Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease

by Robert Lustig.

Stay away from sugar, processed food, and too much saturated animal fat. Unsaturated fat, especially those high in omega 3's are fine. Eat foods with much fiber and macro nutrients (raw vegetables and whole fruits) Eat quality proteins.

Everything else in this book discusses why the above is a good idea, how all successful diets are some variety of the above and how to achieve the above in your diet.

How to Think More About Sex

by Alain de Botton

If there is one thing to take away from this book, it's that normal sexuality really isn't easy or common. It's the result of a much work, and that by implication, normal long term relationships aren't easy or common, they are the result of years of effort.

Zoo

Zoo is a documentary far better than it aught to have been.

A few years ago in a village near Seattle, a man was fatally injured while having sex with a horse. After the investigation it turned out this wasn't a freak incident. The man was on a farm where people who wanted to have sex with animals could do so.

The documentary then is about the death, the people and events leading up to the death, and it's aftermath. This subject matter is great stuff for a hyperbolic media circus.

But that's not how the documentary is. It tells the story with understanding, sympathy even. While the documentary is not pro-bestiality, it does try to help someone understand why someone would be attracted to animals. And that's a little creepy.

The Riemann Hypothesis: Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics.

This book tells the story of people who haven't solved a problem. They've tried many ways to solve the problem. They've leant much on the way. But, they still haven't solved the problem.

 

Interesting questions along the way.

 

Are there truth's that we can't prove? Or proofs that are too complex for us to understand?

 

When you work on a problem like this, the work must inevitably be collaborative, yet the person who ultimately proves the Riemann Hypotheses will get a lot of credit. Is that fare? Is that right?

 

i'm going through my old math texts trying to understand what the Riemann Hypotheses actually is. I remember being exposed to it in University, but it's importance and relevance never stuck out. I'd like to understand at least what it means.

 

 

How to Live

-or A Life Of Montaigne

 

I first heard about Montaigne from "The Consolations of Philosophy" Montaigne appeared to have a practical philosophy that acknowledged human frailty.  I didn't set out to read Montaigne's essays though. I stumbled on this book going over my libraries list of recommended books from years gone by.

 

Montaigne was a nobel in France who lived in the latter half of the 1500's His lived through the protestant revolution, the black plague and the French civil wars. How didn't realize how convoluted these events were until I read this biography. Religion and politics were far more combined than they where even today. Protestantism was treason. England was supporting Protestants in Catholic France. Into this, the black plague was killing thousands of people convincing people that the end-times where near.

 

In this time Montaigne wrote his essays.

 

I'm not sure what I want to remember from this book, other than to read his essays, though this decision is now hard as Montaigne never stopped writing and rewriting his essays. On top of that there are different translations with different intent. I'll pick on and see.

10/10/2014. I've listened to the audio book a second time now, and have found a decent translation of the Essays. The public domain editions are difficult reading as they are old French translated into old English. Better to pay a few bucks and get a modern translation. I have Screech's translation.

This time around I got more out of "How to Live..." Maybe it's that life involves actually paying attention to the people and things right in front of you and not treating them as abstractions or after thoughts. Life is it's own meaning.

"All human endeavors are eventually muddled with human error."

"Life should be an aim until itself; a purpose until itself."

"Enlightenment is something learned on your own body. It takes the form of things that happen to you."

"(In your interactions) you are looking at a creature who is looking back at you. No abstract principles are involved. Only two individuals, face to face, hoping from the best from one another."