Category: Genre: Cultural Studies

A History of the World in Six Glasses - Tom Standage | Book Review

11/15/2022

This was an excellent example of what we call 'Historical Lensing', the process of intentionally and proactively reading History from a particular and unique angle.
The way that Standage explores the development of the Western World from the roots of civilization all the way to our current Capitalist hellscape is elegant and fascinating. It uncovers the unique ways in which what we drink truly does have an affect on Society and therefore on History. His accounting is detailed and well-researched and eloquent enough to open plenty of minds to the way in which seemingly little things often have some of the largest impacts.
It does have its problems, however. While this book intentionally lenses through specific drink histories, it is also (seemingly unintentionally) lenses all of world history through the West's rise to domination. It briefly comments on how non-western cultures affected the rise of each drink, and then comments again even more briefly on how the West aggressively screwed over the rest of the world repeatedly in various ways.

I will say that it doesn't flinch away from saying that the outright Imperialist activities of America in the 1940's~80's are objectively Imperialist, but it does brush over the horrors of those consequences in a similar way to how it brushes over the fact that Britain is basically the Evil Empire.

I do highly recommend this book for anyone at all curious about History, even the layest of lay-persons could find it entertaining and informative.

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BEHAVE: the Biology of Humans at our Best & Worst - Robery Sapolsky

4/21/2022

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Every so often a book comes along that genuinely makes a viable case for a complete paradigm shift. This book is certainly one of them!

Reading this is certainly a monumental undertaking, being that it's nearly 800 pages of intensely detailed scientific rigor, but the result is entirely worth the effort! I will say that some parts of it, particularly a few of the early chapters, are a slog for anyone who is not familiar and keening interested in the finer point of microbiology, cellular neurology, or endocrinology. Sapolsky's writing is exceptionally clear and his points in these early chapters are well laid out, but, even so, the material is simply dense.
While I wholly understand the reason that these chapters are placed early in the sequence of the thesis (being that the book scales outward, starting with the literal smallest piece of potentially relevant biological influence and incrementally moving out to the macro-scale evolution of globalized, cooperative culture), it's a shame that the intensity and niche specificity of the early chapters come before the parts that a layperson could more easily connect with... I'm sure plenty of readers who would have delighted in the second half of this work were unable to make it past the first half.
Still, I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the mess that is the modern human, go for the audio book and just let the words wash over you (possibly skipping many of the early chapters).

The most important piece of this, in my realm of study, is actually the introduction. This is the first book in the realm of so-called 'hard science' in which the reality of Academia is called out and appropriately decimated. The divisions between subjects taught and studied in schools are arbitrary and nonsensical. They are useful boxes to make people feel like they have a safe and comfy niche to work in and use to declare their own identities via pre-defined shortcuts. But if you're truly in a venue to learn you absolutely must approach a subject with interdisciplinary awareness. In learning sciences, we call this mixing of disciplines interleaving and I mentioned it a while ago in my review of How We Learn by Benedict Carey.
Sapolsky is the first truly respectable hard science guru I've found to laboriously press home the point at this arbitrariness being useful only in the sense of easing personal identity definitions and creating a sense of in-group cohesion. (There is also an argument for varied disciplines that raises its head in terms of budgetary concerns for academic institution, which is an avenue to explore another day and is itself an argument in favor of how considering something through multiple lenses is the only way to truly understand it).

