Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in btripp_books' LiveJournal:

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Friday, December 21st, 2012
10:18 pm	Howdy ... After many years of not reading (the details of this strange condition, a side-effect of running my own publishing company, can be found in the early entries here), I got back into the habit around 2002, and in February 2004 began to post (in my main LiveJournal) little reviews of books as I read them. In November 2005, I discovered LibraryThing and began to log in my extensive library. As there is a "review" section for every book listed there, it occurred to me that linking back to my book review posts might be a useful thing to do. However, I didn't want to "blur the lines" dividing what I primarily use LiveJournal for and what I see LibraryThing being. As such, I started this new journal, just for my book reviews, and have copied over all the book review posts from my main journal to this new one. NEW! BTRIPP's Reviews - Alphabetical by Author           {EDIT}           By the way... EVERYTHING ON THIS SITE (http://btripp-books.livejournal.com/ and all subsidiary pages) IS COPYRIGHT © 2007-2012 BY BRENDAN TRIPP. Due to recent developments at LibraryThing.com relating to users' book reviews, I felt a need to make a formal statement of copyright claim. Book Blogger Appreciation Week This journal is a member of: The BooksANDBlogs webring. Power By Ringsurf This blog is on the resource listing! (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 29th, 2012
9:19 am	Her name is written on the Clouds This was another of those Dollar Store finds … and I actually went back to pick up another copy to pass along to a friend, so I guess that says something. Swami Ramananda's Bliss Now!: My Journey with Sri Sri Anandamayi Ma is certainly not the typical fare for the dollar store, and, I have a hard time imagining that this was remaindered off of the Walmart shelves, given its subject matter, but it's over at Dollar Tree in quantity, yet is still available on-line. Bliss Now! is a “spiritual autobiography”of Swami Ramananda (on who I was unable to dig up any biographical information, beyond what's in the book, so I can't even give you his “real name”). In his youth, he had recurring dreams of a lady, who was encouraging him to come to India, and he managed to follow this and come in contact with his guru, the famed Sri Anandamayi Ma. This book owes an inspirational debt to Ram Dass' Be Here Now from 1971 … a relationship that Ramananda is certainly cognizant of, mentioning it on a number of occasions. There is a connection, as Ram Dass' teacher, Karoli Baba, is one of the figures here, but I'm pretty sure that the “look” of this book isn't accidentally evocative of the older one (and there's a quote here suggesting that Bliss Now! completes a trilogy, with Bhagavan Dass' It's Here Now, Are You? being the middle expression). This is one of those books that likely has less to do with the author's history as it does with his inner journey. There is a lot happening within its pages, but not so much in its text. Ramananda (or whatever his birth name was) has visions, convinces his family that he needs to go to India, gets there and (in the narrative) almost immediately hooks up with his first teacher, Swami Shankarananda Giri, and begins traveling visiting various holy men. His teacher decides it's time to part ways (he believes it's his time to die), and begins the long walk to Benares … leaving Ramananda behind, but also set up as his dharma successor. The author begins to wander, when suddenly a car lurches through the forest he's in, and who happens to be there, but Sri Anandamayi Ma, who “recognizes” him from previous lives and tells him to get in the car. Now, obviously, one has to either have experiences that include these sorts of belief systems or be able to “suspend disbelief” a lot here, as there is a recurring element of “spiritual recognition” going on from “past lives” (and it seems that the author and his main teachers seem to hold that he's a reincarnation of the 15th century Indian saint, but not to be confused with other teachers concurrently going by the same name). There is also a lot of “spiritual experience” being presented as literal happenings (people “glowing”, etc.) which likewise requires a cognitive jump for most folks. One thing I wondered about here was the timing of the book … Sri Anandamayi Ma died in 1982 at age 86, but the autobiographical part of the book only tracks up to that point. Yet Bliss Now! did not come out until 2002 … when Ramananda got his PhD (in Indian Philosophy and Yoga, from a U.K. university). Following his guru's death, Ramananda goes back to the US, and begins to be a Yoga teacher … but there is scant info on that. The second part of the book is a collection of pictures of and devotional poems about Sri Anandamayi Ma, which is then followed by his explaining about the various types of Yoga that his teachers practiced, the obvious Bhakti Yoga (focusing on devotion to the deity), Japa Yoga (using mantras), and then a long section on Hatha Yoga featuring him demonstrating (in photos) a couple of dozen poses (which, one has to ask, are of what use here? … one can hardly do a practice out of a single picture and a paragraph of description!), before getting into Karma Yoga, with a lot of diet and houskeeping suggestions, and finally discussing building communities. The book closes out with suggested reading and web sites, and a fairly extensive listing of Sanskrit terms and their definitions. Frankly, it feels like Ramananda really wanted to do two books here, one the autobiographical part up front, and the other the explanatory material in the back. I think this would have been better had he been able to flesh out the first section of the book to more than the 54 pages he applies to his spiritual journey. I'm sure he has fascinating stories to tell about many of the spiritual teachers that he largely only name-checks there. Ramananda keeps falling back to his theme of “bliss” rather than talking about the who/what/when/where of the situations, which may be sort of the point, but “I was at this place with this person and it was so blissful” only goes so far as literary structure. I did enjoy Bliss Now!, however, and found a number of things that will be interesting to follow up on. I should probably note that I have never “gotten” the Bhakti Yoga path, and that's clearly the central element here, so there's a lot of the essence of the book that I just wasn't connecting with … but that's likely to be more me than him. As noted, this is still available via the big on-line companies (Amazon has it at a whopping 60% discount), but if you have a Dollar Tree handy, you might well be able to find a copy for a buck out there … the one I went to today had a dozen or more copies on hand, so I'm guessing it's out there pretty broadly at the moment! (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 28th, 2012
4:00 am	the sky tumbling down As I have no doubt mentioned previously, until my recent job search, I had never been given to reading “business books”. Over the past several years, however, I have read quite a number (due in large part to my writing The Job Stalker blog over on Chicago Now), so one would think that I would be past “old biases” towards the genre … still, I had approached Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, a bit hesitantly as it was from Forrester Research, and published through Harvard Business Press … I mean, how boring a read was I setting myself up for? Well, I'm happy to report that it's quite an engaging book, and while it has its moments of going into more details than I felt I needed to know, it never drags itself into an “MBAs Only!” zone. I suppose to start off, you're wondering, “Uh, what's this groundswell thing, anyway?” … I had the same question, although it didn't start bugging me until I was several chapters into the book. Here's their definition: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. Yes, I think that's pretty vague, but I guess they were going for a broadly inclusive frame to include a varied range of particulars. On its surface, this echoes Napster and the demise of the entertainment industry, but that's the “blunt instrument” manifestation of the concept, and the dynamics of this “groundswell” weaves its way through more subtle channels as well, manifesting as blogs, forums, ratings, reviews, wikis, and the “live” channels such at Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, among others. Structurally, Groundswell is in three sections: “Understanding the Groundswell”, “Tapping the Groundswell”, and “The Groundswell Transforms” … with most of the heavy lifting done in the middle section which looks at strategies for, listening to, talking with, energizing, helping, and embracing the groundswell. In each of these (well, all throughout the book, actually) there are specific cases discussed, frequently companies that Forrester was working with, but also others who had made public mistakes or successes. One of the latter was Unilever's Dove skin-care brand, which had, in 2006, a video released to YouTube that went viral … and ended up driving more than twice the traffic to their website than their 2006 SuperBowl commercial did. Cost of placement of the video: zero; cost of placement of the ad: $2.5 million! That's obviously an impressive “ROI” for working with the dynamics of the groundswell. While this is interesting, accessible, and even entertainingly written, it's at base a book for the business reader, and it helps to keep that in mind. Here's what seems to be the basic call to action:       You're about to fundamentally change how your company relates to its customers. This will require not only fortitude on your part but difficult negotiations with other people throughout your company. We've identified some mistakes you may make, and you'll probably find a few we haven't thought of. At this point you might ask yourself, “Why should I bother?”       Here's why.       You cannot ignore this trend. You cannot sit this one out. Unless you are retiring in the next six months, it's too late to quit and let somebody else handle it. The groundswell trend is unstoppable, and your customers are there. You may go a little slower or a little faster, but you have to move forward. There is no going back.       We will leave you with this: there is no one “right way” to engage with the groundswell.       While there are plenty of wrong ways to join the groundswell – not listening, for example, or trying to fool people – there are also many effective strategies. Each company must adopt the tactics that are right for its customers and its way of doing business and adapt as the technologies change. Copying others doesn't work because your company, your customers, and your goals are not the same as anybody else's.       So it's time to engage with the groundswell. Your company will be better for it. The book is robust in delivering its message, with numerous examples that run the gamut from extremely specific to broad-strokes overviews, leaving the reader with the impression that they've been toured through an entire tapestry of how these technologies are impacting businesses. I do have one fairly substantial gripe, however. The notes point to a place on the Forrester website for a LOT of supporting material (and additional resources) with the address groundswell.forrester.com/site#-# … but they've apparently changed the directory structure, and this ends up at a “server not found” page. Since the forrester.com domain is certainly still active, having all the links in the book be bad is almost unforgivable … and not only are the links not working, there's no trace (that I could find) on the forrester.com site. Now, I have a copy of the 2008 hardcover edition, and there is an “Expanded and Revised Edition” paperback that came out in 2011, which I assume has updated links (I would hope), but it's a big “slap in the face” to anybody who is reading the original version that there's not even a page on their site that the links from this would go to that would explain that the info was someplace else. I tried to get an answer from them via Twitter today on this issue, but have not heard back … there may be something out there, but it certainly isn't easy to find (and I went looking for anything that would provide those links, even through archive.org's “wayback machine”)! Anyway, I found Groundswell a very engaging and informative read, and would recommend it to anybody with a business interest in the new communications technologies (with the caveats above). As noted, there are two versions of this kicking around out there, the 2008 hardcover (which is what I have), and an updated paperback. There are “like new” copies of the hardcover available through the new/used vendors for as little as 14¢, but, given the abandonment of the supporting materials by Forrester, I'd probably have to recommend getting the paperback. I very much enjoyed the “groundswell experience” until I tried checking out the links … and really feel “cheated” that I was unable to follow up on that information, and find it somewhat inexplicable that, in the obvious case of the directory structure having no good reason to be gone, there shouldn't have been the absence that there is of those! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 27th, 2012
