Reviews

Summary Chesterton wrote this as a companion piece to his early work ‘Heretic’. He wishes to document his own views and how he got to them. I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. Chesterton reminds me of a Churchill or Benjamin Franklin in the way in which his ratio of memorable sentences per page asymptotically approaches 1. Every paragraph has gems that beg to be plastered on some living room wall in garish curly-q font: ...

Summary Blaise Pascal was a philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Just another run of the mill renaissance man. Pensées, or ‘Thoughts’ are a collection of loosely collected writings put together posthumously. What starts as a series of somewhat disconnected thoughts ends in a fairly coherent apologetic for faith in general and Christian faith in particular. Thoughts I did not research this book before reading it. I saw this quote: The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of… ...

When I bought the Symposium, it came in a two pack with Phaedrus as its second. I was glad to find out that this book too revolved around pederasty(sarcasm). Essentially, Phaedrus runs into Socrates walking in the country after hearing a speech by Lysias on reasons why a boy should only lend his favors to a lover (older man) who is not in love with him. The text is lighthearted and has many jokes as Socrates then makes a better speech which agrees with Lysias impressing Phaedrus, but eventually reveals he believed Lysias’ speech to be pretty lame and he didn’t agree with his own. The book finishes with him giving a rebuttal speech and then he focuses on the art of rhetoric and the dangers and pitfalls that are in it. My favorite quote is in regard to (ironically) writing: ...

Summary Socrates has just been charged with impiety and is preparing for his trial, which will ultimately lead to his execution. He encounters Euthyphro, one of the few people in Greece whom Socrates has not yet alienated. Socrates quickly remedies this oversight. Euthyphro is on his way to court to accuse his own father of murder. His father had owned a slave who murdered another slave, and in response, Euthyphro’s father ordered the guilty slave to be bound and thrown into a ditch while he sent messengers to officials to determine the appropriate legal action. Before the messengers returned, the slave died from exposure. According to Athenian law, murder charges are typically allowed only by relatives of the victim. This accusation would have been considered highly impious by Euthyphro’s society; therefore, he must be highly confident in his understanding of “goodness” and his ability to convince a court of his definition. Socrates, himself about to be tried, uses his circumstances as a casus belli to challenge Euthyphro’s confidence. Socrates initially asks Euthyphro a simple question: “What is goodness?” Euthyphro responds that it is to do what God has ordered, as that is pleasing to God. Through dialogue, this definition is shown to have hidden assumptions, which leads Socrates to pose another seemingly innocent question that creates a truly thought-provoking dilemma for those inclined to ponder it: “Is the good loved by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?” ...

Summary Are you tired of hearing news stories about Kashmir and wondering why Pakistan and India can’t just get along? Can we ever hear any positive news from Sudan? Why does it seem to be in a constant state of turmoil? Why are the borders of some countries straight lines instead of the usual squiggly ones? The world of geopolitics is a complicated place, and there are many approaches one can take to understand it. In Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall argues that the most probable route is to look to the land itself for the answers. The main thesis of the book is that there is not enough focus on the ‘geo’ part of ‘geopolitics’. We often spend too much time talking about various ideologies or technologies as driving world events, when reality is often much more affected by land features. For example, on paper it is hard to imagine why the massive empires of China and India have rarely engaged in full-scale conflict—that is until you realize they are separated by the tallest mountain range in the world. This also explains why Tibet is so fiercely contested, as it represents a high ground that neither country is interested in ceding to the other side. ...

This set of short stories was recommended to me by a friend. Each story takes about 5-10 minutes to read. Akutagawa published these stories in 1915 and the six stories included have some really interesting psychology in them investigating honor, revenge, humiliation, and morality in subtle ways. Impress your friends and buy a copy of this to put on your toilets good bathroom reading.

A clear and concise book that does exactly what the title says it does. Bauer takes issue with the K-12 grading system in the US claiming that it does not make proper contingencies for the individual. Instead, designed much like the factories that were popping up at the same time, the K-12 grading system treats each kid like an identical piece of machinery. This book was helpful to me as it underlined the fact that K-8 grade needn’t be nearly as structured as is popularly believed. These grades in fact will have little to no impact on their futures assuming the time isn’t completely wasted, and the kids are introduced the core material requisite for high school. Bauer also believes in the idea that each subject is its own island, and kids have natural talents in each. Some may be good at math while others excel in history. Allow each kid to benefit from their natural talents, without falling into the trap of too quickly pushing them forward a grade and into a social situation they are not mature enough to handle. Overall, the book was a couple years away from being really useful to me, but it has given me some ideas for when the time comes so I won’t have to start out from scratch.

This book was largely a response to a response to the French Revolution by Edmund Burke. The French Revolution started in 1789. The aristocracy of England was starting to see the writing on the wall and the French Revolution made them that much more uneasy. So, one of monarchy’s most vocal proponents (Edmund Burke) wrote a book entitled “Reflections on the Revolution of France”. If that book was a Facebook status a good chunk of this book was a comment on Burke’s Facebook status. Paine rips the idea of monarchy to shreds. To summarize his argument in a couple sentences I would say Paine’s main point was this: Government should be formed to protect the existing rights of man and not be looked to as a definition of human rights. Furthermore, that any formal document that is written in order to form a government is a limitation on those rights of man. Therefore, it should be the individuals themselves that define the contract that does so limit each man’s individual freedom. The book itself is a little rant-y hence my Facebook reference. But it would probably be one of the best, and most informed Facebook responses you will ever read. I did not realize that the French revolution was in such close proximity to our own. This makes me interested to contrast the two. One seemed very ‘gentlemanly’ and the other seemed sort of ‘barbaric’. Not sure if this is due to my own ignorance or not.

This was a sort of rando pick I made but was definitely the best book I’ve read this year. There is a well-known guy in the computer science community who coined this idea that code quality can be judged by the “number of WTFs/minute” the person coming behind that code has. Well, I’d like to say that when it comes to a book like this, the quality of it can be judged by how many times your mind gets blown by a unique thought or viewpoint that I haven’t had. This book has hundreds of those. In a nutshell this book outlines science’s best “story” about the development of man in the following stages ...

Summary The moon has exploded, no one knows who done it, but scientists quickly figure out that it will spell the end of the world in approximately two years. Thoughts The first half of this book was nearly flawless. Positioned as a hyper realistic sci-fi similar to books like ‘Martian’, it faithfully, to a layman at least, describes what the experience would be like for people trying to survive in what could be described as a slightly improved international space station. The major thing that stuck out to me from the book was just how easy it was to sympathize with the characters’ predicament. This was in part a product of exemplary writing, but there was also something more. Something hauntingly familiar about the way the explosion of the moon occurred. I could easily imagine the way the story would propagate across our information superhighways. The neuronal synapses it would causes to fire, the horror, but also the detachment that would follow. This fictional series of events felt all too familiar for reasons that are difficult to explain. ...