Review: King, Warrior, Magician, Weenie: Contemporary Men's Humor

King, Warrior, Magician, Weenie: Contemporary Men's Humor by Peter Sinclair
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My review from Jam Rag Vol. IX, No. 3; March 2, 1994




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Review: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Zakaria builds an analytical approach to the viability of democracy as government elected by the majority of its people and often a constitutional liberalism codifying the rule of law, separation of powers, institutional check and balances, and most importantly individual rights around property, contracts, etc. This analysis suggests a sweet spot around GDP, a lack of a natural resource-based economy (full duplex integration with the global economy), and other basic elements such as a healthy middle class. You cannot have a true, liberal democracy without the rule of law. Examples of “illiberal” democracies are democratically elected autocrats as have happened in Egypt, Venezuela, etc.

This opus begins with a The History of Human Liberty from when first in Rome in created the rule of law. Actually, Zakaria finds Rome more important to the growth of democracy as know it than Greece. As the scholarly analysis of the lifespan of democracy and what are its fertile grounds proceeds, it becomes most thought provoking and surprising toward the end with a Too Much Democracy chapter.

Zakaria speaks to the general public discontent with the democratization of political process in the U.S. such as how the most democratic branch, Congress, is loathed, while non-democratic parts like the military and Supreme Court are. He speaks to how American (all?) democracy unchecked tends to commercialize and thus deplete the effectiveness of democracy leading to rampant referendum hijacking, constant fund-raising, and—most disconcerting—an absence of priority of public service by leading citizens.

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Review: The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

fascinating first person account of a brave Yazidi woman sexually enslaved to a series of Islamic State militants. in this ARC copy I enjoyed the clear three acts:
1. background including a summary of the unique and poetic Yazidi worldview
2. enslavement in a process that recalled holocaust horror
3. escape and reunion and owning her story

As I read this, I see Scotland, Castille possible limping toward an independence in a less bloody fashion, than say South Sudan or a fracturing Iraq-Syria. Reading this, the Yazidis are too small for independence, and apparently too different for protection from Kurds, Iraq, etc. In this era of apparent national identity resurgence, can the world protect its minority cultures, too?

Also, this feels like a cautionary tale like that of "First they came ...", the poem written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. One variation goes:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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Review: Theoriae causalitatis principia mathematica

Theoriae causalitatis principia mathematica by Ilija Barukcic
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science, is Newton's opus on his laws of motion and universal gravitation. Principia mathematica is a similarly regarded achievement on the foundations of mathematics by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. Ambitiously, this Theoriae causalitatis principia mathematica (as capitalized by the author) has a similar lofty goal for causality through a set of axioms “to characterize the relationship between cause and effect while using the tools of probability theory.” From the preface comes the succinct aim: “This book is designed to provide both, a new mathematical methodology for making causal inferences from experimental and nonexperimental data and the underlying (philosophical) theory.”

At least some readers will find this presentation containing unfortunate obstacles to an effective perusal. Aristotle and Hume are quoted in German without translation. There are quotes in English and others are translated into “broken English”, as the author declares. Still, readers not multilingual will miss some meanings here and there. This inconsistency is an unnecessary inconvenience. Typographical difficulties also come in from extensive, lengthy 4-pt. footnotes, long italicized passages, unusual notation such as “+1” as a special value, and symbols often using underscores with left- and right-subscripts all at the same time. I had to resort to a magnifying glass to see that this definition of joint probability includes the statement p(dt)=p(ict.ꓵ jet). An example of opacity from the +-prefix notation is when contrasting “today’s rules of algebra” the awkward statement +1 – 1 becomes equivalent to +i2 + i2 during a definition of |0| as the “square root of zero”.

These aspects seem either unnecessarily complex or in need of an improved layout. Added to this are unclear connections between definitions and results. The introduced +1 is defined as the product of the speed of light in vacuum squared, magnetic constant (vacuum permeability), electric constant (vacuum permittivity) without discussion of units or why these particular physical constants should be combined in this way. Later, +1 is treated as a unit-less value and no further mention is made of this basis in physical constants making opaque the motivation to define +1 in this peculiar manner. Further, infinity is treated as it were a real number, or least subject to the typical operations of multiplication, division, etc. as if it were a real number in such claims as 1 x 0 = ∞, etc. The book makes no acknowledgement that infinity is being treated unexpectedly nor is the concept of limits brought in when expected. Combining this approach with introduced concepts of “anti-number”, “anti-finite”, etc. the reader is confronted with such equations as:

