Tag: books

Drugs Without the Hot Air

In the chapter “Is Ecstasy More Dangerous Than Horse Riding?” David Nutt again raises controversy. In the U.K., there are 5700 cases yearly of traumatic head injury from horseback riding accidents, 1 serious accident per 350 hours of riding. Dr. Nutt compares this rate to the yearly hospitalizations for ecstasy abuse and concludes that accidents from horseback riding and ecstasy abuse are on the same order of magnitude. Using this statistical comparison he wrote a “tongue-in-cheek” article for Lancet, the U.K. medical journal, calling addiction to horseback riding as “equasy:” equine addiction syndrome.

drugs are illegal because they are harmful, and they are harmful because they are illegal, except for alcohol and tobacco.

Science Left Behind

if you thought the right wing has a monopoly on it’s attack on science, i have news for you. the vaccination causes autism assholes are a good example.

To listen to most pundits and political writers, evolution, stem cells, and climate change are the only scientific issues worth mentioning—and the only people who are anti-science are conservatives. Yet those on the left have numerous fallacies of their own. Aversion to clean energy programs, basic biological research, and even life-saving vaccines come naturally to many progressives. These are positions supported by little more than junk-science and paranoid thinking.

OWS is self-parodying

OWS focused more energy on the mundane logistics of camp life than on organizing for social change. Petty decisions such as how to manage laundry (a multi-day debate), what kind of storage bins to buy (they had to be fair trade and procured through Craigslist), and how to put limits on the drumming circles without alienating them (some considered this a civil rights issue) often sucked up hours of valuable time when put to consensus-based discussion in General Assemblies.

this all reads like a camp organized by the park slope coop.

50 Shades of Grey

hard to pick a favorite of the many devastating blows in this review.

What in the hell just happened? Did I really read that? Oh, my god, I did. I did read that. Ana is just a giant mess of a human being. She’s insecure to the point of it being laughable, “klutzy” (even though she only trips twice in the entire book, when it’s convenient for her to look awkward), and a complete ditz. She’s a virgin (of course) who’s never taken any sexual interest in anyone before. Right. I’m fairly certain there hasn’t been a woman this naive since ’round about 1954. At one point, she thinks putting her hair in pigtails will keep her safe from Christian’s lusty advances. Fuckin’ really? She “flushes” constantly, and on several occasions referred to her hoo-hoo-naughty place as “down there.”
Next, we have Christian Grey: Christian is a misogynistic, self-loathing, abusive piece of shit. Apparently, his only redeeming qualities are, in this order; his ridiculous good looks, his money, and his giant penis. The only time Ana seems to like him as a person is when he’s being “lovable”, and those times are few and far between. Most of the time he’s serious, brooding, and threatening. How charming.

The half-live of facts

i’d love to have expiration dates for facts. would make it much easier to assess whether a piece of data is still good. some fields change every few years, others take centuries. i find it hard to take any non-fiction book older than ~5 years seriously.

Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor-recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the Brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing.

But it turns out there’s an order to the state of knowledge, an explanation for how we know what we know. Samuel Arbesman is an expert in the field of scientometrics—literally the science of science. Knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives.

Doctors with a rough idea of when their knowledge is likely to expire can be better equipped to keep up with the latest research. Companies and governments that understand how long new discoveries take to develop can improve decisions about allocating resources. And by tracing how and when language changes, each of us can better bridge generational gaps in slang and dialect.

A distant mirror

currently reading this. the middle ages are due for a major reexamination in my view, it wasn’t all just knights and damsels in distress.

The fourteenth century reflects 2 contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight–in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.”

Unscientific US

Mooney describes in detail how bad it is – that millions of our neighbors deem facts to be malleably ignorable. Though soundly refuted by scientific studies, angry parents continue to believe their children acquired autism through vaccinations: “Where do they get their ‘science’ from? From the Internet, celebrities, other frantic-angry parents, and a few non-mainstream researchers and doctors who continue to challenge the scientific consensus, all of which forms a self-reinforcing echo chamber of misinformation,” writes Mooney, noting that for every 5 hours of cable news, just 1 minute is devoted to science. In 2009, 15 year old US students ranked 17th out of 34 developed countries in science. A firm foundation in science is fundamental to modern citizenship as well as our ability to innovate and succeed in a global economy.

scientific illiteracy is a far bigger problem than the ups and downs of politics, or caring about which marginally different party is in power.

Padded books

Why are there so many well-padded books out there that really ought to be nice, long articles? The subject came up over dinner the other night, and having just wrapped up a nice, long article, I think I may have an answer to this question: journalists, like many non-economists, do not properly understand sunk costs.

essentially all non-fiction books are still produced with the following characteristics:

  • tons of filler material to reach a desired length
  • give away most in the introduction
  • assume readers are cognitively challenged

combine those things and you can get the gist of these books by using the free samples. enjoy!