The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

By David W. Anthony

This book explores the origin and spread of Indo-European languages. It's my first exposure to analytic archeology, and linguistic archeology. 

Analytic archeology example-- With the right horse bones, you can tell how old the horse was when that horse died. In a herd of wild horses, the age of the horses are distributed. If those horses were slaughtered and left in a heap, then the age of their bones are also distributed. For domesticated horses, males are slaughtered at about two years and females at about age six. 

So, while you can't look at a single horse bone and know if the horse was wild or domesticated, you can look at a heap of horse bones and see how the ages cluster. If they cluster around age two and six, then those bones were from domesticated horses.

Linguistic archeology-- how much can you learn about a people, not from their language, which is dead and gone, but from their daughter languages? How do linguists know when a word is borrowed from another language, or when a word is similar between the two languages because they share the same parent language?

If daughter languages contain similar words for wheel, cart and axil, then you can be fairly certain that the parent language had the same, and that the parent society had wheels and carts with axils.

The Day the Universe Changed

By James Burke

Science as truth-- science sees the truths that the current systems-of-belife agree are truths, and calls out the mistakes made by past systems. Things get squishy when you discuss mistakes made the current system of belief.

I enjoyed this book. It's difficult for me to take a lesson from this book other than "Things are complicated and happen for complicated reasons. Beware of narratives that tell simple stories."

From Whom the Bell Tolls

By Earnest Hemingway

I am trying to read more literature. This is a good book. It's about a bridge bombing during the Spanish Civil war. The first half is full of background and character building. The action picks up half way through with battles and the actual bombing. 

Sex Lives of Canibals

By J. Maarten Troost.

At the start of the book, Troost and his girlfriend have just graduated from University. They have debts. The thought of a corporate job bores them. They long for adventure. What should they do? Why not get a job in remote Pacific Island!

That island Tarawa in the country of Kiribati. It has unreliable food, power and water and no garbage service or sewage processing. The lagoon is everyone's dump and the smell at low tide is oppressive.

Life on the streets is literally dog-eat-dog. At one point Troost takes an injured stray dog in to health services to be treated. An hour later he is told "We're sorry, but your dog was eaten by another dog."

Despite that, the book is a very light hearted and fast paced. Troost includes his observations on the failures of the World bank and foreign aid to actually make a difference. 

The Monkey Is the Messenger

By Ralph De La Rosa.

A thoughtful guide through meditation, particularly through eastern meditation. The book tries to help people try more than modern mindfulness mediation. 

Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

By Esther Perel.

It's a big challenge to keep up an exciting sex life in a long term monogamous relationship. Intimacy and comfort are at odds with the erotic.

The causes and solutions to this conundrum are varied. A sixty year old couple will face different challenges that a young couple who just had a kid. 

Perel relates the stories of many people who have found way through this challenge. There is no one-size-fits all solution here. Just couples will to do the work needed to improve their relationship. 

The Evolution of God

By Robin Wright.

If you want to read the Bible as a literal, provable book, then don't dig into biblical history.

One of Wright's points is that the facts on the ground, the situation at the time, greatly defines the way those passages were written. The other way around, we are naturally led to only follow the passages that we choose. When inclusiveness allows us to grow, then we focus on the inclusive parts of the bible ("Love your neighbor as yourself").  When inclusiveness allowed the authors and editors of the bible to grow, then they wrote inclusive passages. 

When we desire isolation, then we focus on the isolationist parts of the Bible. When the authors and editors needed isolation, they wrote the stark "kill the philistines" passages. 

Wright believes that in our small and connected word we must focus on inclusiveness. For the foreseeable non-Christians will live among us, period. We must coexist with them. There is no viable path to make the world all Christian. For Christianity, (or Islam, or any other major religion) to flourish, it must coexist with the rest of the world.

And that's were we get to positive sum games and inclusiveness.

