Mars Underground, William K. Hartmann

Mars Underground by William K. Hartmann is an effort to look at what living on Mars might be like via a novel.  Mr. Hartmann is a well-known astronomer and planetary scientist.  The price tag on this book makes me think that I found this on a remainders table at Barnes and Noble.  I don't have a conscious memory of having bought it, however.

Started: 11/29/2014

Completed: 2/2/2015

Recommendation: Not worth the time

Recommended By: Nobody

Words and Concepts for which I sought help:

Anastomosing -- the reconnection of two streams that had previously branched out.

Ostinato -- a short melody or pattern that is constantly repeated.

Review:

So, Arthur C. Clarke says (on the cover) that this book provides insight into how people would live on Mars.  I think not.  It puts 4,000 people on Mars within 10 years which is hard to fathom.  Somehow trips to Mars become routine and frequent flitting between the moons and Mars becomes common place in the same time period.  This just couldn't happen.  The book is odd and the premise is vaguely reminiscent of 2001 A Space Odyssey.  The human interest story lines were also odd--intended to show some kind of evolved sense of sexuality that sort of comes with exploring a new planet.

There was, however, one great quotation:

"Intuition was no longer some magical sixth sense.  It was simply the knowledge squirreled away in the back of your brain, subliminal knowledge, the knowledge you didn't know you had, gained from cumulative experience--the churning reservoir stored below the surface of frozen pack ice of consciousness."

I would say, enjoy the quotation and skip the rest of the book.  It isn't useful as a way to look at Mars exploration and its commentaries on society in general feel odd.

The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon, Shannon D. Beebe and Mary Kaldor

The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon:  Human security and the New Rules of War and Peace by Shannon D. Beebe and Mary Kaldor is a way of looking at how we wage war with an eye towards having a more effective solution to human conflict then dropping bombs.  Lt. Col. Beebe was a West Point graduate who was an expert in human security and worked in Afghanistan and Angola (he was killed in a private airplane accident in 2011).  Mary Kaldor is a recognized expert in peace and efforts to facilitate peace, particularly in Africa.  She is a recipient of the Ludwig Quidde award for peace research and is a leader in the concept of Human Security.

Started: 11/21/2014

Completed: 11/29/2014

Recommendation: Can't offer a recommendation

Recommended By:  my wife

Words and Concepts for which I sought help:

Injunction -- an authoritative warning or order

Review:

I could not get past the first 20 or so pages.  I'd like to read this, but the endless litany of human suffering that characterized the beginning of this book made it too hard for me to read.  Indications were that each chapter would contain similar descriptions.  I know this happens.  I want to find a way to stop it.  I cannot suffer through it each chapter.  Some people need this, I don't.

Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz

Excellent Sheep:  The miseducation of the American Elite and the way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz is a book about the role of college in the modern life.  This book was published on a Global Village School blog and was recommended for parents considering colleges for their children.

Started:  10/17/2014

Completed: 11/20/2014

Recommendation: Must read for anyone interested in an Ivy League college

Recommended By:  my wife

Words and Concepts for which I sought help:

Semiotics - The philosophical study of signs and symbols.

Review:

I found a couple of books while reading this book that I would like to read:

The Path to Purpose, William Damon

Being Wrong, Karen Schulz

Unto This Last, John Ruskin

This book helped me understand my path to education.  I did not attend an Ivy League college, but I did attend a prestigious college within a State University.  The college was focused on "weeding out" the unworthy and set up barriers to success that could only be overcome through constant hard work and a commitment to excellently parroting the material being provided.  My education, while both comprehensive and useful, drove out of me a love of learning for a time.  I recovered this after college, but I was fortunate.  I came to espouse the concept that college was a factory through which one could get a "good" (read wealth building) job.  It did not teach me who I was or what value I could bring to the world.

I now work in a job I dislike (some of the people with whom I work are well worth knowing) practicing a skill I have honed into excellence (but still dislike) and on a ladder climbing path I began before high school.  I wanted to be an astronaut.  In college I took philosophy courses to fill out my humanities electives and found I truly enjoyed them.  I was, however, convinced that pursuing a degree in philosophy (or being an astronaut) was not a worthwhile use of my time in college (philosophers don't make any money) and was enjoined to become a programmer (I had taken over writing an accounting system for the computer science department for a friend of mine who needed some help whereupon I was noticed by the Dean of Computer Science) because I was good at it.  In college I was handed a vocation rather than pursuing a better understanding of who I was.  How many graduates of colleges in general have been so dis-serviced?

There are aspects of my life I would have sorely missed had I taken a different path.  Meeting and marrying my wife would almost certainly have been missed had I pursued a different approach to life.  That alone is reason to be grateful for the path I have taken, but is it a path on which I would put another?  No.  I have striven to encourage my children in their areas of interest, take joy in their successes (of whatever kind they deem successes) and find ways to help them be happier themselves.  I'm not terribly good at any of this as I spent a long time measuring success by a different stick.

This book let me believe that excellence is conceptually overrated and that the goals toward which I willingly let myself be guided (and later espoused) were of marginal real value.  Money and power are tools, not ends.  It is true that life is easier with both wealth and power, but happiness is not easier to find in a gilded cage.  How, in that space, does one learn the value of generousness (not charity which is a different thing) when that very act compromises one of the foundations of wealth and power?  How does one learn to "open one's hand wide unto one's brother" (Deut. 15:11) while pursuing the "lifelong, perpetual and restless desire for power" (Hobbes, Leviathan)?  How does one transition from Anavajjasukha (happiness derived from wealth earned in honorable work) to Bhogasukha (happiness derived from sharing one's wealth) while adhering to the guidance that "gold and silver [not] be accepted or sought for" (S.IV. 326)?