Beyond the critically important thesis presented in the Introduction, there are a good dozen chapters within which material that is exceedingly valuable to the everyday person's interaction with the world around them.
The adolescence chapter (chapter 6) is one I highly recommend, as it both shows how unfortunate it truly is to exist as a teenager and proves beyond any entitled, obnoxious parental whinging that grown ups do NOT remember what it was like to be a teenager. You absolutely cannot recall with any degree of accuracy, while utilizing your currently operational frontal cortex to draw on the memories, what it was like to experience life when half of your adult brain was essentially offline. (I have a soap box for this. And I scream from it on an almost daily basis. A solid half the reason I hate most parent is that most parents are the primary reason their teenagers hate life.)
Furthermore, this book has 2 additional pieces that I adore.
Chapters 10 through 15 are the core of the reason I find this book valuable to the lay-person. They examine the circumstances of behavior through lenses that the average human can negotiate and with a congenial frankness that invites readers to consider their own circumstances, as well as those of others they encounter, on a continuous and casual level of expanded comprehension. It's not necessarily the kind of eye-opining that forces people to rethink their entire existence, per se, (though it certainly has that potential for some readers), but it does a thorough job of helping an already open-minded person clean off their windshield from the inside where you can't even tell there's a layer of grime until you've wiped it off.
And then Chapter 16 pops up. 16 is the most controversial chapter of this book, being that it discusses the concept of abolishing, not just the police, but the entire modern criminal justice system as a whole. It also delves into the concepts of free-will (and the Hobbes / Locke / Rousseau argument, though it does fail, somewhat, to fully explain what that argument entails or who stood for which side of it...), which actually ties well into the arguments of Time Progression in physics and the Causational theory of History. It gets WILD. But it manages to make a solid, logical case for a rehashing of the considerations of what Justice truly means and how Punishment needs to be understood to be utilized effectively in a modern world.
All in all, it's quite amazing. And the congenial, down-to-earth delivery is delightful. The narrative voice is one of inviting friendliness and pervasively judgement-free guided exploration. Rather than a didactic lecture with pejorative weight behind it, reading this book feels like playing a teaching-game with a beloved grandfather.

That said, it's not 100% perfect, obviously.

It's LONG. And while I loved every second of my reading of it, I'm sure I'm the outlier. This is NOT, on its own, a layperson book. Unless you're willing to skip chapters or deep dive into nearly incomprehensible strings of abbreviations, a normal, casual reader will not make it through this beast.
Secondly, while it does call out other respected scientists for cherry-picking data (like Steven Pinker, whom I bear a particularly spikey and resolutely low threshold for bullshit), Sapolsky fails, himself, to discuss the on-going issues of replication being grappled with regarding some of the studies he references. Now this IS a new enough book that some of that failure can be forgiven as optimism that in the near future other labs will be able to replicate the findings of certain circumstances, but it still ought to be addressed (particularly as some of the studies are a great deal older than the book presently reporting on them).
There is clear personal stake in these matters, too, which makes sense as it's not a cut-and-dry piece of research publication and is instead a personal entreaty to consider the broader view from the perspective of someone infinitely too privileged to respect beyond the safe boundaries of Stanford's sunny promenades. Like seriously, if I took this guy on a foot tour of Queens, I'm like 80% sure we'd both just drop dead. If not, I'd probably kill him myself when he quibbles over the price of a banana (often a whooping full dollar per pound with tax, these days).
Honestly, if we got stuck in an elevator together and he were even a smidgeon less fascinating than he is, he'd be walking out of there with a black eye.
In the same way as he elucidates that a grown-up cannot recall being a teenager, he fails to truly recognize how unbelievably wealthy he is to the point of inevitably causing a painful degree of friction. He even acknowledges his privilege, and that of the reader, but he fails to connect that privilege to the particular rosiness of his glasses. It's a fact that makes chapter 16 more amusing than truly compelling, and it threatens a lot of his credibility in that, when combined with his congenial tone, can potentially make a lot of this come off as condescending. I think he manages to avoid that, for the most part, but that's coming from a place of being, myself, atrociously over-educated, painfully under-stimulated, and deeply indulgent toward my own aggressive curiosity.
All that said, however, this is easily my favorite Hard Science book from the last 5 years. It's the first book I've actually purchased in 2022.
Again, though you might have to skim or skip a few chapters, I HIGHLY recommend it!

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the Last Graduate - Naomi Novik | Book Review

3/4/2022

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A deeply satisfying sequel to a Deadly Education and an absolute Master Class in how to utilize plot bits to effectively ratchet up intimate emotional tensions! I am absolutely delighted by this series, and the second installment is an excellent addition to the over-all enterprise of it!

