Reviews

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. ...

Keeping this review short, I really enjoyed this book. Full of very interesting points and theories, really helped to get a grasp on the story about what happened between big bang and man. Got way more acquainted with monkey sexual practices than I had expected. The things that I didn’t like was that on one hand we have the insistence (correctly I think) that evolution is blind and has no destination in mind, where on the other hand there was still the subtle presence of the idea of “evolving past something”. Most notably xenophobia, this struck me as inconsistent with the previously utilitarian view presented on the universe. The other thing that caused some mental friction was their approach to chimps learning language. This section felt like quite a stretch to me, as I think it misrepresented chimps’ linguistical abilities. In total, I still enjoyed this book quite a bit and it is worth a read if only to see the interesting overlaps between monkey culture and human culture.

Finished this, this weekend. Still processing it. I think the moral of the story is you can’t teach wisdom, the only way to learn that is through personal experience. Especially being aware enough to know when you are fighting a useless battle trying to “teach” someone wisdom when they aren’t ready. While this is somewhat of a common idea, being able to graciously accept that is not common at all. I’ve often found it frustrating trying to impart my “wisdom” on people who clearly just aren’t ready. Why can’t they see I’m always right?

This was probably one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read, but at the same time one of the most thought provoking. As the first book I’ve ever read from Baudrillard, this book felt like jumping on a bullet train that was traveling to some unknown destination at top speed. Never pausing to offer his readers any lifelines Baudrillard forges on with twisted logic and esoteric analogies. Steeped in the culture and place of France in the 1980s I found myself often at a loss and not catching the references to geography or pop culture. Even so this book has stuck to my mind like glue, and for the rest of the year I was unable to shake it. His view of the world seeped into mine, and irrevocably changed it. Let’s just say I won’t be going to Disney World anytime soon, I for one am satisfied with the unreality that the rest of America has on offer. ...

Summary This book is supposedly the longest single-authored mystical poem in the world. Coming in at a little over twenty-five thousand Persian couplets which are the equivalent of fifty thousand European lines, the Spiritual Verses are twice as long as Dante’s Divine Comedy. Rumi, a Sufi mystic from the 13th century, puts together a group of fables that are connected by metaphor and style as opposed to any plot. Many stories turn out to be like a Russian nesting doll, containing many smaller, distantly related stories to further enhance the author’s ideas. Rumi, at points, floats above time and place to speak of universal experiences, while at other times he is firmly rooted in his Islamic perspective. ...

And if it be objected that we belong to a time of crude force our answer is : We stood with our feet in mud and blood, yet our faces were turned to things of exalted worth. And not one of that countless number who fell in our attacks fell for nothing. Summary Storm of Steel is the firsthand account of the German officer Ernst’s Junger’s time in the trenches during WW1. ...

Summary The first in a series of seven books, ‘Swann’s Way’ opens with reflections by a narrator on some of his earliest memories, one of which involves being visited by a man named Charles Swann. After a period of reflection, we begin to follow Swann, a man of society, as he eventually falls in love with a former courtesan named Odette de Crécy. The rest of the book chronicles the rise and fall of their relationship. ...