(+1)/(+∞)+((+∞-1))/(+∞)=+1

This author, who has been publishing in this area since at least 1989, bundles redefined operations and new notation into “proofs” based on applying algebraic operations to false statements in a way that appears to avoid the material conditional that a false statement can be used to support false or true statement. This will cause the eyebrow to arch for some. Here is one example, including some representative grammar:

Given
+2=+3
as the starting point of this proof, which is incorrect, we obtain immediately
2×0=3×0
or due to the definition before
2_0×∞=3_0×∞
Multiplying be positive infinity, we obtain
2_0×∞=3_0×∞
which is equal to
2×1=3×1
At the end, a logical contradiction does not follow since from something incorrect (+2 = +3) something incorrect is derived as
+2=+3
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM

Some facts strike one as incorrect or at best not accurately stated. For example, “A definite value of Archimedes’ constant π is still not known…” Also, some definitions lead to apparent contradictions when later employed. What is most unsettling is that these issues are crowded around the core ‘Axioms’.
The Pythagorean Theorem gets introduced in what appears the typical, planar interpretation with hypotenuse c defined as “the longest side…” Later, Axiom II is stated:

(+0)/(+0)=+1

Support for this (here, all ‘axioms’ have supporting proofs) comes from “In general according to Pythagorean theorem it is a2 + b2= c2. Under conditions where b2= c2 it is a2 + c2= c2 or a2 = c2 - c2 = 0.” So, from this specific case apparently excluded by the stated definition, it follows from a normalized Pythagorean equation that this ‘axiom’ arises. Similarly, a Pythagorean case where “b2= c2 = +∞” contributes to a general ‘proof of Axiom III

(+1)/(+∞)=+0

This book contains a thin history of formal approaches to causality spotty fundamentals for probability, statistics, set theory, probability, and more. Much of this content comes across as needing an editor. For instance, the Lorentz factor is defined after variance and before Bernoulli trial. The basics presented are to support philosophical arguments. However, often the suddenness and unclear linkage weakens the presentation. For instance, preceding the definition of an equivalence relationship is the pronouncement:

EQUIVALENCE – THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
The one is not the other, the other is not the one, both are different. Still, there are circumstances where the one has within itself the relation to the other and vice versa. Two, which are different and separated in the same relation, are still united or identical. Thus far, difference as such is a kind of contradiction for it is the unity of two which are not one.”

This is a typical arrangement here: some mathematics lies adjacent to a philosophical statement with a connection not clear to this reader. The evolution from arithmetic to philosophy of mathematics is missing some steps resulting in steep jumps. The result is a series of assertions, not developments; a gallery of fundamentals loosely coupled to a philosophical worldview. Along the way, other generally accepted principals are rejected: The gravity constant is not a constant and fuzzy logic is refuted. However, while such things are taken away, this does add to world’s store of proofs of the existence of God: “The notion of God is mathematically justified only if God is equivalent with nature or objective reality itself.”

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Review: The Stranger

The Stranger by Albert Camus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I took in this excellent narration with an intriguing translation note about this modernized edition while cycling through continuous rain and clouds through mountain roads between Chattanooga and remote Guild, TN. It worked very well for this existential classic and its musings on guilt, death, the pointlessness of it all under the dark and grey sky. This time around I really felt the trial to be the significant vehicle as a metaphor for the absurdities of life, very much like The Trial.

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Review: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had sort of avoided this because I am more interested in Lincoln biographies and Civil War history than-what I thought this was-a cabinet (political) history. It really is the former; Lincoln's life and ideology and the story of the events leading to the Civil War and its arc. The ideological path leading to an anti-Slavery conflict and the Emancipation Proclamation make me want to learn a political history of the Confederacy, too. Is there one?

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Review: Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Walls brings forth another stellar memoir, this time a biographical novel of her mother Rosemary and amazingly talented and resourceful grandmother Lily. While Lily is horse breaker, pilot, school teacher and more the entire family in the generations covered here is interesting and told in an entertaining and easily readable way. All the details about Rosemary and her background and upbringing tells us one half the mystery of the parents in The Glass Castle, so I hope Walls does the same for the other half: sketchy Rex Walls.