Still exercising the glorious flex of how the first book absolutely eviscerated the foundational concepts of the modern education industry, Book 2 delves into the consequences of system correction efforts (and the potential for over-correction), and how such seemingly benign endeavors, at best, swap the disadvantages of one group with the privileges of another, and at worst, further entrench a brand new sort of inequality that can hardly be accurately identified, let alone emolliated.
The inevitable conclusion is just so poignantly visceral that it almost belies the genuine reality of the allegory. The system isn't working. And it cannot simply be 'fixed'. It needs to be entirely torn down and created anew.
This novel also delves into the concept of blame for the entrenchment of inequity. The founders of the system meant it to be far better than they built it to effectively accomplish. Yes, exploitation and inhumanity was present at the conception, but for all their faults they tried to do right by the next generation and it's not fair (let alone productive) to simply castigate them for their failings without both acknowledging their efforts and also doing something to fix what they got wrong. Both within Novik's magical world and within our external reality, the school-system is abysmally flawed and needs to be entirely reimagined if we are to make any more significant strides of advancement as a species. The clear cut allegory of Novik's delightfully satirical explication is GLORIOUS.

More than that, the story itself is fun, engaging, and masterfully written. The characters are all unique, well-developed, and have arcs of growth that move elegantly through the plot. The story's set-up and pacing are exquisitely handled and managed in such a way so as to entirely prevent the sense that Book 2 is simply a bridge from 1 to 3. It is its own critical piece of the puzzle and a uniquely worthwhile read without reliance on its place within the trilogy.
I absolutely LOVED this book and HIGHLY RECOMMEND it to anyone over about age 10, though the more frustrated with the education industry you are (ie, high-schoolers, college kids, and their immediately concerned parents), the more viscerally you will react to the commentary presented here. I do however want to smack someone upside the head for allowing that ending to exist prior to the release of Book 3. I anticipate stalking through life like a trapped tiger until September when such misery will be granted absolution.

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The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics - James Kakalios

6/30/2021

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Date Read: May 29th, 2021

Final Score: 9 / 10 !

Well. The subtitle lied. This is NOT a 'math-free' exploration. But that was obvious going in, largely because Math is the language by which we consolidate descriptors of observable and calculable phenomena. Math isn't magic that controls the universe, it simply reduces the description of what's already happening down to its core components. Like taking all the nebulous adjectives out of a sentence, instead of saying 'this thing is moving quickly', it defines both the thing and the speed its moving relative to what it's moving more quickly than.

This book while not genuinely 'math-free' does go to great lengths to elaborate on how math as a concept is really more akin to a very specific, very concrete linguistic construction than it is to a magic number-thingy.

The most fascinating aspect of this book, from my perspective as a tech-savvy Millennial who wasn't born in an era before Quantum Mechanics had already become an accepted part of Science to the point that it had trickled out into commercial markets, was the illuminating comment on what schism of understanding left futurist thinkers of sci-fi tech in the 50's & 60's (and even in the 70's & 80's) swinging so wildly off-base in their projections of 21st century tech...

While I am still waiting for the hoverboard Back to the Future promised me, I have a much better understanding why such promises seemed plausible back then and yet so impossible now: our future-tech revolution struck the wrong vein of development:

The problem that scientists and futurists were focused on back then was the efficient production, storage, and transfer of Energy.
The solution that we found to catapult ourselves into a digital age was one of efficient storage, transfer, and reproduction of Information.

The advent of transistors made power usage slightly more effective, but it changed everything in terms data movement and processing. I'd known that on a logical level, but I hadn't quite realized how focused the previous generation's gaze was on energy-related tech-developments until Kakalios linked aspects of futurist projections to both the cutting edge of 50's science culture, and to the pop-culture creations that came out of each new 50's science revelation. (I always knew it made sense to them, but this IS the generation who flung 3 people at the moon in a gold-covered toaster with less digital processing power than the watch I had in middle school, soooooo... 'sense' has always been something I took with a few hearty grains of salt).

Kakalios breaks everything down into understandable, bite-sized pieces, relates those pieces to both a pop-culture event and a scientific development, explains the math that describes the concept, and creates a coherent, over-arching narrative about how these concepts have both literally built and conceptually inspired our modern world.
Overall, it's an extremely well done, fantastically well researched, and deeply informative pieces of physics non-fiction that was also delightfully entertaining.

Now, I may be biased towards favoring it because I am the super geek that was glued to the History Channel and the Science Channel, watching Michio Kaku and Brian Greene discuss the physics of the impossible and taking viewers on a tour of the universe instead of watching Spongebob (which I STILL don't understand the appeal of) or whatever else was on Nickelodeon, but that doesn't really mean I had too much of a leg up in the science-understanding aspect, here. The thing about Quantum Mechanics, and about math & modern physics in general, is that it's NOT easily observable, relatable stuff. In the same way as being given a random chapter in a book is not really going to illuminate the story for you, even if its a book you've read before, unless you're VERY familiar with the context, you'll need a little help exploring it.

