this to say “the entire process is fine; the trousers are to be desired.”

            Pierre was for social justice and a staunch far left Trotskyite in school; he still is an activist for social justice with a twist: as he started secondary studies he believed that he had a powerful ally in Jesus.  Curious Pierre had met with a group of practicing Catholics called “Focolari”.  He applied the concept of loving his neighbor and in his case it was finding ways to loving his teachers.  It dawned on Pierre to attend seriously to classes as his notion of loving teachers; his grades improved greatly though he persisted on not studying at home.

            Pierre was never afraid in childhood and he was even less afraid in middle age: he believed that after death he will enjoy a listening ear in Jesus and aid better his family and friends.  When Pierre looks sick and his wife is terribly worried he would say “Don’t you worry; I’ll pray for you” meaning that his new location by Jesus will take care of everything.

            At the age of 53, Pierre had a stroke but was conscious all the time.  As he was carried to emergency he saw his second son standing bare footed and told him “Bruno, wear your slippers.”  This curious researcher was having a field day witnessing all the maneuvers and equipments being used to re-animate him: Pierre was asking plenty of questions for detailed comprehension of this new opportunity to learn.  When Pierre recovered his son Bruno cracked this joke “Can you imagine if you died there and then what people would have retained as your last words? Bruno, wear your slippers! You certainly can do better next time”

            Pierre is suffering from a terrible backache; as a scientist Pierre reviewed medical journals, analyzed the data of his medical file and understood that he has a generalized bone cancer; Pierre also knew that it is incurable though physicians never explicitly revealed his illness: the bones formed a Christmas tree shape. Pierre studied the authorized medicines, the secondary effects, and the statistics. Pierre asked his physician to cooperate with him as partner in the procedures and treatments. The debate was: “who is in charge to decide on the treatments? Is it the physician or the patient?”  The physician position is that death does not exist and it is his responsibility to heal the patient. Pierre begs to differ. (To be continued)

Note: Sylvie Garoche wrote a book on her husband’s fight for stopgap measures (taking charge of his destiny and dying peacefully)

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

a glass of wine and a good book

a glass of wine and a good book, originally uploaded by minervacat.

An incomplete and totally subjective list of books about music that I have enjoyed:

• Dixie Lullaby, Mark Kemp. I’m not sure this is actually, objectively, a good book — it’s a little sloppy and a little biased in the author’s own musical tastes, but it’s a book about the culture of white Southern music, focusing hard on the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it fell into my lap at precisely the right time — the spring of 2008, when I was in the first flush of obsessive love with the Drive-By Truckers, and this is a book, in a round about way, about what went before the Truckers, so that the Truckers could be the Truckers. It opens with an interview with David Hood, bassist for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who integrated music in Alabama mostly unbeknownst to the people listening to the soul and R&B records made at FAME, and father of Trucker Patterson Hood, and it closes with several pages of interview with Patterson himself, in the wake of the release of Southern Rock Opera. It’s a little dated (obviously, as SRO had just come out — almost ten years ago, now) and a little cringey in places, but it’s also clearly a labor of love and a weirdly compelling window into the Southern Rock genre.
• Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerad. Recommend to me by H., when I was searching out books on the history of the punk and DIY movements. Covering an era of music and a list of bands I was almost completely unfamiliar with (Husker Du and the Replacements being the exceptions, thanks to my Minnesota-college-education), I couldn’t put this down. Compelling and heartbreaking and a little delightfully nasty, this made me interested in the music of a genre and time period I had previously dismissed and ignored outright. I loved this so much I bought myself a copy.
• Who Shot Rock And Roll, ed. Gail Buckland. Sid gave this to me for Christmas, and it’s stunning. A photographic history of rock and roll, a history of rock and roll photography — gorgeous. I mean, absolutely breathtaking in some places. And super depressing, because holy crap, I’ll never be that good or that much in the right place at the right time. But something to strive for, I suppose.
• I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, Stephanie Kuehnert. A novel! A young adult novel, even — the story of Emily Black, self-proclaimed rock goddess, using music to save herself from her family, her history, her small Wisconsin town, and herself, in the early 90s as Nirvana was breaking huge. I said to J. last year, I felt like this wasn’t a very good book but it was a great story, and I stand by that. It’s flawed, technically, as a novel, but I couldn’t put it down — I’ve re-read it several times since and I still feel that way. I love it for the story, and for the obvious love of music that went into it.