12:47 am	We all need control. Another Dover Thrift Edition, another “hole” in my education plugged. Here's something you may not know … the term “robot” is derived from a word in a Czech dialect meaning “forced labor” or “drudgery”, and was coined by a Czech writer. Now, I had some idea about the broad strokes of this, but hadn't encountered the writer, nor the book in which the term had been introduced previously, so I was thrilled to pick up Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). As widespread and persistent as the idea of robots have been in popular culture (let alone their less-glamorous, but more productive, non-anthropomorphic cousins on factory production lines), it is fascinating to take a look at where the word originated. The idea of the automaton or other artificial being had, of course (be it Dr. Frankenstein's re-animated corpse, or the Golem of Jewish folklore, etc.) preceded this depiction, but I believe that Čapek introduced the idea of industrially manufactured beings. Interestingly, Prague was the scene for the most famous Golem narrative, and it was in Prague that Čapek published, in 1920, R.U.R. . I should say published and staged, as this is a play (something that had not filtered into my mental file on the work, and something that I certainly did not expect). The play features the daughter of some government head, who is on a trip visiting the Rossum factory, where she meets with the factory director, and eventually with various of the department heads there. What is quite interesting is that the process for making the robots is organic and that they are artificial biological creatures, rather than mechanical devices. This has a key element to play in the course of the plot (and, by the way, if you're “allergic to spoilers”, you may want to quit reading as I'm going to discussing all the major points here). Anyway, this young woman arrives and meets with the factory's director, who gives her the background on the development of the robots … a scientist named Rossum (derived from "reason") had come up with “artificial living matter” that he could coax to differentiate into various tissues and forms … but it wasn't until his son, an engineer, got involved that they were able to make artificial humans. Once developed, factories could be set up to make the new workers in whatever quantities were necessary. As one would expect, this quickly turns into a dystopian vision, with the robots causing unemployment, and then being armed and turned into fighting forces that eventually turn of their creators and seek to destroy the humans. This happens between acts one and two in the play. In the latter part of the book (ten years after the first act) the remaining humans are trying to figure a way to survive. At one point the main character, Helena, burns the files that end up containing the only formulas for making the materials from which the robots are made. This, of course, becomes inconvenient as nobody else has been able to independently figure out what was involved in producing this, and without it there will be no new robots, and the robots have been doing a fairly efficient job of eliminating the humans. The robots are shocked to find that the few remaining humans in the factory can't discover how to recreate the formula, and are facing their own extinction (they, like the Replicants in Blade Runner only last a certain amount of time, about 20 years). However, the stress of this situation appears to be enough to evolve the robots, and two of them start exhibiting emotional behavior (in trying to protect each other), and eventually become a new “Adam and Eve” at the very end of the play. This is a very short work, under 60 pages, so there's not a lot of room for “fleshing out” a lot of the finer details or filling in too much of the wider “historical” story arc. Most of the action (in terms of wars and massacres, etc.) happens off stage and in vague reports. The actual dialog is presented within a few rooms in the factory complex with a 10 year span happening between. Because it is a play, most of the story line is carried forward by discussions and interactions between the main characters, so there isn't much opportunity to detail the happenings beyond those walls. Needless to say, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a fairly quick read, but an entertaining one that does closely hold one's interest. There were certainly parts of this where I would have liked to have had more information on what was happening in the wider world, but, within the context of the play, one is limited to the sources the characters have available to them, so there's not much temptation to get cranky about not having long descriptive passages inserted into the dialog. As you would expect for a book from the 1920's, it can be found free on the web, however, the Dover Thrift Edition of R.U.R. has a mere $2.50 cover price, so is one of those things you should keep in mind when ordering from the on-line big boys where free shipping kicks in at twenty-five bucks, and one often finds your order is just a buck or two shy of that. I enjoyed reading this, and feel like I've added a “key piece” to some part of the puzzle of recent culture in having read it! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
10:48 pm	Paraphrasing from the Persian ... This is a perfect example of why I love picking up those Dover Thrift Editions to fill in holes in my education … now, of course I knew of The Rubáyát of Omar Khayyám, and certainly was familiar with the more famous excerpts from it, but I'm pretty sure I'd never read it, and I certainly didn't know about it, at least to the extent I do after reading the introductory materials here. While the source material of the book originates with an 11th century Persian “mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher” (who was not known as a poet during his life, but it seems that the core writings of this were in his papers, and over the centuries more and more material was “attributed' to him). What is an eye opener in Edward FitzGerald's The Rubáyát of Omar Khayyám: First and Fifth Editions is that its translator was actually more of an interpreter of the material, and that what we know as “The Rubáyát” (which pretty much is Arabic for “quatrains”) is really FitzGerald's “take” on the original rather than an attempt to make a literal translation, making the “classic” work an expression of 19th century English composition instead of an work of Sufi poetry the likes of Rumi. It at first seemed odd that this slim volume would contain two editions of FitzGerald's work, the first edition (1859) and the fifth edition (1889), but by including both it allows one to take a look at what was happening here. First of all, when this initially came out, it was an anonymous translation, purporting to be Omar Khayyám's writings … in fact, FitzGerald's hand in the “translation” did not come to light until 1875, prior to the fourth edition in 1879. FitzGerald died in 1883, but he had “marked up” a copy of the fourth edition, and this served as the basis of the posthumous fifth edition. There are significant differences between the first and the fifth editions, with the former having only 75 quatrains, and the latter 101. Of these only 12 were the same (with only punctuation and capitalization changes) between editions, and 3 of the first's are missing (or sufficiently “spread out” over other quatrains as to be unidentifiable), #37, #38, and #45, with 28 “new” quatrains in the fifth edition (two of the fifth's, #83 and #87 use half of the first's #60, thus bringing the total up to 101). Most of the new material appears between #38 and #53 in the fifth (which come in a gap between the first's #36 and #39), with most of the the fifth's 60's new (but for #63 which is a version of the first's #26). Many of the quatrains are only slightly changed between the versions, with (as noted) 12 being basically unchanged, and another 20 having only 1 line out of 4 differing, and only 10 exhibiting changes to all four lines. However, one would expect that if this were a translation, especially by the same person, there would be a lot more consistency. It seems that FitzGerald was more interested in having the poems “live” than having them express exactly what the Persian sources said, and so there was a lot of trying to create a poetic expression that was over-riding any literalism. To take an example, here's a quatrain that probably provides the most famous line from The Rubáyát … “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou” … in both its versions: I – 11 Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou       Beside me singing in the Wilderness – And Wilderness is Paradise enow.   V – 12 A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou       Beside me singing in the Wilderness – Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! Obviously, with a book of this vintage and renown there are many free versions to be found (just do a Google book search), but I found the juxtaposition of these two editions here quite charming, as they do provide a window onto the reality of this “paraphrasing” by an English writer of the medieval original. Of course, one of the other “charming” things about the Dover Thrift books is that they're so inexpensive, this has a cover price of a mere $2.00 … which is very handy when one's on-line order is not quite at $25 to get free shipping and you're not wanting to throw in another “regular” book! Aside from those concerns, the poetry itself is quite enticing, as FitzGerald really did a very nice job of making the quatrains “live” in English. It's something you should keep in mind for that next order. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
1:17 pm	Holey moley! I suppose that I really should read the descriptions of the books being offered in the LibraryThing.com “Early Reviewers” program more carefully, but in my defense, the only indication that this was a kids' book was an offhand thing saying “children and adults alike”, so I was surprised to find that it was a book targeted for the 9-12 age range. Ooops. I suppose that I have looked at other science-books-for-kids previously, so the “Almighty Algorithm” might have taken that into consideration when matching me with this, but frankly, I think there were better matches among the several I'd requested in the February batch. Fortunately, I happen to have a 12-year-old handy, and cajoled her into reading the book, and providing me with her review of Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano's A Black Hole Is Not a Hole, which follows below. I must admit, however, that I found the book delightful, even from a perspective of having read numerous books which have dealt with the subject. At no point was the science trivialized, although being brought down into language and “idea units” targeted for a Junior High audience. One of the great strengths of the book is its gorgeous and quite informative illustrations, helping to envision some of these difficult concepts much better than most of the “general reader” books on black holes have done. Before I end up “stealing her thunder”, let me plug in here the review that my daughter Claire wrote about this, as it's, obviously, more germane to the book than my opinions: A Black Hole is NOT a Hole By Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano Reviewed by Claire Tripp      “A Black Hole is NOT a Hole” is all about explaining the qualities of a black hole. Although it may sound like you are about to read a text book, that is not true! The author was very uplifting and explanatory on the topic. She kept the reader informed and entertained by being very creative in her writing. She also balanced the book out with the history of science and how people approached the topic of outer space, stars, gravity, planets, etc.      One of the main qualities that surprised me was that not for one minute was I bored or, well, reading a science textbook! I do not really enjoy science, but this book was very enjoyable and fun! The way she approached the topic was clear and kid-friendly, she also included connections to our day-to-day lives as kids! The illustrator, Michael Carroll, also did an amazing job at creating clear and beautiful pictures. They were very accurate to the book.      The author also had little “chat bubbles” that had little sayings such as “Then what is it?” in reference to the title. This was another example of her creativity in her writing. Overall, the book was very fun and exciting while it was still educational and informed me on the topic. While I wish she was more interested in Science, I think it's telling that she was as enthusiastic about A Black Hole Is Not a Hole, and I was pleased and surprised that she got her review written up and into my hands with only the barest minimum of reminding (she had put it off until her History Fair project was presented at the Regionals). Anyway, as I said, this is a remarkably informative and comprehensive look at the current theories involving black holes. Obviously, the author was challenged by the nature of her target audience to step things back to very basic levels, and so the book starts with looking at the Solar system, and the concepts of really big numbers, then comes up with a parallel of a black hole and a whirlpool, and explains that it's “kind of” like that, but not exactly … which then sets up a discussion about gravity (complete with a sketch of an apple bouncing off of Newton's head), with the basic concepts spun out along with some tables of how much various things of a particular size would weigh (a “snowball-sized” black hole would weigh more than 10 earths!). This leads to the very difficult concept of the “event horizon”, which then proceeds into a look at the life cycle of stars, and how stars of various sizes end up doing quite different things when they die. At this point the book shifts a bit back to some basic astrophysics, looking at how light behaves in assorted contexts (and why it can't get out of a black hole, thus making it “black”), how we can find black holes out in the universe, and lots of pictures of galaxies, etc. in which they've determined there are black holes. Finally, they get to the “thought experiment” part with the obvious question about “what happens to stuff falling in?” and getting into Relativity and non-Newtonian space. I had sort of expected them to get into the “hole in space/time” diagram earlier, but it comes in at this point as a final look at “a hole”. The book concludes with a very interesting timeline (from Newton on), an illustrated glossary, and the author presenting (in a very conversational mode) her sources for the information in the book, along with a more standard list of resourses. Considering the difficulty and complexity of the subject, and the age of its audience, A Black Hole Is Not a Hole does an amazing job of making this understandable, while not (in my daughter's words) making it like reading a textbook. While I might not have learned anything new per se here, I certainly picked up good “images” of how to frame the concepts (like the snowball-sized chart noted above), and I can appreciate the efforts of the illustrator to make these things visible to us terrestial-bound life forms! This has only been out a couple of months, so it should be available in the bigger book stores, but (of course) the on-line guys have it, with a discount that would make it cheaper (assuming you add it to other stuff to get free shipping) at this point than getting it from the new/used vendors with their shipping add-on. Again, this is a really remarkable book, and a tour de force in making something very challenging both accessible and entertaining. It's a volume every kid (especially those with an interest in science) should get a hold of! (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