While I have read the metaphorical 'Quantum Mechanics book' before, but like only once and way back in high school, so I can be pretty confident in saying that anyone totally unfamiliar with the topic will still get a huge boost of in-depth understanding out of this.

I HIGHLY recommend it! Kakalios truly presents a FANTASTIC in-roads to this entire realm of study!
(And, of course, I also recommend that everyone explore a little of the Quantum Physics realm, simply because of how critically important it is to the making and maintenance of our modern world!)

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How We Learn - Benedict Carey (Book Review)

6/6/2021

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Date Read: May 12, 2021

 Final Score: 7 / 10 !

This is another book I picked up for Class and it's a fantastic start-point for anyone interested in the finer points of psycho-social neurology. It addresses the physical aspects of how the brain functions, the psychological elements of how it processes information, and the social influences that nudge both of the above to work effectively.
A lot of what my current research is focused on is not just the hyper-academic psychology journals or neuro-medical experiments, it's on what is accessible to the average, open public. Because the Ivory Tower of academia is like the number 1 thing that modern society is absolutely bonkers about (seriously, the WHOLE POINT of the development of libraries and public education was to make learning accessible and incentivized for the sum total of the entire population... locking shit behind paywalls that even big institutions can barely afford is just asinine). This is one of the best, ease your way in sorts of overviews that I've found. A key factor of that is in how it's accurate science and not full of gimmicky give yourself an edge lies on how to be the smartest person ever.
It touches on the neurology, cites plenty of legitimate and historic studies in both medical neurology and psychology, and explains the conclusions in down to earth, easy to understand language that is congenial while still being accurate.

The look at Perceptual Learning Modules is my favorite, simply because what I look at while nose-deep in the journal side of academia are the ways in which Intuition is trained, measured, and utilized in practical settings, so the PLMs are kinda my wheelhouse.
The other great thing it mentions is called Interleaving, which I don't think Carey spent nearly enough time on. While paywalls are the biggest thing that America and upper level academia is doing wrong, the idea of disciplinary studies is the thing that education as a concept is doing wrong. Subjects are not separate. They only ever developed into separate departments because they had to argue for funding from school boards and when a department got funding, it was spent at the discretion of the department head. If the Dean of Science decided that music was lame, even though music was definitively considered a hard science for most of history, all the Science money was spent elsewhere (like alchemy or astrology...), so Music petitioned to be considered an entirely separate discipline with its own discretionary budget and such.
I may have to write up a Culture Crit essay on the topic, because the manner in which we teach 'subjects' in school is just something that makes me want to claw people's eyes out. In short, if you're not teaching music with your math and history with your science and poetry with your politics, you're doing everyone in the universe a lasting disservice. Anyway, I really liked how Carey addressed the fact that true learning, not just memorizing for the test, is learning how to manipulate the variable rather than how to achieve an end result. It's a principle that works in math just as well as in sports, and that idea is addressed by Carey quite well.
I also liked Carey's quote of the Henk Arts Group at Leiden University regarding their study on perception motivations with Bisaldrops (ie, if you're thirsty and stuck in a room, you notice things that relate to water / liquids more easily and remember them better than if you were locked in the same room while not thirsty). They address the idea of motivation directly and excessively affecting the ability of the brain to perceive the factors of its environment and how the idea of the "body's basic needs" includes the things needed by the mind.(There's probably another Culture Crit piece in there about Mazlo's Pyramid of Needs being outdated bullshit, but that's a rant for another day.)
In short, I liked this book. It's a good survey of the scientific state of learning psychology and a great toe-dipping start point with accessible, accurate prose.

I definitely recommend it for anyone even a little curious about how our brains actually manage to work their magic!

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A History of the World in Six Glasses - Tom Standage | Book Review

BEHAVE: the Biology of Humans at our Best & Worst - Robery Sapolsky

the Last Graduate - Naomi Novik | Book Review

The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics - James Kakalios

How We Learn - Benedict Carey (Book Review)

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