It's one thing to think about inclusiveness as a left wing mantra. Wright, however, talks about inclusiveness as a driver for mutual growth-- a positive sum game.

War, conflict, is zero-sum-- if you win, I loose. If I win, you loose. 

Inclusiveness let's us take a different path-- how can we live such that we both succeed and grow? What choices can we make that are mutually beneficial?

The "Seven Habits" has a chapter on this... "Think win-win, or no-deal."

Wright observes that positive-sum living drives us to be virtuous people-- to listen to one another, to get along, to build relationships, to work and collaborate with others-- to love one another.

Negative-sum lives are destructive. Societies built on negative sum plans can't flourish in the long run.

Write goes so far as to suggest that the existence of positive-sum-actions, and their virtuous consequences, are evidence for God.

I want to draw this out because the existence of positive-sum collaboration is also a response to those who say that life is meaningless. It's a response to those who would dismiss inclusion as a left-wing mantra.

By itself, when you think zero-sum, when you don't bring positive meaning to life, then yes, it is meaningless. When you think positive-sum, then something wonderful happens. You bring meaning to world. The world will bring meaning to you.

The Drunken Botanist

By Amy Stewart

A fun read about the plants that make our alcoholic beverages. Plants that are fermented. Or distilled. Or steeped.

Years ago, I made my own wine and brewed my own beer. Every now and then I want to pick that hobby up again. Books like this remind me how much work that is.  

Don't Tell Me To Relax

By Ralph De La Rosa

An interesting overview of our emotionally charged world, and how to better deal with it. De La Rosa brings the variety of his experience to this book.

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces.

By Margaret Atwood.

The Essays in this book are a mix of topical and reflective, personal and public. Atwood is a fairly prolific writer. Much ground is covered here.

It's inspired me to read some other Ontario Authors as well as Ursula K. Le Guin.

Maddadam

By Margaret Atwood

The last book in the Maddaddam series. This book focuses on Zeb & Tony's story and tells more about how corporations took over government.

It's a hopeful ending. Complicated. I enjoyed the series. I and will reread at some point.

Does Atwood have her own version of Chekhov's gun? Atwood's mushroom-- A poisonous mushroom introduced early in the book means that someone must be poisoned later on?

Atwood is generally a great writer. However, she should stay away from writing about computer hacking.

The Year of the Flood

By Margarat Atwood. 

The second book in Atwood's MaddAddam series. The story of Brenda, Toby, and what life is like outside of the Corporate compounds.

Just as depressing as Orxy and Crake. The world of MaddAddam is just our world taken a little farther. Corporations have more power. The Government has none. We ignore global warming. Everything is legal if you have enough money, or aren't important enough for the money to care. 

The House on the Cerulean Sea

 

By TJ Klune.

Cute. Warm. An easy fantasy read. 

World building wise, so much is left out of this book. Short sentences hint at something big and terrible in the time before this story. I will look up the other books in this series to see where they go. 

Oryx and Crake

By Margaret Atwood

Lately, I've been struggling to find a good read. I usually finish a couple of books a month. Things are slow now. I have a few books 'in rotation', I'm slowly working my way through these. I'll check one out of the library, read it a bit every night, return it when due, then check out the next. Making progress. Not in a rush to finish.

Orxy and Crake is different. I've powered though it since I started less than a week ago.

It is dark and dystopian. On many levels. The science at the forefront of the story is about genetic modification and biological warfare. There are layers of dystopia under that. The characters live in a world with non-existent government, where corporations and private security have filled in the power vacuum. Where the news is mostly there for shock and titillation. Where the people watching it can't tell how much is real, how much is staged.

It looks a lot like our world, just two steps in the wrong direction.

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

By Eldar Sharif

Scarcity can mean many things. Not enough time. Not enough money. Not enough food. Sharif discusses the nature of scarcity, how it affects our thinking and our actions. How we can plan with it and around it.