4:15 pm	"Who controls the present ..." I heard Erik Qualman do a presentation on Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business at the December 2009 meeting of the Social Media Club of Chicago (along with Shel Israel talking about his Twitterville), just a couple of months after it came out. I suppose it's a testimony to the book's popularity (and my on-going poverty) that I was unable to get connected with a “reasonably priced” used copy until just this January … notably, getting to it after I'd read his new book Digital Leader. While this is a very good book for its time (it's amazing how a book that's not quite 3 years old at this point can feel “dated” already), but it suffers from the author's evident excitement over Barack Obama (whose campaign, admittedly, did make significant use of Social Media tools) ... were the Obama election just one case study among many (it gets its own chapter, and the Obamas have more mentions than anything else in the index), it would be less of a problem here, but, as it is, this imparts to Socialnomics something of the same "irrelevant" feel that most political books have within a year or two of their publication. The book starts off with laying some groundwork about word-of-mouth information distribution, and how communication systems are changing … We have shifted from a word where the information and news was held by a few and distributed to millions, to a world where the information is held by millions and distributed to a few (niche markets). … While {the} traditional mediums were still trying to grasp how to handle the upshot of blogs and user-generated content, social media suddenly came along, causing yet another significant upheaval in the status quo. Once this basis has been established he moves into “behavior”, outlining two types, “preventative” and “braggadocian”. The former of these can be brought down to the phrase “Live your life as if your mother is watching.” … and is, basically, the herald of the recent dystopian “self-edit or else” vibe that one needs to conform to social norms and expectations or be indelibly branded a pariah (since, as he also notes: “What happens in Vegas stays on You Tube”). The latter is the trend to documenting one's existence via Social Media tools, and how various “generations” interact with these. In both of these chapters there is a lot of “what's good for society” at the expense of the individual, side-by-side with case studies from various businesses. This segues into the political chapter: In 2008 … several companies gave away freebies on Election Day. Generally most marketers steer clear of anything political, but in this case, the brand marketers wanted to be a part of a community, and the community in this instance, thanks to social media, was the American community. ...This is the sense of community that human beings long for, and it is something that isn't lost with social media. In fact, it is part of the reason for social media's meteoric ascendancy in our lives. Face-to-face interaction still can't be beat, but social media does help you feel part of a community. It is even able to help keep an intimate community feel on a national or global level. This at least had an interesting bit about how search engine traffic can serve as a predictive measure of future events, from emerging pop stars to patterns of flu outbreaks (before they're recognized as outbreaks). There is a rather dystopian spin here too, talking of ways the government could become more involved in our daily lives. The next sections are about how people prefer to get recommendations from peers rather than marketing messages from companies. The 30-second commercial is being replaced by the 30-second review, tweet, post, status update, and so on. Not all great viral marketing ideas need to originate in the marketing department – businesses need to be comfortable with consumers taking ownership of their brands. The marketers' job has changed from creating and pushing messages to one that requires listening, engaging, and reacting to potential and current customer needs. And it's not just marketing that changes; businesses models need to shift. Simply digitizing old business models doesn't work; businesses need to fully transform to properly address the impact and demands of social media. Again, most of the illustrative stories here are specifics of how various companies did or did not succeed in using Social Media and associated web technologies … the details are interesting in context, but really not suitable for extracting as examples here … ultimately, the over-all tone of Socialnomics is very much that of an introductory volume for business people who may not have any experience with Social Media, but are quite conversant with advertising and marketing challenges. As much as the assorted business "snapshots" here provided fascinating illustrations of how Social Media affected the success or failure of numerous companies, I was disturbed by the "meta" implications of some of the over-riding themes. Qualman keeps returning to the at least the suggestion of personal sublimation to the Society … he refers to “The Death of Social Schizophrenia” positing that having a private self and a public self is a symptom of a disease and that one needs to make one's personality and activities “transparent” and congruent, “for the good of society” ... with the obvious implication that if one's personal orientation, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs are not “approved”, one will be shunned by the less-individualistic masses (or at least their HR department keepers). Admittedly, I suspect that most people reading this book wouldn't even notice the "dystopian meta themes" running through Socialnomics, but they were ongoing "nails on a chalkboard" to my Libertarian sensibilities. Unlike many of the Social Media books I've read, this is very much oriented as a business “primer”, so the feeling was less that of enthusiasm for the new technologies of communication and interaction, and more looking at how these could be brought to bear on beating the competition. As noted, it's been very popular, and is currently widely available in a paperback edition. This certainly has worthwhile material in it, and I'm sure that I'm an "extreme outlier" in my visceral reactions to the societal spin I found implied in it, but I don't think this would be near the top of my recommended Social Media reading list for general audiences, although it might be an ideal intro book for MBAs and fans of big government. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 21st, 2012
6:40 am	"Put the glasses on! Put 'em on!" I don't know why these books never crossed my radar back when they were coming out … they sold tons of copies, and I guess got lots of ink, but I was oblivious to them until much later. In fact, I tried to get an interview with Lois Weisberg, the Chicago Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, some years back (related to a job opening I'd seen), having seen her mentioned in a magazine article, and I got a note from “her people” saying that ever since appearing in The Tipping Point , she was so swamped with requests that she just couldn't do any … and I had no clue! So, although I came late to the books of Malcolm Gladwell, I've been catching up ... in this case, with Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. This book is a collection of stories from a wide array of contexts and settings, all dealing with the way our perception works. From the instant “read” we might have on something (in the first piece here, a forgery of a statue), that can be more accurate than expert study, to how our unconscious can mis-read the “truth” in a situation, and to how this can be managed and even trained. There is an awful lot of individual bits and pieces of research, background, and narrative here, so it's not something where I can sketch out the “story arc”, instead, I've pulled out a few quotes that I think give a taste of what's in here. First is a thing that deals with looking at which doctors get sued, and which don't. Contrary to what one would expect, this has very little to do with their competence or track record. Even odder, the research leading into this was based on studying couples with an eye to which were going to break up or not. {The researcher} listened to {the study's} tapes, zeroing in on the conversations that had been recorded between just surgeons and their patients. For each surgeon, she picked two patient conversations. Then, from each conversation, she selected two ten-second clips of the doctor talking, so her slice was a total of forty seconds. Finally, she “content-filtered” the slices, which means she removed the high-frequency sounds from speech that enable us to recognize individual words. What's left after content-filtering is a kind of garble that preserves intonation, pitch, and rhythm but erases content. Using that slice – and that slice alone – {she} did a Gottman-style analysis. She had judges rate the slices of garble for such qualities as warmth, hostility, dominance, and anxiousness, and she found that by only using those ratings, she could predict which surgeons got sued and which didn't. So, from less than a minute of meaningless speech patterns, signals came through which allowed accurate predictions of which surgeons were sued … how? It tuns out that the attitude of the doctors, which came through all this reduction, was the key element … those that were treating patients like a case and not like a person were the ones that ended up being sued if things went wrong. There were other experiments that showed that subtle elements could change results dramatically … asked to think of professors or soccer hooligans before taking a test, the former (randomly selected) group of subjects got 55.6% right while the latter got only 42.6% correct … a huge difference just from thinking of a particular “type” before the test! More dramatically, a study of Black students showed that the group asked to fill out a questionnaire before the test that had a place to identify their race, scored only half as well as a similar group whose pre-test form did not have that question. The results from these experiments are, obviously, quite disturbing. They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize. What was striking here was that the pattern of influence was evident in a wide swath of studies, quizzes full of items about senior citizens had their college student subjects moving far more slowly and hesitantly on their way out of the testing center than peers who didn't have those cues … people “primed” with word scrambles that either had “rude” or “polite” entries in them acted out the programming in a subsequent “accidental” encounter, with 82% of the “polite” subject never interrupting in an structured inconvenient situation. It makes you wonder how close movies like They Live are about the messages being fed to us! On the flip side “they” don't necessarily have a firm grasp on all this … there's a section dealing with “sensation transference” where product packaging totally overwhelms things that one would expect to be top difference-makers, like taste or brand name … or situations where our “gut reaction” has five times the accuracy than when we're asked to analyze why we prefer A to B. One of the issues raised here is that people are rather change averse, and “different” is often taken for “bad”: The problem with market research is that often it is simply too blunt an instrument to pick up this distinction between the bad and the merely different. … {in initial testing of All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show} Viewers said they hated them. But, as quickly became clear when these sitcoms became two of the most successful programs in television history, viewers didn't actually hate them. They were just shocked by them. And market researchers at CBS utterly failed to distinguish between these two very different emotions. The challenge is to find out what is just so new that it shocks, but then is embraced, and what is actually bad and will never find a wide audience. There's also a test you can try at home … do a blind “sip” test between Coke and Pepsi, and many (but by no means all) can pick which is which, but throw in a third cup, and a second serving of one of these, the average success rate drops to 1/3rd – right at chance – and Gladwell reports that when he tried this on a group of his friends, they all failed to make the correct identifications! Finally, as though to validate the “happy smiley”, “fake it till you make it” people, it appears that just trying to look a particular way effects the whole body/mind complex … suggesting that those (irritating) people who go through the day smiling like they're having a great time, are actually ending up happier than those of us with a firmer grip on reality … {Researchers} gathered a group of volunteers and hooked them up to monitors measuring their heart rate and body temperature – the physiological signals of such emotions as anger, sadness, and fear. Half of the volunteers were told to try to remember and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other half were simply shown how to create, on their faces, the expressions that corresponded to stressful emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear. The second group, the people who were acting, showed the same physiological responses, the same heightened heart rate and body temperature as the first group. Again, this is just a small sampling of what's covered in Blink … it's an amazing collection of things that will shake how you see the world, and maybe even change the way you go about things (I know that the next time I need to take a test, I'm going to start making a list of “genius things” before I go in!). Despite being out for seven years, Blink is still in print, available in both hardcover and paperback, so it should be available in the brick-and-mortar stores, but the on-line big boys have it at about 1/3rd off of cover, and the new/used vendors have “very good” copies of the hardcover for as little as a penny (plus shipping). This is one that is such a “shock to the system” that I really wish everybody would read it … it's in the intersection of a good read, an interesting study of human psychology, and a satori-like unfolding of an unsuspected reality. If enough folks read this, maybe we won't need George Nada's sunglasses to see the “obey” and “consume” signs! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
