I've been reading the Gentlemen Bastards series....not that great but the lots of good twists in the tales...
I've been reading the Gentlemen Bastards series....not that great but the lots of good twists in the tales...
I've read a couple of John Sandford books, someone here suggested them. Light reading, detective action series. Pretty good. Thanks for the tip.
currently reading
Conquistador - Hernan Cortes , King Montezuma and the Last Stand of the Aztecs - Buddy Levy
interesting and well researched
previously
The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science - Will Storr
this book is more about the reasons for the ability of people to have beliefs - stories - and be able to rationalise away any discrepencies
easy to read and it does provoke you to examine aspects of your perceptions
not sure if I mentioned this beforeThis is a fascinating work of investigative journalism. The author, Will Storr, examines a range of beliefs that are antithetical to science, history, and even common sense. He interviews people who have these strange beliefs, and digs in deep. He tries to understand why people have these beliefs, their motivations, their way of thinking. Storr sometimes mentions the contradictions between these crazy ideas and reality--and listens carefully as these people rationalize their beliefs
Autopilot : The Art & science of doing nothing - Andrew Smart
well worth reading explanations on current thinking about how the brain works
Andrew Smart may become the Pavlov of doing nothing. The metaphor of his title is that our brains run by themselves and that interfering with them too much – or at all – is the precondition for crashes, for people as individuals, for society and for the world in which we live.
He bases his arguments on experiments in neuroscience which indicate that much of our mental activity takes place when we are doing absolutely nothing.
If you torture data for enough time , you can get it to say what you want.
In Pharaoh's Army
Tobbias Wolff
Can bee seen as another Hemingway lover who went to Nam...
Well written, more of a coming of age story than a war account.
Thanks for mentioning this book, Baldrick....it sounds fascinating, and may help us to understand some of the conspiracy theorists on this forum.
It seems to have also been published under the title : The Heretics: Adventures with Enemies of Science
Intelligent creationists, scientifically-minded climate-change doubters, and Holocaust deniers—why don’t all smart people believe in facts?
As he was researching his new book, Will Storr met a creationist who said there were dragons on Noah’s Ark, a climate-change denier who maintained that DDT is harmless and can be eaten “by the tablespoon,” and a past-life regression therapist who told him that in previous lives, one of her clients was a tree branch and two others were John Lennon.
Occasionally, Storr found himself frustrated. But the industrious British journalist kept his exasperation in check, deciding that he was less interested in combatting obviously flawed reasoning than in exploring how contentious notions take root in the first place. In terms of the intellectual rigor required to get the job done, Storr chose the tougher path. For this, he deserves a pat on the back.
The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, in which Storr asks dissident ideologues to explain their unusual theories, could easily have become a crass look-at-me-I’m-shooting-fish-in-a-barrel expedition. The jokes practically write themselves.
Instead, drawing upon his well-documented store of inquisitiveness about superstition, eccentricity, and idiosyncratic beliefs, Storr has delivered an accessible look at the brain’s capacity for adopting unconventional ideas. Along the way, he makes some convincing arguments but occasionally oversells the obvious. He also introduces us to a roster of vexing characters—some harmless, others quite nasty—and the subcultures in which they circulate.
Storr happens to be a connoisseur of alternative thinking. In newspaper and magazine pieces, he’s profiled occultists, doomsday fundamentalists and Big Foot-believers. Also a novelist, Storr’s last nonfiction title was about people who say they’re in touch with ghosts.
Like a lot of his previous work, his new book emerged from his abiding fascination with groups and individuals who refuse to accept the scientific consensus on everything from the effectiveness of our medicines to the formation of the universe. In one important way, he writes, people who adopt radical philosophies aren’t so different from the rest of us: “we all secretly believe we are right about everything and, by extension, we are all wrong.”
In The Unpersuadables, his curiosity about these matters takes him first to eastern Australia, where he meets John Mackay, a creationist who says the Noah’s Ark story is a literal truth and talks of a gay conspiracy to convert heterosexuals. Storr, to his credit, calls Mackay on some of his wrongheadedness—“‘When I sat there listening to you today going on about gay people,’ I tell him, ‘I thought you were evil.” But as they’re about to part ways, he sounds worried that he’s embarked on a demoralizing project. “What can you do,” Storr wonders, “when common sense doesn’t work? When reason’s bullets turn out to be made of smoke?”
A couple chapters later, Storr attends a yoga confab in London hosted by Swami Ramdev, an Indian guru who says his teachings cure potentially fatal ailments. He speaks with several attendees who testify to the healing powers of the Ramdev-endorsed pranayama breathing method, and he interviews the man himself: “I begin by asking, just to confirm, that pranayama really can cure all diseases. He nods deeply…‘Yes,’ he says.”
Pondering what he’s been told, Storr concedes that the guru’s teachings appear to aid the health of some of his followers. But he suggests that what’s at play is less a matter of respiratory cleansing than a kind of placebo effect. He talks with doctors and scientists who study cognition, and cites a raft of research that bolsters his hypothesis. The “placebo effect is limited,” he writes. “It cannot shrink tumors, mend broken jaws or cure diabetes. But it can have remarkable effects on pain, for example, and inflammation, ulcers and anxiety.”