Scarcity causes a mental tunnel vision. Where we struggle to think past our scarce resources. Take a deadline, for example. For many people this really focuses our attention and allow us to get things done. That is the downside... our attention is focused on the deadline. It's difficult to think outside the box.

Hunger, food scarcity, causes the same thing. It's difficult to get someone who is short on food to think past their hunger. They will make many poor short term decisions to get food immediately, rather than thinking long term, to create a long term supply of food.

Slack-- In the drive to be efficient we often cut slack out of the schedule, or the budget. This can cause greater problems than it solves. It means that the plan must be upended the moment there is an unforeseen crisis, and there are always unforeseen crises. The solution here is to build some slack into planning so that emergencies can be dealt with.

The Lord of the Rings

By J.R.R. Tolkien.

I've never read LOTR before. The book has been extensively analyzed for decades. There are Tolkien scholars. The series has deeply impacted the fantasy genre. The quest. The wizard. The medieval setting.

So what do I want to remember? 

That Tolkien meticulously planned this series. Probably taking as much time to plan as to write. The characters have genealogies that go back for centuries. There are are maps that lay out middle-earth in much detail. The detail is then carefully woven in to add color to the story. There is a difference between two characters arguing, and two characters arguing when they share the same grandfather, whose children couldn't get along.

There is *alot* of denouement in this book. After the ring is destroyed there are easily another 150 pages spent recovering, celebrating, tying up loose ends, saying good bye and rebuilding lives after they returned home.

The Violinist's Thumb

By Sam Kean.

Stories about investigations into our DNA. I have a new appreciation for the complexity of our genes.

A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

By Karen Armstrong

There is much to learn in this history. The God of Judaism, Christianity & Islam has many different faces.

Armstrong has given me a few new ways to think about God. For example-- the conflict between a rational conception and a mystical conception. A rational conception of God seems to remove him from this world. A mystical conception means that anyone who has a revelation can proclaim whatever they want about God.

How to Eat

By Mark Bittman & David L. Katz MD

Years ago I read "Disease Proof" by Katz. It has very blunt and common sense health advice. There are four things that make a big difference to your health--  eat a proper diet, exercise regularly, sleep properly, keep a healthy weight and stop smoking. Everything else is noise. 

In "How to Eat" Katz and Bittman explore "eat a proper diet." The conclusion is similarly common sense and blunt-- eat a largely whole plant based diet. Eat a variety." Don't be picky about your fruits and veggies. A conventional apple and a glass of water is better for you than a glass of organic apple juice. 

Everything else in this book is commentary on that thought. 

When we are deciding if something is healthy, we should think through the trade offs. We don't eat food in isolation. Food is a balance. We eat one thing at the expense of another. Is dairy healthy? A glass of milk is more healthy than a glass of sugary soda. If that's the trade-off you are making, then by all means enjoy dairy.

They also warn against demonizing conventional fruits and vegetables. It's a mistake to eat packaged foods because you are concerned about the pesticides on raw fruits and vegetables. We have an epidemic of obesity in this country. Organic snacks won't solve that.

Journeys North: The Pacific Crest Trail

In 2007, Barney 'Scout' Mann and his wife hiked along the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. He wrote about his experience, and the experience of others who hiked alongside him. The journey is strenuous.

"When does the pain end?" asked a novice distance hiker.

"About three months after you get off the trail." replied an experienced distance hiker.

The End of the Universe (Astrophysically Speaking)

How will the universe end? Will it collapse in a big crunch? Will it stretch itself apart? Will it cool down to nothing? Of course we don't really know. This Katie Mack explores the possibilities and the physics behind them.

Lost and Found in Glitter

By David Pizzurro

These reviews are largely for myself. I want to write down what I want to take away from a book. Should I read that book again? Should I read other books from that author? Are there learnings I should apply to my life?