10:26 pm	Some splainin' about human origins ... This was another of those delightful dollar store finds … always a treat to discover a nice hardcover, in perfect condition, for a buck! The randomness of the dollar store books is one of the most attractive (well, aside from the $1 price, of course) parts of the find, as these will, obviously, not be things that I went out looking for, but often are quite interesting, and expand my reading outside of its habitual ruts. Not, of course, that paleoanthropology is a particular stretch for me, my having read many books on the subject … it's just one that I don't typically go out looking for. So, Donald Johanson & Kate Wong's (he's the paleoanthropologist, she's the co-author who happens to be the Editorial Director of ScientificAmerican.com) Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins was a particular treat to discover some weeks back at one of my periodic trips to the dollar store. As I was coming to this “by accident”, I didn't have much preconceived expectations of the book, and found that it was a very interesting interweaving of Johanson's personal reminisces and current research into the early predecessors of Homo sapiens. Johanson, of course, is a major player in the unfolding of the story of that research, having been the discoverer of “Lucy”, the famed fossil remains of a young Australopithecus afarensis female in the Hadar area of Ethiopia's Afar region back in 1974. Lucy's Legacy follows his career, from the early '70s up through when the book was published in 2009, with much of the “action” happening in Ethiopia, from the later days of Haile Selassie's reign, and resuming in the 1990's. One is tempted to assume that the writing division here is Johanon providing the “boots on the ground” material, and Wong filling in the scientific background, as the narrative swings in and out of “what was happening” and into “what it means”. One certainly gets an interesting look into the day-to-day activities of a working camp in a fossil-rich area, with all the inter-disciplinary work that's involved on dating finds, etc. There is also quite a bit of drama involved with the changing political landscape … as the Marxist military regime that ousted and succeeded Selassie was varying in how it related to “outsiders”, and for the better part of a decade forbidding any paleoanthropological research in the country. Later expeditions were also saddled with military escorts, but these were more in a “protective” role (despite having the predictably dampening role to open investigation) with active rebel activity in the regions Johanson and assocaites were working, as well as having significant tribal issues to deal with (at various times they needed to maintain close, or at least cordial relations with two tribes that were on either side of generations of hostilities). The main thrust of the book is the efforts to figure out the “family tree” leading from our Australopithecine predecessors (in various manifestations, the relation of which are still very much under debate) on up the assorted branches of Homo, leading to our current sapiens “humanity”. One fascinating point is presented late in the book: Geneticists believe that sometime around 140,000 years ago, the founding populations of modern humans underwent a catastrophic event that slashed their numbers from around 12,800 breeding individuals to a mere 600. Those 600 people gave rise to the modern humans that would one day leave Africa and colonize the rest of the world. I'd read about “population bottlenecks” before (like the Toba event about 70,000 years ago), but this is the lowest number I'd seen for “surviving population”! Needless to say, with these sorts of realities in the mix, it's no wonder it is sometimes difficult to “connect the dots” between numerous sets of fossils. I'm not going to even try to summarize the over-all paleoanthropological info from the book here … just suffice it to say, that this is not a “dry” presentation of the theory of Human Origins, but a tapestry of stories from the field, reminiscences from academia, and solid background information that only occasionally directly relates to the narrative (not a bad thing, it fills in the gaps that Johanson didn't specifically work on). If you have any interest in this field, I'm pretty sure you will find Lucy's Legacy quite an engaging read. It is still available, in a new paperback edition, although the hardcover can be had (at Dollar Tree, if you're lucky) in “very good” condition via the new/used on-line vendors for under a buck (but with $3.99 shipping, of course). I suspect that even more “general readers” might appreciate the “story” here, and I'd certainly recommend it as both informative and a good read. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 16th, 2012
2:12 pm	Perhaps in some other universe ... As I've previously noted, I will, from time to time, get queried by any of a handful of publishes (on whose radar I apparently appear) as to my interest in getting a review copy of an upcoming book. This one came from such a communication by the good folks at Ten Speed Press, the home of the Bolles' “Parachute” job-search book empire. It's been a while since I'd read any books specifically about the job search, and was, frankly, feeling a bit guilty that I was letting down my readers over on The Job Stalker by only bringing them “societally important” or “business trend” books in recent months, so I was quite open to adding this to my “to be read” pile. Had my reading over the past half year or so trended more to job-search topics, I might have taken a bit more discerning look at Quentin J. Schultze's Résumé 101: A Student and Recent-Grad Guide to Crafting Resumes and Cover Letters that Land Jobs. First of all, The Job Stalker is largely focused on those “in between jobs”, meaning that I'd assume that most of my readers there would have at least a modicum of professional background to work with on their resumes. This, being quite directly targeted to those in or recently out of college, has an entirely different focus … which, additionally, really didn't “speak to me” much, given how long I've been out of college! Secondly, there's the old joke about opinions, and how they're like certain bodily orifices in that “everybody's got one” … this adage is perhaps cubed when it comes to the subject of resumes. I can not begin the count the number of wholly contradictory opinions (often presented as Universal and Unquestionable Truths) I've encountered on the subject of resumes in articles, books, webinars, lectures, workshops, and consulting sessions … the only consistent element is that each disagrees with the others, frequently vehemently. I, of course, have my own thoughts on the subject, and my resume reflects an amalgam of assorted approaches … and it has garnered reactions from folks doing “resume reviews” from total snide dismissal as “hopeless” to “looks good, I wouldn't make any significant changes” (I would like to point out that I've gotten this latter reaction from a number of places who make their money writing resumes, so I feel that's a particularly strong endorsement). I wanted to set up this context for my review of Résumé 101, which started off quite strong (in my opinion) and then “fell completely off the table” for me. Honestly, there is stuff in here that goes 180° from much of what I've recently paid to hear about resume development that it boggled my mind … the one defense that I can come up with for Dr. Schultze here is that he is a college professor working with college students who, generally speaking, have “nothing to say” (professionally) on their resumes yet need to say something. He also makes recommendations for preparation of resumes that, were I to do these things in my job search, it would double my time devoted to getting out applications, and probably cut down the number of things that I could apply to by a factor of 10 or more! Again, this started off well in the introductory chapters where the author is dealing with the philosophy of the resume, I felt that the first two of these were particularly good examples: {in comparison to a “sales piece”} … in a résumé you leave out as much as possible, because the employer is reading your résumé to see if there's any excuse for screening you out. Put in one or two sentences too many, or mention something that you think might eventually “sell” you but is misinterpreted on a piece of paper that an employer spends about eight seconds scanning (typically), and you're toast. ... {A}n authentic résumé is far more than a list of jobs. A résumé is “you” in a particular written format. A résumé is “you” on paper or on a computer screen. A résumé is what you offer to an employer – somewhat like what a restaurant menu offers its customers. … Your résumé is like your personal, specialized menu of what you offer your customers – your potential employers. … The big three aspects of your life story – your skills, knowledge, and traits – are the keys to transforming your life experience into a standout, interview-generating, career-opening résumé. Why? Because every employee is a person, not just a worker. And because employers seek employees who have the right combinations of skill, knowledge, and personality. This last quote is where the book veered off into unreality for me. In the vast majority of cases, no “employer” is going to see your resume. It's going to be scanned by a machine, and if that machine finds the right key words/phrases that it's programmed to look for, it might get routed to an intern who's been given another set of filters to look for as they take those 8 seconds or so that they'll spend looking at your resume … as noted above, the goal of the resume reading process is to ELIMINATE as many would-be candidates as possible … and unless you're very lucky and your resume ends up in the dozen or so that get handed to the actual Hiring Manager, all that touchy-feely stuff about your “potential” as an employee is just “noise”, and probably rejection-generating verbiage at that. In discussions I've had with various recruiters, most are looking for a very specific profile, which I envision as being an exact multi-sided polygonal shape … if you're a circle, a square, a triangle, you're shot down at the first view, after that it's a matter of counting your sides and measuring your angles. If you pass that inspection, you might get called in to see if they can fit you into the exact polygonal hole they're trying to fill. Most of this book ignores this reality, and attempts to make the best of slim achievements, but in reality, unless an employer is looking for somebody who can run and talk at the same time they're not going to care if you played soccer and were on the debate team! My reactions aside, the book is very well structured, taking the new job seeker from the very basics through a lot of details on crafting one's resume, getting references lined up, developing cover letters, etc. , with examples, tips, and recommendations (and stories from the author's own experiences, which I found charming), all through the book. The most useful part of this, however (and I'm extrapolating to what I'd guess college kids would find most handy), is the last quarter of the book where Schultze presents check lists, worksheets, editorial guides, word lists, and lots of examples of resumes and cover letters. Obviously, I “had issues” with Résumé 101 … but I'm a long way from college and have been fighting the job search out in the trenches of the real world for years, so I'm probably taking a more reactive view than most would on this. I don't doubt that this would be a reasonably handy guide for a college kid to get out their first resumes and start building up the scar tissue they'll need out there, but from where I sit, its view of what “lands jobs” is pretty Pollyanaish. It's brand new, so should be available at your local book vendor, and, of course, the on-line big boys have it at a discount from its quite reasonable cover price. This drove me nuts reading it, but if you're a college student looking to get started on the long, brutal, soul-crushing job search, it might very well be a good first toe in the minefield. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 14th, 2012