I’m reading one right now — The Year Before The Flood by Ned Sublette — that I’m very much enjoying, with some caveats. Part personal memoir and part memoir of New Orleans in the year before Katrina, part history of music in the States and part history of music of New Orleans, it’s compelling, impeccably researched, and it balances all the things it’s trying to be immaculately; it just happens to have some racial issues that are either the result of vague writing and poor editing, or thinly disguised unintentional racism. It’s not enough for me to dismiss the book outright, but someone else should read it and, particularly in the chapters on second lines and on the New Orleans rap and hip hop scene, tell me if I’m projecting unnecessary outrage.

Last year Paste offered a list of the 12 best music books of the decade, and the Boston Globe offered a list of music books that make great gifts.

Your favorite book about music?

[Via http://brandnewkindof.wordpress.com]

Push by Sapphire (spoilers)

Of course, much has been made of Sapphire’s 1996 novel about the life of Clareece Precious Jones, a survivor of incest and a mother of two in Harlem. The book is delivered in the voice of Precious. Despite the fact that it is the shortest novel we have reviewed so far, it is one of the most powerful.

The book is written in the voice of Precious, a sixteen year old girl, who is illiterate despite having attended school. It is horrific to read of her living conditions, being raped by her father and brutalized by her mother. The failings of the educational system and that of social services loom as large as the Manhattan skyline in the life of this Harlem native.

Despite the rich history and culture of her home burrough, she harbors intense self-hatred and the misguided belief that only white people are real. When she meets a woman of her dark complexion and body type in the alternative school she attends because she is pregnant (she gets suspended from regular school because of the pregnancy, by the way), she refuses to believe that the woman is a teacher.  The school proves to be the catalyst for change in Precious’ life. She befriends several students, moves out of her abusive mother’s home, and learns to read and express herself through journaling and poetry composition.

However, the travails of Precious are far from over as she discovers that her father who has raped and impregnated her has infected her with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.  Her mother also keeps trying to bring Precious and her second child, Abdul, home with her and her social worker proves not to be an entirely helpful force in Precious’ life goals. The story does not have a fairy tale ending, but there is hope for Precious.

While Miss B and I felt the mother and grandmother of Precious were ridiculous and the father should have died in prison for their role in her situation, the story was compelling and inspiring and for that deserved our highest honor, two godiva truffles.

[Via http://chocolit.wordpress.com]

Book Review: Writing Fiction for Dummies

Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy

My Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Writing Fiction for Dummies is an excellent resource for new writers. It covers all the basics from starting out to looking for a publisher, which would provide a solid foundation to get started with for any serious writer.

As I’m not a newbie, I didn’t get as much from the book as a new writer would, but I knew that when I purchased the book. I bought it for two reasons, no make that three reasons:

1.One of the co-authors is Randy Ingermanson (the snowflake guy). As I use the Snowflake method all the time and I subscribe to his newsletter, I was sure the book would be useful in helping me improve my method…I was right!

2.I needed an inspiration boost and felt I’d get it from this book. This is related to the first point in a way; knowing the content would be heavily Snowflake influenced convinced me that I’d be inspired to get stuck into my own planning…and I was right again!! (I love being right.)

3.I was interested to read the section of writing proposals. This is something I’ve been researching for a few weeks now, but I haven’t been able to find anything useful. When I realised there was a section on proposal writing in the book, I was pleased. I didn’t know what to expect, but I learned more than I imagined and now have a “Proposal Template” saved in my writing file. I’m sure I’ll be returning to that section of the book often when I need help filling in the different sections of the proposal.

While new writers need to find a method that works for them, a more advanced writer needs to bring things back into prospective at times and I think that’s what I got from the book most of all – a reminder that determination and persistence is the only way to move forward.

Thanks to this book, I’m enthusiastic about my next project.

[Via http://karenleefield.wordpress.com]