Glitter is interesting in that it's from a blog, that's still in progress and that I read regularly. What do I want to take away? That I should keep reading.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Homes

Over time, I've been reading the Sherlock Homes collection. Much of it is available for free as it is now out of copyright. Mostly I'm doing this out of a sense of historic curiosity. 

The books are a pleasant read. 

The Psychology of Money

By Morgan Housel

Stay invested in the market for the long run, especially with low expense index funds.

No One is Crazy-- Your Personal Experience with money makes up maybe 0.00001% of what's happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works

Nothing is as good, or as bad as it seems.

Rich people do crazy things with their money. That's ego.

Compounding growth-- $81.5 billion of Warren Buffett's worth came after if 65th birthday. He had $11.9 million on his 60th birthday. If he had retried when he was 60, he'd just be some guy. The best thing he ever did was to stay invested for years. His skill is investing. His secret was time.

Getting Wealthy is different than staying wealthy. Good investing is about consistently not screwing up.

You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune. They secret is to know how to fail safely.

Controlling your time is the highest dividend that money pays

No one is as impressed with your possessions as much as your are

Wealth is what you don't see. Spending money to show people how much money you have is the fastest way to have less money.

Save Money-- The only factor you can control generates one of the only two things that matter.

Being mostly reasonable works better than being coldly rational

The most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan. If you do so, any forecasts are not needed. 

Long Term Planning is harder than it seams because people's goals and desires change over time.

Every thing has a price. Not all prices are visible.

Don't take financial queues from people playing a different game than you.

Optimism sounds like a sales pitch. Pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you.

Stories are more powerful than statistics. We will believe an appealing fiction. 

Our Own Worst Enemy The Assault from within on Modern Democracy

By Tom Nichols

I don't know why they read these books. As a single voter in a country with hundreds of millions of other voters, the odds of my actions make a difference are very small.

-- Get out and Vote

-- Be civic minded.

-- Be polite with those who want the world to burn, but also push back. You don't have to support them.

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

By James Barr

The recent history of the middle east is full of wars, battles, fights, assassination, plots, terrorism, murders, duplicity, stupidity, greed, stubbornness... the list goes on.

I don't think the middle east stands a chance at a sustainable peace. There is no configuration of power, resources and culture that doesn't starve a large enough population that they won't resort to violence.

During WW2, you could blame Britain and France. They were certainly responsible for much of the chaos. Their alternative was to let the middle east fall to Germany and Russia. Also unthinkable.  

Termination Shock

 By Neal Stephenson.

A sci-fi (Speculative fiction?) set in the near future. Climate change is aggressively affecting the world and those with money and power are either doing something about it, or fighting over it.

The cast of characters is rather odd-- the Queen of the Netherlands, a mixed race southern pig hunter, oil billionaires, Sikhs,

It's a fun read. Maybe a few too many dangling ends for my tastes, but I enjoyed it overall.

There is a fun, nerdy, drones-vs-eagles battle towards the end of the book

I liked that the "bad guy" wasn't really bad. Global warming and any attempts to change it, will create winners and losers. Can you blame a looser who is just fighting to get a chair at the table?

Walking the Beach to Bellingham

By Harvey Manning.

Harvey Manning was a local author, conservationist and advocate for trails and parks. He died in 2006. Many of the parks around my home exist because of Manning's lobbying. 

He wrote a popular series of Washington Trail guides.

I decided to go over some of Manning's non-trail-guide writings. And--- he loved to walk and hike. He wanted to preserve and grow this experience for others. The urge to hike was deeply in his bones.

A Guide To the Good Life

By William B. Irvine

Be a modern stoic...

Practice living through tougher situations. From time to time, make yourself uncomfortable-- fast-- don't wear enough clothing in cooler weather.

Be clear on what you can control, what you can only influence, and what you don't control. 

You really don't control things that you can only influence, so only set yourself internal expectations and goals for these. For example, don't set a goal to win every tennis game. But do set a goal for yourself to play the best you can.