6:30 am	Society fought the law, and the law won ... This is a somewhat odd book … it's both a technology and a societal book … it both looks at current trends and tries to forecast from them … and yet, when it's over, it's become something of a look at actual law rather than a philosophical projection of “laws”, which comes as something of a surprise. There's a quote by a federal judge towards the end of the book, which sums up a lot of the thrust here: “Beliefs lawyers hold about computers, and predictions they make about new technology, are highly likely to be false. This should make us hesitate to prescribe legal adaptations for cyberspace. The blind are not good trailblazers.” Essentially, The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces that Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age by Larry Downes is about how the on-rush of technological change is changing everything, and the way that society is dealing with this is both complicated and not ideal. As any “digital native” will tell you, one of the biggest challenges out there is that most elected officials are technologically illiterate at best, with many being nearly Luddites in their resistance to the digital reality … and the down-side of this appears again and again in totally disastrous legislation and regulation. Frankly, I “had issues” with some of the places Downes was going here, with my background in publishing (and hence in intellectual property, copyright, etc.); he argues against a lot of things which have long been elements of our creative culture and proposes solutions which are not particularly palatable. An illustrative quote regarding this “new approach” is presented from the comic book icon Stan Lee, who says: “In the digital age authors should be prepared to give away everything of value and make their money on the crap.” … although how much imprinted swag the average author is likely to sell (and back in the day I had Cafe Press stores full of un-ordered merchandise sitting there for each of our books), is a good question. Downes says: ”The Law of Disruption always challenges the existing rules and profit allocations of industries, but in the end it creates more value than it destroys.”, but it certainly leaves destruction in its wake … one hates to think that one's particular niche in the world is simply the next “sealing wax” or sheet music, soon to be inconsequential. The book is arranged in four areas: “Digital Life”, “Private Life”, “Public Life” and “Information Life”, the latter three of which each contain three of what Downes describes as the nine laws of disruption … Law One: Convergence, Law Two: Personal Information, Law Three: Human Rights; Law Four: Infrastructure, Law Five: Business, Law Six: Crime; Law Seven: Copyright, Law Eight: Patent, and Law Nine: Software. Historical antecedents are sketched out here, going back to the Middle Ages and how the “killer app” of the time, the stirrup (which allowed Charlemagne to develop mounted troops, evolving into Knighthood, and the Feudal system), and similarly through each law. Other “laws” underlie much of the book, the familiar “Moore's Law” (every 12-18 months the processing power of computers doubles while the price holds constant), and slightly less familiar “Metcalfe's Law” (the usefulness of a network is the square of the number of users connected to it), which lead to the (coined for this book, I take it) “Law of Disruption” - technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally. Obviously, this expresses itself in the nine “laws” across three spheres as noted above. One thing that stands out is the idea of “non-rivalrous goods”, unlike a physical object, information can be used simultaneously by many people, so have significantly different economics associated with their creation and use. Downes introduces the concept here of “The Five Principles of Information Economics” ... 1 – Renewability: “Information cannot be used up.”,, 2 – Universality: “Everyone can use the same information at the same time.”, 3 – Magnetism: “Use makes the brand more, not less, valuable.”, 4 – Lack of Friction: “The more easily information flows, the more quickly its value increases.”, and 5 – Vulnerability: “Value can be destroyed through misuse.”. Within the Information Economy there are also, as in the regular economy, what Ronald Coase described as “transaction costs”, these being to costs of Search, Information, Bargaining, Decision, Policing, and Enforcement … each of which will vary by situation and the nature of the transaction, with as much as 45% of total economic activity being taken up by these. The Laws of Disruption has a somewhat uneven arc … starting out almost “philosophical” but, by the time the author gets to Copyright and Patent, it's nearly “polemical” in favor of massive change in these areas, and somewhat enmired in the legalistic details of these subjects. Of course, along the way, there are many fascinating expositions of what one might not have suspected in the digital field (for instance the vast differences between the thrust of “privacy” regulations between the USA and Europe, and even, in specifics, between the various European countries … what would be a “who cares?” issue in one is frequently the “third rail” in another, and vice-versa), but I suspect that most folks reading it will find it far more engaging in some parts than others. If you have an interest in the digital world (and, of course, more and more, the “digital world” is defining the “real world”), you might find this a source of unique context for consideration of some of the thornier issues of that environment. It certainly provides lessons to legislators (not that legislators are likely to be paying any attention) of how not writing laws is far more helpful in most situations than grinding out some short-sighted piece of regulation … and one would hope that this concept, if anything from The Laws of Disruption, would work its way into the public consciousness! Being that the book is only a couple of years old at this point, you're likely to be able to find it in your local bookstore, but the on-line big boys currently have it at a deep discount, and new copies can be had from the new/used guys for as little as a penny (plus the $3.99 shipping, of course). This was an interesting read, and I'm glad to have taken in the information, but it's not something that built up a lot of enthusiasm in me … perhaps it's my wariness over messing with Intellectual Property rights, or my general distaste for anything having to do with the legal profession … but this is one that I'd only recommend if you have a specific interest in the topic. (Comment on this)
Friday, April 13th, 2012
5:59 pm	An encouraging look towards the future ... Well … you've had to wait a while to read this review. I was halfway into writing it five weeks ago when my much-beloved netbook up and died … in the middle of a sentence. It's taken this long for me to a) get hooked up with a replacement and b) get back out to do some reviews … and, of course, the material (which was fresh in my mind back then) has faded slightly in my recall. However, I really, really liked Peter Diamandis' Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, which I anticipated I would when I requested a review copy from Free Press. As you can guess from the subtitle, this is not your typical “the sky is falling” futurist book … instead, it's a look ahead at all the stuff that is trending positively, and what might bring a very bright future. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the “if it bleeds, it leads” mainstream media, which thrives on sensationalizing bad news, as Abundance is very much the antithesis of that. Diamandis works with a “pyramid” symbolism here, somewhat related to Maslow's, with “simple physiological needs” at the base: water, food, and shelter; the next level featuring energy, education, information and communications, and finally, at the top, health and freedom. All the elements in the book relate to one or another of these concepts, and how they can be brought to the whole of humanity. This is a challenging book to summarize, because there is so much in it, hundreds of case studies and reports of research and programs moving things forward toward the “abundance” of the title. As with most books that I have been enthusiastic for while reading, this has dozens of little slips of paper sticking out of the top, with pages that I noted as having particularly important passages, or things that I wanted to take a further look at later. Here are a few of the points made in the introductory sections: Our current educational system … is built around fact-based learning, but the Internet makes almost every fact desirable instantly available. This means we're training our children in skills they rarely need, while ignoring those they absolutely do. Teaching kids how to nourish their creativity and curiosity, while still providing a sound foundation in critical thinking, literacy and math, is the best way to prepare them for a future of increasingly rapid technological change. ... Many of today's dangers are probabilistic – the economy might nose-dive, there could be a terrorist attack – and the amygdala can't tell the difference. Worse, the system is also designed not to shut off until the potential danger has vanished completely, but probabilistic dangers never vanish completely. Add in an impossible-to-avoid media continuously scaring us in an attempt to capture market share, and you have a brain convinced it's living in a state of siege ... ... In contemporary society … very few of us actually maintain 150 relationships. But we still have this primitive pattern imprinted on our brain, so we fill those open slots with whomever we have the most daily “contact” - even if that contact comes only from watching that person on television. … The reason we care so much about what happens to the likes of Lady Gaga is … because our brain doesn't realize there's a difference between rock stars we know about and relatives we know. This initial section is fascinating as it shows how we're not set up to see the good stuff that's happening, on both an organic and societal basis. It then presents a litany of “dire forecasts” of the (mainly recent) past that were just plain wrong … and then moves into a wide array of exciting new things, which rarely make it onto the media's radar, and so don't get into the general population's minds. These are all over the board … with new subjects every few pages. There is Dean Kamen's water purification project, that started out as a way to help dialysis patients, but was scaled up to the point where “The current version can purify 1,000 liters of water a day using the same amount of energy it takes to run a hair dryer.”. There are the “highrise farm” projects (this one has recently been in the news), with promises that “One hundred fifty vertical farms could feed everyone in New York City.”. There are the “generation IV” nuclear reactors, being developed by the likes of Nathan Myhrvold and others, which are “backyard nukes” that have “no moving parts, can't melt down, and can run safely for fifty-plus years, literally without human intervention … We could power the world for the next one thousand years just burning and disposing of the depleted uranium and spent fuel rods in today's stockpiles.”, and are projected to be priced “to undercut coal”. Abundance then moves into health care, and the remarkable advances in systems to diagnose, treat, and prevent illness … and the evolving capabilities to address health at the genetic level. Advances in robotics are also promising to replace (or at least augment) surgeons, and nurses. Technology developed for (and made very inexpensive by) the Xbox Kinect is at the forefront for sensors that will allow for nearly-automated assisted living at a fraction of the current costs. There is so much in this book that I've not even touched on. The scope here is really breathtaking, and the vision world-changing. There is a web resource for on-going research at AbundanceHub.com, which promises to keep updating material in line with what's in the book (although, at the moment - only a couple of months past its publication - it's mainly about the book). The last 20% of Abundance is a remarkable collection of references with data related to elements covered in the book (one of my favorites is the side-by-side comparison of a Cray2 supercomputer from 1985 and the iPad2 from 2011, where the latter had almost everything the former did, at a bit over a pound vs. nearly three tons, and at less than 1/50,000th the cost!), which in many cases brings home the really remarkable advancements discussed in the main text. Abundance is one of those books that I wish EVERYBODY would read … it's really that important. If people took the information in this to heart, it could radically change the future of the planet and the race dramatically for the better. Heck, there were a dozen projects described here I wish I could work with, given my current job search! As it's brand new, your odds of finding it at your local brick-and-mortar book store are very good, and the on-line big boys are currently both featuring it at a deep discount. Do get a copy … it's a game-changer … highly, highly recommended! (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
5:26 pm	Sometimes "no plan" is the best plan ... Although I crank out a vast lot of reviews (just this weekend I hit my 500th review posted to LibraryThing.com!), I haven't been particularly active in soliciting books for review. As I've mentioned, from time-to-time I get queried or have titles sent to me from a couple of publishers, especially for books dealing with the job search, due to featuring my reviews on the subject over in The Job Stalker blog on the Tribune's "Chicago Now" site ... but every once in a while I'll run into something that sounds interesting, but might not be the sort of book that I'd have picked up in my general reading, so I'll make a request for a review copy. This is one of those. I'd seen Harvey Mackay's enthusiastic piece about this in his newsletter a while back and thought it might be the sort of thing that would be of interest to my The Job Stalker readers, so you're getting it kind of “in the middle”! Coincidentally, “cutting out the middle man” is one of the themes in the business bio of Bruce Halle, Six Tires, No Plan: The Impossible Journey of the Most Inspirational Leader That (Almost) Nobody Knows by Michael Rosenbaum, a look at the owner of the Discount Tire company. Those familiar with my reading patterns might find this an odd book to grab my interest, but the way Halle went from “rags to riches” was deeply engrained in the same “openness”, “customer service”, and “treating people right” lessons constantly pushed by Social Media gurus like Scott Stratten, Chris Brogan, and GaryVaynerchuk … decades before they (or “social media”) came on the scene. It's a testament to how basic values can make business thrive if consistently applied, without undo interference from MBAs and accountants. Bruce Halle was a child of the (1st) Great Depression, hailing from small-town New England. His family barely was able to eke out a living, and came to depend on friends and relatives for food and shelter. This, no doubt, etched into young Halle a feeling of responsibility for others close to him. A middling student, he looked like the type that would get out of highschool and move into a factory job, but was encouraged by one of his teachers to at least give college a shot. This he did, but didn't fare particularly well through his first two years, so the timing of the Korean War was quite fortuitous for him, giving him a break to “get his head right”. While in the service Halle manage to get married and start a family, so when he returned to college, he had both school and work hanging over his head, and, again, with the help of particularly interested teachers, managed to graduate. He was very successful selling cars, and things looked promising, but he then shifted into insurance sales, which did not work so well, and eventually partnered in an automotive service business which ended up failing (due to licensing issues with suppliers), leaving him with the title's “six tires, no plan”. However, Halle's genius lay in interpersonal connections, and he set up his half-dozen tires in a storefront he personally rehabbed and began to offer great value, personal attention, and a pattern of free services. He found he could get “off-brand” tires for a great deal less than the “names” (although these were frequently identical), and came up with the name Discount