The education that students receive at elite colleges prepares them for a status and wealth seeking life-long vocation which is not healthy and not good for society at large.  This book addresses some of what might be required to teach one to "be worthy of recognition rather than seeking recognition" (very loose translation of Confucius, Analects 1:1).  This book has changed my perspective on life.  Whether I manage to change my life remains to be seen.

Mind, Language, and Society, John Searle

Mind, Language, and Society:  Philosophy in the real word by John R. Searle is a book that I picked up after reading about the "Chinese Room" argument against "strong" artificial intelligence.  I believe that I read the argument in The Most Human Human which talked about a classic artificial intelligence test.  I like the idea of reading modern philosophy and, particularly, philosophy of the mind, but I have had some trouble figuring out who to read.  It has ended up being Minsky and company and the attempts to find artificial intelligence through language.  Searle, therefore, is a natural outgrowth of that line of reasoning and is a giant in the field having received numerous awards.

Started: 9/25/2014

Completed: 10/17/2014

Recommendation: Highly Recommended for those interested in Philosophy

Recommended By: Nobody

Words and Concepts for which I sought help:

Russell's Paradox -- This is the paradox that in set theory it is logically possible to have a set of all sets that are not members of themselves.  The paradox comes that if this set is not a member of itself, then it would have to include itself.  But, by definition, it should include itself.  This is presented symbolically as:

Verdical -- coinciding with reality

Vertiginous disorientation -- confusion, disorientation, and dizziness caused by a discrepancy between the reports given us by our vestibular sense and those emanating from other sense organs.

Review:

This is hardcore philosophy.  There are lots of concepts presented with probably annoying levels of detail for most people.  Philosophy, itself, tends to go into sometimes annoying detail over tiny details one could hardly imagine is consequential.  It turns out that sometimes the detail is crucially important and, therefore, we get it.  Personally, I like the attention to detail (despite the frequent glossing over of areas that clearly have tons if issues inside).  The ability to take the information presented in this book and apply it is wonderful.  I'm so happy to have found this book with a coherent philosophy I can espouse.

Super Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner

Super Freakonomics:  Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a sequal to Freakonomics which I just loved!

Started:  9/15/2014
Completed:  9/25/2014
Recommendation:  Highly Recommended
Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

This does not have the shocking pleasure that Freakonomics had simply because it is a sequel and, thereby, is less likely to surprise.  It was, however, quite refreshing and pleasurable in itself.  I really enjoy hearing about how things that don't seem to be related really are.  Of particular interest to me was the "garden hose" solution to Global Warming.  This is an  eclectic mix of topics usually that helps us understand why something happens as opposed to figuring out how to prevent something bad from happening.  So much for altruism (OK, so it is an inside joke from the book, but it is a good joke and hopefully you will laugh after you have read it).

Tutankamen, Joyce Tyldesley

Tutankhamen:  The Search for an Egyptian King by Joyce Tyldesley is a history of a king who has fascinated me since I saw his grave goods displayed in the 1970s.

Started:  9/3/2014

Completed: 9/15/2014

Recommendation: Mild Recommendation

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

As a child, I did not really think about the grave goods I saw being looted from a tomb.  Sure, I knew that these came from a dead king, but I didn't really think about how his family must have felt laying him to rest and how all of these things were placed in his tomb so that he could realize his belief that he would become a demi-god.  I knew that intellectually, but I was more interested in the pursuit.  How had Carter done it?  What was the order of discovery?  What did all these items mean?

This book answers all those questions, but also brings home the concept of a crypt defiled.  The author is herself an archaeologist and she doesn't talk about archaeology or the exploration of the tomb as a defilement.   She even provides some of the reverence which one should have for a human corpse.  The book brought home to me, through the details and the politics and the outright thefts, how it was a defilement.  While it may be extremely valuable for history and I certainly applaud the value of that, I understand far better now how such a tomb should be treated.

The story itself of the discovery and extraction of the grave goods is rather well known to me, but it was developed into an integrated whole in this work and I fully appreciated the effort to which Tyldesley went to bring us into the excavation work at the turn of the century.  She also does an excellent job of showing how initial concepts (like a box that was thought to contain a library) yield to modern understanding (it was actually loincloths).  In so doing, however, she manages to bring the story of the king to life and to explain in rather good detail how difficult even this well documented individual is to understand.  Discerning propaganda (even in the king's own time) from truth is challenging and even the lineage of the king is only a matter of speculation.

I enjoyed the book and read it quickly despite the dry material.  I'm not sure, however, if others would enjoy it.  It removes so much of the myth that many find pleasurable from the story it might actually be frustrating to many.  For myself, I enjoy finding the truth where I can and didn't give much credence to issues Ms Tyldesley clarified such as the non-existence of a curse (it was, however, interesting to me to hear why such a curse didn't make much sense even in ancient times),

The Healing Mind, Paul Martin

The Healing Mind:  The Startling Link Between Our Brain, Our Behavior, and Our Immune System by Dr. Paul Martin is a book that my wife came across and thought might be worth reading.

Started: 8/15/2014
Completed: (gave up)  9/4/2014 after 80 or so pages
Recommendation: Not recommnended
Recommended By: my wife

Definitions I needed:

frisson -- A sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear; a thrill.

Review:

I quote:  "In this chapter we shall look at what the immune system can do to the mind and, conversely, what the mind can do to the immune system.  We shall see that changes in a person's mental state can affect their immune function and vice versa[sic]."  I HATE this kind of needless repetition and the book is rife with it.  The abuse of similes reinforce the repetition.  In the space I read, I hated the experience.  This book is old for a medical book (1997) and I just can not force myself to read the same sentence over and over for what seems to be a sparse amount of information.  Please, consider another source if you really need this information.