This, alas, is a rather uninspired conclusion, and when, in the following chapter, he again cites the placebo effect in explaining the appeal of past-life regression therapy, one begins to wonder if Storr will spend the entirety of the book making banal observations. His subsequent consideration of confirmation bias—the unconscious process by which we assemble evidence that supports our preconceptions—is also fairly rote.
But as he delves deeper into knottier concepts, The Unpersuadables begins to find its footing. This is most apparent in his discussion of the many forms of confabulation. A conceptual cousin of confirmation bias, it’s a term we’ve all heard, but one that, for those who study cognition, is particularly useful in explaining our predilections and beliefs. Confabulation, Storr writes, is “what we do when we unknowingly invent explanations for behaviors and beliefs whose causes we” don’t quite comprehend.
Though some in the scientific community will probably find his analysis to be rather superficial, Storr’s distillation of current thinking on the subject is a nice primer for the non-expert reader.
With welcome clarity, he describes the findings of many relevant studies, noting that researchers disagree on how much of conscious reasoning is confabulation. David Eagleman notes that “the brain’s storytelling powers kick into gear only when things are conflicting or difficult to understand.” But Daniel Wegner, who died in 2013, argues that our sense of free will is a confabulation, while Jonathan Haidt says that our moral beliefs are also mostly confabulations.
This is a useful concept when trying to make sense of the ideas espoused by some of the book’s more brazen figures, smart people who seem to be almost willfully misinformed. These include a historian who claims that Hitler didn’t know about his Nazi machine’s genocidal campaign against Jews, and a far-right muckraker who says the idea of manmade climate change is hokum.
This latter fellow, a British viscount named Christopher Monckton, believes that the Hitler Youth were left wing and green, and compares 2009’s Copenhagen Climate Conference to the Nuremberg Rallies. Storr could’ve ridiculed the man’s foolhardy statements, but that wouldn’t have taken much effort. Instead, he uses Monckton as a vessel for exploring how we form our opinions and attitudes. What does it mean to be card-carrying conservative—or, for that matter, a staunch liberal—and why do so many politically-minded citizens adhere to such a rigid set of ideological positions?
“If a person’s set of beliefs all cohere, it means that they are telling themselves a highly successful story. It means that their confabulation is so rich and deep and all-enveloping that almost every living particle of nuance and doubt has been suffocated. Which says to me, their brains are working brilliantly,” Storr writes, “and their confabulated tale is not to be trusted.”
Last edited by Latindancer; 27-06-2014 at 04:11 PM.
Sounds like a load of PC crap.
Any book like that that does not include global warming nutters, has to be a bit suspect ..
Fathead . Your assumption is incorrect.
"Storr links together various anti-science cults, from creationists and global warming deniers to people who believe meditation can cure any disease (except AIDS apparently) and UFOlogists."
BTW : It has very good reviews. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17122950-heretics
Last edited by Latindancer; 27-06-2014 at 05:10 PM.
grab it from mobilism.orgOriginally Posted by blue
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Edward Gibbon
Despite being written in 1776! A well documented accounting of the decline and reasons thereof of the Roman Empire.
Slightly annoying in that he doesn't always stay linear in his progression of Emperors, but more than made up for by his interesting and unwitting take on events colored by his time.
Available free on the guttenburg.org
"Where Underpants Come From' - Joe Bennett
Joe buys a six pack of underwear at his local supermarket and wonders where they come from and how many processes are involved to get the underpants from where they are made to the shelf. He takes this voyage to the new factory of the world, China, to trace his underwear back to their source.
Funny, interesting and insightful. How the develop world depends on China to make all the bits and pieces of our lives.
^ Who wears underwear?
Cowboys...Because your balls smack around something painful if you ride horses commando...
You'll only do it once, believe me...And I got a nasty fecking horse that day, Ole Sky High, or something...Hadn't been ridden in weeks and was ready to rip...
Found this yesterday and initial appraisal makes it a worthy addition to the thread.
Here is a link to a taster to whet your appetite....
http://indies.com.au/IndiesAdmin/Obj...2013124210.pdf
At some one's recommendation, either Necron or Dillinger, I downloaded and have been reading some John Sandford books, cracking stuff. Thanks.
Just finished
The Birth of Britain
Winston Churchill.
The old fella takes us through the end of the roman empire to the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. Quite a good read.
Now reading
Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel
Joseph Gias
A look at technological development through the dark ages to medieval times.
Bit of an apologist for the god botherers, but interesting nontheless.
Just finished my 8th of 14 books by Sven Hassel.
The horror of WW2 from a Danish / German perspective.
Sven Hassel: Novels
^Just ordered my first. My kind of stuff....
"Where men win glory" Jon Krakauer
The very well researched and compelling story of Pat Tillman.
Just finished "Dharma Bums" Jack Kerouac; excellent read, funny.
Map of the invisible world by Tash Aw.
Fictional story of some kids raised by a dutchman in Indo, who was then purged by Sukarno's men in the 60s. One boy returns to Jakarta to trace his roots while the other lives a crazy carefree life in KL.
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