Tire. Just as he'd had success in selling cars, his skills caused the business to thrive. As the business grew, Halle did things differently than most other companies. Firstly, he'd find guys with a lot of enthusiasm, but few prospects, and give them a clear path to both a solid paycheck, and a decent shot at moving up to management positions. Secondly, to get into management in the company, you had to start out “in the bays” installing tires … he wasn't hiring the business school grads in suits, unless they were willing to get their hands dirty for a few years. This created an atmosphere of camaraderie on all levels of the company, as (after a while) your boss, your boss' boss, and your boss' boss' boss had all been right were you were now, and knew what your daily concerns, challenges, and frustrations were. Halle (initially with partners) also personally owned all the stores, so there were no outside interests and agendas … making it possible for him to pluck an assistant manager from one place and offer him a new location on the other side of the country if he felt that was the right man for the job, and using what he called “the reset button” if one of these shifts had to be reconsidered. As in any corporate story, there were ups and downs, experiments that didn't work, and decisions that went awry, but generally speaking, Discount Tire exhibited impressive growth, spreading around the country. Halle, himself, had personal challenges, with his wife of nearly 40 years succumbing to cancer before her 60th birthday, and his near-fatal mountain bike accident four years later. He survived both of these, appointing a new CEO following his recovery from his accident, and soon afterward re-marrying, bringing in a “new partner” on several levels. The specifics in here of how Halle dedicates so much to the employees of Discount Tire should be inspiring to anybody in business … and the practices he brought to bear in building his business should be a lesson to anybody looking to improve their life. Six Tires, No Plan is a delightful read, and brings a whole different perspective on some “business teachings” of more recent vintage. This is a brand-new release, so should be available via your local bookseller, but it's also at a 33% discount at the on-line big boys. Even if you're not interested in business, careers, or the like, this is an inspiring read about somebody who made a great success of himself by “doing it right” … so you should check it out. (Comment on this)
1:18 am	No clothes and a collar ... Ever since they explained it to me at the dollar store, I'm less incredulous at finding really cool books for a buck, but it still feels pretty remarkable when I show up there after a re-stock (of the books that they buy in bulk from places like Walmart when the stock cycles out of their book sections) and find real gems. Needless to say, Neil deGrasse Tyson's The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet (a book still in print) was a pleasant surprise. I'm sure that most folks are at least peripherally aware of the subject of this book … the “demoting” of Pluto from planetary status to a “dwarf planet”, one among many existing out beyond the orbit of Neptune (although, interestingly, Pluto, with an “off kilter” orbit, sometimes is closer to the Sun than Neptune, but the two have managed to sync their orbits so there's no chance of a collision). I suppose it's some sort of consolation that this class of “dwarf planets” have been re-named “Plutoids”, so that Pluto, rather than being the least of the planets is now the first among an ever-growing list of minor bodies (some a bit larger than Pluto) out on the edges of the solar system. Neil deGrasse Tyson has become the media face for planetary studies, Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, and an astro-physicist with the American Museum of Natural History, he is constantly in demand as a guest on TV shows and as a lecturer at schools across the country. Much of The Pluto Files feels like it's addressed to a younger audience (although the book is not specifically targeted to kids), with lots of cartoons, Disney connections, song lyrics, and even reprints of a bunch of grade school kid's letters, but it, ultimately, is a pretty straight-forward telling of the history of Pluto in the sciences and popular culture. There certainly is a lesson to be learned here … Pluto was only discovered in 1930, so had been a planet for just over 75 years when it was re-classified in 2006 … yet the level of public outcry, especially in the USA, was pretty extreme. If only three or four generations were told that the solar system had nine planets (the last of which was Pluto), yet the “demoting” of it caused so much hostility, it becomes easy to understand how religion keeps it hooks in believers. The book looks at how a planet out beyond Neptune had been forecast from the orbital patterns of the outer planets, and how it was discovered, named, and taught in the developing astronomical sciences. However, it was the onward march of science that brought better telescopes and tracking machines (computers replacing film exposures), and suddenly there were many “trans-Neptunian objects” running around in the Kuiper belt … at least eight around Pluto's size. One of the key “set pieces” for the book was a new display at the Hayden, where Pluto was nowhere to be found. The inner “rocky” planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, were there, and the outer “gas giants”, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, were there, but Pluto and other Kuiper belt “ice balls” were not represented. Strangely, there were even members of the scientific community who were angrily fighting to keep Pluto in the planetary mix … but most of the opposition came from folks who just weren't comfortable “having their universe changed” on them. While I did not have a strong reaction to Pluto's reclassification, I can sort of understand where they were coming from, as I felt a certain level of “personal affront” when I discovered that the creature I grew up knowing as a Brontosaurus had somehow morphed into an Apatosaurus without anybody seeking out my opinion on the matter. Anyway, The Pluto Files is a light, yet very informative read. There were a good half dozen things that were completely new to me here, and I'm reasonably well-read on the solar system, as well as information on how the name happened, and some details of astronomical research which were quite illuminating. It had its lesser moments (the recurring bickering between Tyson and a “pro-planet” guy got tiresome fast, and why did they bother including three appendices for song lyrics and another two for stupid tongue-in-cheek legislation on the matter from New Mexico and California? … those could have just as usefully been URLs in footnotes instead of 6% of the book), but those are just minor gripes (and I suppose the book had to have a picture of the author posing with the Disney character Pluto). Anybody interested in astronomy, planetary science, scientific “politics” and history, as well as sociological issues of how belief systems become ingrained in the masses, should find this book fascinating. As noted, it's still in print (although I'm guessing it's long since been sold through in the dollar store channel), so might even be available via brick & mortar book stores, but the on-line guys have it at a discount, and “good” copies of the hardcover can be had for under a buck (plus shipping, of course) from the new/used guys. I certainly enjoyed this, and am glad I stumbled over it like I did! (Comment on this)
Monday, April 2nd, 2012
2:47 am	Fresh fruit for ... This was another dollar store find. It's not necessarily the sort of thing that I'd go looking for, but it seemed interesting enough, and fit into the sort of book that I could feature over on The Job Stalker. Frankly, Lynda Resnick's Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business isn't really about what's suggested by the sub-title (or by the cover splash saying it contains “Secrets to Marketing Just About Anything”), but is more like a “business autobiography”, walking the reader through her career. Now, her career has been rather remarkable, but this is more her life story than a “marketing treatise”, save for a couple of dozen adage-like statements set out in boxes through the book. This starts off strangely … sure, the author is well-connected, but what does it say about you when your book starts with thirty-six blurbs from famous people (from Michael Eisner to Gloria Steinem to Queen Noor of Jordan) over 7 pages before even getting to the title page? That is either a particularly crude expression of braggadocio, or an extreme manifestation of self-doubt needing to be salved by Big Names saying nice things about you. The litany of companies that Ms. Resnick has led is quite impressive, including Teleflora, the Franklin Mint, Fiji Water, and POM pomegranate products (the book largely hangs on that business, with the fruit being the “rubies” in the title). In each of these (and her experiences in the advertising business before) she faced different challenges, and came away with assorted life/business lessons. I assume the intended take-away would be these lessons, although they pretty much need to be extracted by the reader from the author's narrative about her life. There are also some “colorful” aspects to the history presented here … including a brush with political notoriety when, while doing other work for the Vietnam anti-war movement, she allowed Daniel Ellsberg to use her agency's copier at odd hours … which ended up his copying the classified documents that later appeared as The Pentagon Papers. One would think “once bitten twice shy”, but she was later blindsided, in her role with POM, by the same types when PETA fixated on their business' use of animal testing (necessary for making the sorts of health claims for their pomegranate products they were). The PETA campaign was loaded with falsehoods, whether intentionally or simply as a result on the group's lackadaisical research. But what PETA's attack inspired was far worse. Animal rights extremists, some with their faces covered to avoid identification, began protesting outside out house. It was unnerving to drive each day past a group of screaming protesters, who called us murderers and worse. The tone here is of somebody who is shocked that she, who has all these hard-left friends (many of whom show up in the front blurbs), would be subjected to this sort of treatment. It evidently left a mark, as they subsequently bent over backwards on almost every front to make Fiji water appear “earth friendly”, from doing rainforest conservation in the Fiji islands, to various approaches to make it look like they were creating a smaller “carbon footprint” than their competitors. There are, however, several bits of business wisdom in here beyond the “personal story” of Ms. Resnick. The tale of each of the companies she's run is interesting in its own right, and general statements can be pulled out of the telling. Here's one that stood out for me: Successful advertising makes us register the moment and take notice. If you can generate a reaction in consumers, you've already achieved a major goal; you've become part of their life in that small but very critical moment. If you use that moment to land a solid message somewhere on the brain – a message grounded in your brand identity and value – then you've truly achieved a great deal. Again, these sorts of “teaching moments”don't stand outside the main flow of the memoir … it would have been (in my opinion) more useful had she created a “take-aways” section at the end of each chapter (which generally go company-by-company through her career) for the “business lessons” learned. As noted previously, there are also a number of one-liners sprinkled through the book, which do present an encapsulated “point”: You get a lot further in life by showing what you don't know and asking for help than you do pretending you know it all. What good are advertising, marketing, and design if the product is junk? If you want to make money on a product, you have to learn how to give it away. That has a certain resonance for me, as I was involved in a friend's promotional project for Fiji water (I was a judge in a city-wide “scavenger hunt”), and I've been aware of many other events where they've been quite prominent in providing cases and cases of the water. Obviously, the things highlighted in the book are things that Resnick holds as true and applies in her business. Rubies in the Orchard is also strange in terms of illustration … it has a few, but they are oddly selected … one page is a mass of clippings from the author's involvement with Daniel Ellsberg, another is a “cheesecake” shot of her from a poster promoting her agency in 1970, thee are a couple of charts and diagrams, but, again these are few and far between, and seem to have been almost randomly added (from what one must assume to be a vast amount of possible illustrative material that they'd have on hand). In addition, there's a section of color photos which are pretty much all reproductions of ads, billboards, etc. from her various companies. One of these is to-the-point (illustrating the Jackie Kennedy necklace that they'd bought for $211,000.00 at auction, and ended up selling 26 million dollars worth of copies through the Franklin Mint), but even that could just as well have been handled by a B&W illustration in the book, and certainly nobody else would care if the pictures of the outdoor advertising was in glossy color! This is an interesting book for what it is, but a bit of a disappointment in terms of what it seems to think it is. I guess the author hopes that the reader will be so wowed by the opinions of her blurb-writing friends that they'll not notice the weaknesses here. I suspect that Resnick had an idea about creating a popular business book, but ended up writing a memoir instead. There's certainly an attempt to keep the story line tied in with the pomegranate business, but that becomes tenuous when dealing with pretty much every other company in here. Again, it's generally an agreeable read, and it's a fascinating look at one person's life who has been extremely successful, but the focus shifts around and ends up as being not-quite-this and not-quite-that. A paperback edition appears to still be in print on this, but there are “like new” copies in the new/used channel going for as little as 1¢ (plus $3.99 shipping, of course). If this sounds like something you'd be interested in checking out (and I was looking for extra copies to give to a couple of friends), you might first want to check the Dollar Tree stores, as I got this there only a few weeks ago. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