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Review: We Rode the Orphan Trains

We Rode the Orphan Trains by Andrea Warren
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A moving, quick and easy read with plenty of pictures. Orphan Trains, or in the case of relocated infants, "baby trains" are from the decades after the Civil War up until The Great Depression. Largely moving children from the populated NYC area to the Midwest this was a surprisingly managed process with the annual checkup visits common and children relocated after abuse. Still, many had obstacles to locate their biological parents. Each chapter is the tale of an actual "orphan" (many were just abandoned, etc.) from their remembrances.

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Review: Dead, Insane, or in Jail: A CEDU Memoir

Dead, Insane, or in Jail: A CEDU Memoir by Zack Bonnie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

CEDU Educational Services, Inc., known simply as CEDU, was founded in 1967 by Mel Wasserman and his wife Brigitta. The company owned and operated several therapeutic boarding schools and behavior modification programs in California and Idaho. CEDU origins go back to Synanon, a cult founded in Santa Monica, California in 1958 by Charles Dederich. The Troubled Teen Industry[1] today largely consists of Synanon and/or CEDU offshoots. I thank this author for making me aware of CEDU and prompting me to go to the Web to learn about this. The author himself todl me that of "CEDU and its roots in Synanon and the Troubled Teen Industry,... there's more and more information and articles out there." Now I am also intrigued about "Erhard seminar training or Landmark Forum." However, this book suffers I think from a lack of such historical context.

Well, that is judging is as a historical memoir.

As a thrilling tale that works well, as we are just as much at sea as the author when dropped off by his parents under false pretext and has no such context himself when demeaned in confrontational group therapy and other brainwashing-like, cultish settings even unto dining on raccoon and mouse in challenging "Wilderness Therapy".

As an attack on questionable "therapy" techniques I recall Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark for his well-reasoned arguments for the damage such untutored approaches can wreak on the mind and soul. And that is one thing for adults voluntarily consenting to such activity, but hurling "troubled" teens into such a morass and severing ties to family, well, .... This should serve as a warning for any parent thinking of turning over their offspring to the Troubled Teen Industry.

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Review: Compulsion

Compulsion by Meyer Levin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had to prompts to finally read this novelization of the Leopold and Loeb murder. I recently enjoyed again the Orson Welles depiction of Clarence Darrow in the Compulsion film. Then, I found an inscribed copy of the same hardcover edition. So, I will read the un-unscribed one and then put it in a Little Free Library.

I really enjoyed this telling, which I am sure comes very close to the truth, at least how it was perceived at the time since Levin as a young reporter was assigned to cover the trial and uses many direct quotes from testimony, etc.

Along with Caril, this also really undermines any support I have for the death penalty.




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Review: Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime by Ben Blum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was supposedly to make the world aware of Task Force 6-26 war crimes and Camp Nama prisoner abuse in Iraq and similar other U.S. military atrocities that made Luke Elliott Sommer , a former United States Army Ranger, turn bank robber. Or, maybe the money stolen in the robbery was intended to counter the motorcycle gangs controlling crime in the American Pacific Northwest and Canadian British Columbia, primarily the Hells Angels. Or, Sommer is a psychopath or made to behave like one after going into the Rangers as bipolar and coming out with PTSD. Even more confusing and to the point is the author's nephew, Alex Blum, the getaway driver. He successfully poses as one so convinced the bank robbery is an "exercise" that he avoids harsher judicial punishment and is aided in his defense by the book Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control and Philip G. Zimbardo himself.

The author dives into the evolving complexities of this defense and gets closer to a truth of peer pressure while finding in his own family mental instability, the horrors of war, and a curious recurrence of higher mathematics even with some of the bank robbers.

[I received an ARC of this book through Goodreads First Reads.]

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Review: Leadership Is an Art

Leadership Is an Art by Max DePree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A concise and well-supported treatise of leading in ways that empower employees (broad profit sharing to encourage a sense of ownership) and leading with humility, as a first-servant in the corporation. Much may seem like adages here, but there is much wisdom distilled from years in leadership at Zeeland, Michigan's Herman Miller.

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Review: Wabi Sabi

Wabi Sabi by Unknown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Created in 199? in small numbers from the area of Madison, Wisconsin, I found this on a table at Snug Hollow. It is a moving, enlightening package. The handmade folder of packets of poetic reflections on the Japanese aesthetics Wabi-sabi (侘寂) world view is centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It includes pieces about accepting and moving through painful periods in life, like the death of a loved one.

it includes content on suki ("Subtle Elegance") as found in not originally seen as beautiful effects from inclusion of incoming wetness, light changes, etc. The slowly spoiling package evidences appreciative suki and is thus beautiful.