2:03 am	Bird Talk ... This was one of those Dollar Store finds … I'd been up at the “new” one (I discovered that there was one straight up the Red Line which didn't involve changing trains) picking up a few things when I found they'd gotten in a new batch of books, and I scored $112 worth (at cover price) for just $5 … gotta love that! This sort of jumped out at me, as I've been a parakeet owner much of my life (we currently have two: Shadow and Aqua - see pic at right), and the general thesis of Jenny Gardiner's Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me both sounded like a “light read” and something that might give some perspective on Aqua, our always-hostile older bird. Of course, there's a significant difference between domestically-bred parakeets and a wild-captured bird like Gardiner's African Grey parrot, Graycie, but both seemed to share a mean streak (made less bloody at our house by the relative smallness of Aqua's beak muscles!). Again, what I had anticipated jumping into Winging It was a light bird-centered collection of whacky stories about the author's learning to deal with this ill-tempered parrot. What I didn't expect was this was more of a personal reminiscence of her whole life, in which Graycie, while certainly being an on-going theme, was only one element in a house-full of pets (pretty much all of which, not being as long-living as a parrot, die at one point or another), a work-from-home husband, and three kids who go from birth through college in the telling. The parts of the book that I found very uncomfortable were the ones where her kids had various serious health issues, and she takes up whole chapters on the subject. Needless to say, were I have to gone into this expecting an autobiography these elements wouldn't have stuck out like they did, but having thought this to be a “bird book”, they were unwelcome (to the author, too, I suppose) sidetracks from the stuff that got me to pick it up and leap over dozens of other books in the “to be read” pile. I also had some serious “verklempt” moments reading this. As a father with kids fast approaching college age, much of the reflection that Gardiner does about how quickly this all flies by, leaving one only the memories (or, in her case, a bird still repeating phrases from the children's early years), hit me hard … sort of counter-acting the “light reading” aspects I'd looked for in this. I know it's unfair to judge a book on what I had thought or hoped it was going to be, rather than what the author meant it to be (although, in my defense, it would be hard to guess that the book was more a family memoir than a book about raising a parrot from the dust jacket!), but I do wish there was more like this passage in place of the various “parental challenges” parts of the book: On a recent night she wasn't content with simply plinking. Instead she grew silent. And then I heard he say out loud, “Jenny!” … The sound came from an unfamiliar quadrant of the room. We are all so used to her voice coming at us from the corner in which she resides that it's jarring to hear it from anywhere else. I got up to search and found her in her favorite spot, by the parrot cabinet. She was standing in front of the cabinet, trying to open it up. For fun, because I had the time to actually supervise her, I decided to open the cabinet and let her have at it. So for a good forty minutes she happily hung out, pulling down little wooden blocks and toys and an old sock stuffed with pieces of wood and all the while talking, talking, talking. I suppose I also would have liked some additional expository material about African Grey parrots in general. There are bits and pieces woven through the narrative (coming in as the author found out about them), but it would have been interesting to have had some block elements with data on how long-lived parrots can be, how they are remarkable mimics (and the things Graycie says are pretty amazing), and maybe even some pictures (the only one of the bird here is on the cover … the other pic up there in this review is a snapshot of my parakeets!). I want to say the book is sad, but I guess it's just a sentimental look back on the author's family over a quarter century, much of which is spent “battling” with a particularly cranky (and early on, accident-prone) bird. There's no big pay-off at the end … no happy bird-human détente … just a reaching of the present, and, like closing a photo album, a stop (and I just now took a look at the Amazon reviews, and I see a lot of other folks found this more sad that funny). Winging It is only a couple of years old, and the on-line guys still have it. You can, however, pick up a “like new” copy for a penny (plus shipping) from the used vendors, and if you scurry out to your local Dollar Tree you might be able to find a copy there (I just got this last Friday, and they had several copies on the shelf). This wasn't the book I was hoping to read, but if a family memoir's your thing, this might be of interest. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 9th, 2012
12:57 am	Is not our fortune famous, brave, and great? This is another book that came my way via the LibraryThing.com “Early Reviewers” program. I'm not sure what I was specifically expecting this to be (in the LTER program, there's a big list of books that are being offered by publishers, with a brief description of each, and a button to “request” a book, and then it's up to the “almighty algorithm” to match up the requests to what seems to be the best match of reviewer … you can request as many as you like, but you'll only get one “win”, and that's not a sure thing). Anyway, I've had a long familiarity with the Bhagavad Gita, going back to the mid-70's when the Hare Krishna movement was wide-spread, and I actually had a subscription to their Back to Godhead magazine. One of the features of this was an on-going translation of the Gita by ISKCON founder Prabhupada, where there was the Sanskrit text, a transliteration of that into the Western alphabet, a linear translation, and an interpretive translation of the meaning of the passage … I found these fascinating, as it was a window into Sanskrit that I didn't have otherwise. So, it wasn't much of a surprise when I “won” Eknath Easwaran's Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Guide to Yoga, Meditation, and Indian Philosophy, but I was thinking that this would simply be another translation of the Indian classic. Actually, Easwaran (who is the late founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation) has a translation of the Gita, and this book is intended as a “companion” to that, outlining the “essence” of that text. So, instead of having just another translation to wade through, this is a rather remarkable “explanation” of the book, which depends more on the author's personal relationship with the material than with the details of the material. Because we are not separate from [the] supreme reality, it follows that each of us is incomplete so long as we consider ourselves separate: that is, until we make this discovery ourselves. Whatever else we may achieve in life … there will be a vacuum in our hearts that can be filled only by direct, experiential knowledge of reality. This is the message of the Gita in a nutshell: life has only one purpose, and that is to know the divine ground of existence and become united with it here and now. This certainly is a different tone than the chanting and dancing of the mid-70's Krishna kids … although I'm sure they'd have agreed with this passage in principle. If you are unfamiliar with the Bhagavad Gita, it's one section of the sprawling historical epic poem, the Mahabharata, which describes events in India in the 8-9th centuries BCE. The core elements of this deal with a war between various elements of a dynasty, with relatives, teachers, and close friends arrayed on both sides. One key figure is the prince Arjuna, who is preparing for battle, and at the start of the Gita, is reviewing the assembled lines, with his chariot driver, Krishna. Arjuna, a great warrior, is having qualms about this battle, foreseeing the deaths of so many people he cares about, and expresses this to Krishna … who then reveals himself as the Godhead and goes through a whole exposition about “life, the universe, and everything”, including how Arjuna must follow his dharma as a warrior and participate in the battle. Easwaran points out that the actual war is within, and the battle is with the illusion of separateness, or Maya. Again, I was surprised at how little Essence of the Bhagavad Gita actually dwells on the story, or even wording of the Gita. Rather, the author takes the Gita as a starting point to discuss the underlying concepts involved, and the tone is very much discursive, as though one was sitting at tea with Easwaran and listening to him expound on this. Indeed, there is a good deal of autobiographical material in this, discussing how he came to his faith, and became a teacher, etc., using elements from his own life to illustrate the ideas he's presenting. Of course, when it's to the point, he will dip into the text of the Gita, such as in this passage where Krisha is instructing Arjuna on the illusion of death: Death is inevitable for the living; birth is inevitable for the dead. Since they are unavoidable, you should not sorrow. Every creature is unmanifested at first and then attains manifestation. When its end has come, it again becomes unmanifested. What is there to lament in this? (2:27-28) Frankly, if one looked through the chapter titles here, one would not suspect that this was a book about, or even based on the Bhagavad Gita … as the chapters deal with reality, personality, yoga, meditation, the unconscious, reincarnation, and other more “philosophical” subjects whose natures are brought to light for Easwaran in the pages of the Gita. This is probably the most appealing part of the book for me, as, rather than “beating one over the head” with the insistence of entering a Krsihna practice (like the Hare Krishnas back in the day), he is taking the teachings of Krishna from the Gita and presenting these as a template for an approach that is quite in line with modern western psyches. I very much enjoyed Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, and would generally recommend it to “all and sundry”, with the one concern that it might not have the impact that it did for me if one was not as familiar with the source material. Obviously, one could pick up Easwaran's translation of the Gita (which would likely provide a seamless transition into this), but it is also available free on-line, from the basic text translated into English (http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/gita/), to Prabhupada's idiosyncratic presentation (http://www.asitis.com/), and other detailed looks at this classic book (such as at http://www.bhagavad-gita.org/). That said, I do think this would be a useful read for anybody. Being that it's new, you have a pretty good shot of finding it at your local bookstore that stocks “eastern religion” titles, and the on-line guys have it from a quarter to a third off of (a very reasonable) cover price. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 8th, 2012
12:22 pm	Ill which the gods have sent thou canst not shun ... Yes, here's another of those Dover Thrift Edition books that serve three functions in my reading … first, pushing an on-line order up into the “over $25 free shipping” promised land, second, filling a gap in my otherwise-excellent liberal arts education, and third, well, being a fast read when I've been falling behind on my six-books-a-month reading target (72 books a year). This one, The Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus is one of the few remaining plays by that ancient Greek dramatist. Aeschylus wrote in the 5th century BCE, and preceded the better known Sophocles and Euripides. According to the introductory note here, it was Aeschylus who introduced a second actor in a scene (where formerly, all plays just featured one main actor with a chorus), greatly expanding the dramatic possibilities. The Seven Against Thebes is the third play of a trilogy, of which the first two are lost, dealing with the famous Oedipus tragedy (best known from Sophocles' masterpiece). In this third play, Oedipus' cursed progeny, Eteocles, ruler of Cadmea (later known as Thebes), and Polynices, the exiled brother seeking to take the city-state with the aid of the army of Argos, prepare to do battle. It's convenient that the storyline is so familiar in Western culture, as it makes this play considerably more accessible than if one only had the “backstory” elements included within the text itself. The chorus is supposed to be the “Cadmean Maidens”, lending a certain pathos to the proceedings, as they have a pronounced interest in the results, and are in no way “detached” in their interactions with the featured characters. The first three-quarters of this are exchanges between Eteocles, a Spy which is reporting on the Argive forces outside the seven gates of Cadmea, and the Chorus. The Spy reports on what champions of Argos are assigned to attack which gate, and Eteocles responds with what Cadmean warriors will be meeting them there (along with what deities are affiliated with both forces), and the Chorus expressing their hopes and concerns. Eteocles himself goes to defend the seventh gate, at which his brother Polynices is attacking. I hate to bring in a “spoiler” here, but: O dark and all prevailing ill       That broods o'er Oedipus and all his line, Numbing my heart with mortal chill!       Ah, me, this song of mine, Which, Thyad-like I woke, now falleth still,       Or only tells of doom,       And echoes round a tomb! Dead are they, dead! in their own blood they lie - Ill-omened the concent that hails our victory! The curse a father on his children spake       Hath faltered not, nor failed! Nought, Laius! they stubborn choice availed - First to beget, then, in the after day             And for the city's sake,             The child to slay!             For nought can blunt nor mar             The speech oracular!       Children of teen! By disbelief ye erred - Yet in wild weeping came fulfillment of the word! While all the other Cadmean warriors successfully defended their gates, Eteocles and Polynices slay each other at the seventh. At this point Etocles (obviously) and the Spy are replaced by Oedipus' daughters Antigone and Ismene (although the latter has no specific lines) and a Herald from the ruling council. The Herald bears instructions that Polynices should be denied a funeral and be thrown to the dogs outside the walls, which Antigone refuses, insisting that both of her brothers will be given proper rites, and the play ends. It's primarily in this last quarter of the play that the Chorus (of the Cadmean Maidens) fills in the background on the family's dark history, As you can tell by the quote above, this has been rendered into English rhyme (by an E.D.A. Morshead in 1928), and one has to wonder what liberties have been taken with the original (in ancient Greek rhyme) to force it into not only another language, but a rhyming scheme in that. The doom/tomb and mar/oracular rhymes stand in the above as possibly painful extrapolations! Anyway, The Seven Against Thebes was a reasonably entertaining read, and it's one of those “culturally significant” works that one really should be familiar with. As is usually the case with the Dover Thrift books, you're not likely to find these at your local brick-and-mortar store because their cover prices are so low (in this case $1.50) that they're hard to justify expending shelf space on, but they're ideal to have at the ready when you have a couple of twelve dollar books and need to bump things up to get free shipping from the on-line guys! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
12:30 am	When the moon is in the seventh house? I picked this up a few years back at the dollar store, and it sat in my ever-growing “to be read” pile for a very long time, largely because I assumed that it was going to be a “woo-woo” newage book, as I (perhaps unfairly) recalled the author's previous (and far better known) book The Aquarian Conspiracy to be. I was probably a bit “burned out” by social media stuff last month, and picked this up just for a change of pace. So, I was quite surprised at what a level-headed book Marilyn Ferguson's Aquarius Now: Radical Common Sense And Reclaiming Our Personal Sovereignty was. Frankly, the signs were there, even in the sub-title, “common sense” and “personal sovereignty” are right out of Libertarianism, and the book starts out by discussing Thomas Paine! It's not, however, a particularly political book, as it weaves science, philosophy, mysticism, and, yes, some politics, into a very interesting tapestry. It is, unfortunately, not an easy book to say “what it's about”, as it swings though a wide array of topics, most of which set up as “symbolized” by particular types (The Firemaker, The Sacred Warrior, The Navigator, etc.), although that connection tends towards being somewhat tenuous. I wonder how long it took Ferguson to write this, as it is so “chock full” of quotes, references, stories, and discussions of research, etc., that it must have taken a substantial effort to assemble all of this together. The book's 200 or so pages are divided into 14 chapters, and these contain various sections, each running from a half a page to about 3 pages, and (more or less) containing one idea, which in turn is sequenced with the others around it, and generally relates to the chapter topic. Again, this makes it challenging to snag a chunk of text to put in here that would be illustrative of the book … as each section has its own focus, its own “characters”, and doesn't necessarily create a “story arc” with surrounding materials. To give you a bit of an example, the chapter that's sort of about ESP (“Tuning into the Field – The Dowser”), starts out quoting Tom Paine, moves into the theories of E.H. Gutkind, Henry Miller's reactions to those, which then dovetails into a quote by Ezra Pound … all in the first page and a half of the chapter. Many, if not most, of the sections have as much “happening in them”, making a rich mix of influences and cognitive threads, but making it very hard to sum up. It's almost as if Ferguson took everything she'd ever read in putting out her Brain/Mind Bulletin, cut it into bite-size pieces, and organized it into this book. While I find it frustrating in the context of writing a cogent review, please don't take this as a criticism of the book. While it is a bit of a “fire hose” with concepts flying off the page in quick succession, it is an amazing collection of ideas and the people associated with those ideas, encapsulated just enough (in the sections and “themed” chapters) to give it a structure. The writing is generally accessible, despite the “depth” of some of the particular bits, and almost never veers off into too much (within the context of the book) detail on any one subject. As noted, I sort of expected the collectivist sensibility of the New Agers to be operating here, but the focus is very much on individual growth, responsibility, and freedom, and these linked into key thinkers of the past. One of the recurring themes here is of education/intelligence, and how our culture is being badly served by the systems which are in place currently ...for those who've been following my reading via these reviews, the concept of “attention” (which I've been running into a lot in a number of books) also plays a significant role here … all very interesting. Aquarius Now is still in print, so could be found at your local better-stocked brick-and-mortar book vendor. Oddly, only one of the on-line big boys have it (and with no discount at that), but there are copies in the used channels, with a “like new” version of the hardcover going for as little as 1¢ plus shipping (which would probably be your best bet at this point). Again, I enjoyed reading this way more than I had anticipated, and I'd heartily recommend it to anybody with an interest in all that Mind/Brain stuff! (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 19th, 2012
1:14 pm	A brighter light ... This is a really, really interesting book … if you are into the “Fourth Way” material of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and their assorted followers and interpreters. As regular readers of this space are no doubt aware, I have read quite deeply into this genre, although the explosion of third- and fourth-generation students producing books has made it nearly impossible to have read everything on the subject. The reason that J.G. Bennett's Gurdjieff: Making a New World is so fascinating is that it's written by Bennett, who was a major light in the mystical field in the mid-20th century in his own right, and a linchpin and pivot-point between many threads of occultism of the time. Bennett had been in British military intelligence in Turkey during the time of “the great game” between the U.K. And Russia … and might well have known of Gurdjieff “professionally”, as there are many rumors that much of Gurdjieff's ability to travel as he did was due to having been an agent of the Tsar. While Bennett met Gurdjieff in the 1920's while studying with Ouspensky, he did not work intensively with him until the late 40's, arriving in Paris right before Gurdjieff's near-fatal car crash. The first part of this book discusses the region of Asia that Gurdjieff hailed from, including its culture, history, environment, and mystical traditions. Strangely enough, the tradition of the Masters is almost unknown in India. When Helena Blavatsky published her books, The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, one of her chief claims was to have encountered in person some of the Masters in or beyond Tibet. The belief in Masters then became an integral part of the theosophical doctrine, but it acquired an occult character that weakened its credibility. Much of the mystery of the theosophical 'masters' derived from their supposed location in Tibet, though Helena Blavatsky herself asserted that their headquarters was beyond the mountains in the legendary 'Shamballa'. It never occurred to me that this was more than a pure invention until, quite recently, Idries Shah suggested to me that it could be derived from Shams-i-Balkh, the Bactrian Sun Temple, the ruins of which can still be seen at Balkh near the northern frontier of Afghanistan. Rudolph Steiner associated Balkh with Hraniratta, the centre of the Mithraic Sun worship. The point to be made here is that the belief in an ancient and continuing tradition is particularly strong in the regions of Central Asia in which Gurdjieff concentrated much of his search. In this chapter no attempt is made to settle the question whether or not a supreme spiritual hierarchy really does exist. I shall, however, carefully examine the suggestion that the name “Masters of Wisdom” comes from the Khwajagān who played such an extraordinary role in the heart of Asia between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries of the Christian Era. The word Khwaja means wise man or master, and is best rendered Master of Wisdom. … I have little doubt that Gurdjieff had heard of these Masters in his youth, and that one of the principal objects of his travels in Turkestan, Afghanistan and Tibet was to discover traces of their activity in order to reconstruct their teaching. If anybody would have “inside knowledge” about these mystical threads in the area, it would be Bennett, who had the nearly-unique combination of having been an intelligence officer in the British military and a seeker & adept himself. These initial chapters trace where Gurdjieff likely got most of his concepts, with Bennett presenting tidbits that would be difficult for any others to offer: Even if the Khwajagān and the Sarmān were not identical, it is possible that individual Khwajas were associated with the Sarmān Brotherhood. This is suggested by Gurdjieff, and by comparing dates and activities, we may identify his Brother Olmantaboor with Ubeydullah Ahrar. Ahrar's biographer, Mēvlanā Djami, the greatest literary figure of Central Asia, was evidently aware that Ahrar's influence went far beyond his immediate environment. The level of obscure historical data that Bennett introduces in these chapters is truly amazing, and leads the reader into wanting to dig deeply into the hints and trails sketched out. However, once established, the book turns to tracking Gurdjieff's early history, largely based on the information in Meetings With Remarkable Men and other materials that the author had access to. Again, one gets the sense here that Bennett had data from his intelligence work that allowed him to make more focused “guesses” than would be the case for anybody without his background. About half way through the book, Bennett switches to looking at the actual teachings, and takes apart the literature in a way which surprised me (I had been unaware of how much editing had been done by Gurdjieff to his books over time). Most of this is probably too esoteric for those not familiar with Gurdjieff's books, but it is fascinating for those who have studied them. [One] might legitimately retort that it is useless to know how a machine works if one does not know what the purpose it is intended to serve. … Modern science is in this very situation. It is in process of discovering how the universe works but does not even ask what it is for. If the universe is too large a machine for us to think of as a whole, we have the solar system or even the 'space-ship earth' to study. Who asks the question: “What is this remarkable piece of mechanism for?” Man himself is another marvelously constructed machine closer to us than any other machine. Do we ask ourselves, “What purpose does this ingenious apparatus serve?” This is “Gurdjieff's question”, and sits at the core of “The Work” …       The answer Gurdjieff gives to the questions - “What is the sense and significance of life on the earth?” - is radically different from any current views. Gurdjieff asserts in Beelzebub's Tales that the doctrine of reciprocal maintenance is derived from 'an ancient Sumerian manuscript' discovered by the great Kurdish philosopher Atarnakh. The passage quoted runs: “In all probability, there exists in the world some law of the reciprocal maintenance of everything existing. Obviously our lives serve also for maintaining something great or small in the world.”       This passage occurs in the description of a Central Asian fraternity called “The Assembly of the Enlightened”, which had existed from Sumerian times and flourished openly in the Bactrian kingdom when Zoroaster was teaching. After Zoroaster, it disappeared for a hundred generations, and only now has again begun to send out into the world its 'Unknown Teaching'. I have suggested that this is the Sarmān society.       What is this doctrine? Reciprocal maintenance in its special sense connotes that the universe has a built-in structure or pattern whereby every class of existing things produces energies or substances that are required for maintaining the existence of other classes. On a personal note, I was quite surprised to see this concept put this way, as it is very close to the concept of “Ayni” among the Q'ero people of the high mountains of Peru, whose Shamanic traditions I've studied. Gurdjieff's version of this has a lot more complex cosmology connected with it, but the parallels are very strong. Most of the rest of the book has Bennett walking the reader through the details of this concept, with their associated graphs. While I'd been familiar with the “enneagram”, there are other charts here, specifically dealing with levels of reciprocity from “heat” to “endlessness” (with all the other levels of existence in between) that I'd never encountered, and the complexity of this is somewhat off-putting. Gurdjieff: Making a New World is, oddly, shown by both of the on-line “big boys” as being out of print, although both have used copies in their listings. It is, however, available in paperback from Bennett Books. I've noticed previously that they will have copies of things which don't seem to be generally available, so that's probably your best bet for finding this. However, I got my hardcover in “good” (pretty beat up) condition from one of the new/used vendors, so I can't speak to the “buying experience” with Bennett Books. If you've read some Gurdjieff, I would highly recommend picking up this book, as it “looks under the hood” on his life and teachings to an extent that I've never seen elsewhere … but if you're not familiar with the “Fourth Way” material, I think this would be a very confusing place to start (I'd recommend Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous for a first exposure). (Comment on this)