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Review: Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science

Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science by Karl Sigmund
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Born in the tumultuous emergence of World War I and dissipated by the disruption of World War II, violence punctuates the Circle’s story. This includes physicist-cum-revolutionary Friedrich Adler’s assassination of Austrian minister-president Count Karl von Stürgkh, civil unrest even unto cremation riots, “the frantic 1920s”, and on to the cruelly ironic slaying on the Philosophers’ Staircase at the University of Vienna of Schlick by a former student. Philosophical debate mirrored these physical battles. Simplified, the eventual neopositivism of the Circle contrary to idealism rested on a central thesis of verificationism, asserting that only statements verifiable are cognitively meaningful. As the author observes in reviewing these important decades in the development of Western philosophy: “The crude ideology of the Nazis had always tended to side with the idealistic philosophers, all the way from Plato to Heidegger, and the blind obedience of Hitler’s troops could well have distant roots in Immanuel Kant’s ethics of duty.”
As an avid reader, I applaud the author for embracing the seldom-used technique of a summary epigraph per chapter. It comes across as one part of the author’s obvious enthusiasm in the Circle. Author Karl Sigmund is a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna and one of the pioneers of evolutionary game theory. As he says here, “the Vienna Circle has been with me for half a century.” This history is decades in the making and well worth the wait for anyone interested in the development of Western philosophy.

..."



[Look for my entire review at MAA Reviews]

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Review: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception

The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception by Michel Foucault
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I see The Birth of the Clinic by Michel Foucault, here ably and even passionately translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, is part of the World of Man: A Library of Theory and Research in the Human Sciences, series edited by R. D. Laing. I’d like to find a complete list of this Library, somewhere.

The 18th century development medicine as a practice in French and European history is the declared content here, with noted French personages and the disruptions of The French Revolution. However, what is striking and moving is the subtext, a reverential, mystical, even fetishistic exploration of the doctor’s inspection and interview, here translated as the medical ‘gaze’. From the Preface, “This book is about space, about language, and about death; it is about the act of seeing, the gaze.” And later, “The observing gaze refrains from intervening: it is silent and gestureless. Observation leaves things as they are; there is nothing hidden to it in what is given.” Then at length, “The clinical gaze is a gaze that burns things to their furthest truth. The attention with which it observes and the movement by which it states are in the last resort taken up again in this paradoxical act of consuming. The reality, whose language it spontaneously reads in order to restore it as it is, is not as adequate to itself as might be supposed: its truth is given in a decomposition that is much more than a reading since it involves the freeing of an implicit structure. … The clinical gaze is not that of an intellectual eye that is able to perceive the unalterable purity of essences beneath phenomena. It is a gaze of the concrete sensibility, a gaze that travels from body to body, and whose trajectory is situated in the space of sensible manifestation. For the clinic, all truth is sensible truth; `theory falls silent or almost always vanishes at the patient's bed-side to be replaced by observation and experience; for on what are observation and experience based if not on the relation of our senses? And where would they be without these faithful guides?”

There are several other phrases that are striking and evocative, conjured by Smith from Foucault’s French. I would love to hear a Nick Cave album inspired by these thoughts:

• “The artisanal skill of the brain-breaker”
• “the didactic totality of an ideal experience”
• “sympathy preserves the fundamental form by ranging over time and space; causality dissociates the simultaneities and intersections in order to maintain the essential purities.”
• “…the perception of death in life does not have the same function in the nineteenth century as at the Renaissance. Then it carried with it reductive significations: differences of fate, for tune, conditions were effaced by its universal gesture; it drew each irrevocably to all; the dances of skeletons depicted, on the underside of life, a sort of egalitarian saturnalia; death unfailingly compensated for fortune. Now, on the contrary, it is constitutive of singularity; it is in that perception of death that the individual finds himself, escaping from a monotonous, average life; in the slow, half subterranean, but already visible approach of death, the dull, common life becomes an individuality at last; a black border isolates it and gives it the style of its own truth. Hence the importance of the Morbid. The macabre implied a homogeneous perception of death, once its threshold had been crossed. The morbid authorizes a subtle perception of the way in which life finds in death its most differentiated figure.”
• Etc.

This makes poetic and reverential the import of “The doctor will ‘see’ you now.”

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