Thursday, August 29, 2024

Review: Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions

Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first half of this book as told from inside a concentration camp is the most affecting evidence of the indomitable human spirit I have ever read. The second half, about "logotherapy" has never resonated with me.

I read this book, roughly, every year for the eleven years '87-'98. I found it a powerful testament to the the awesome human potential. In Nietzchean proportions, it is a book on the will-to-live.


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Review: JFK: The Smoking Gun

JFK: The Smoking Gun JFK: The Smoking Gun by Colin McLaren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took American through the Looking Glass

Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took American through the Looking Glass Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took American through the Looking Glass by Ramin Setoodeh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(I read the Audible version narrated by Roger Wayne.)

In Rage, Woodward wrote that Kushner told him the Cheshire Cat in
Here we is the hypothesis that the Pinkett snubbing was "first red flag" of Trump's racism. But as for "grab 'em by the...", here multiple potential sources and investigators report journalistic pressure to exaggerate or heighten abusive behavior from Trump such as unwanted sexual advances dating back to these TV years.

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Saturday, August 17, 2024

Review: Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Make It Stick (Chapter by Chapter)
Learning Is Misunderstood
We don’t really understand how learning works. Things like reading a text over and over show little lasting gains in knowledge while other techniques are far more effective.

First, to be useful, learning requires memory, so what we’ve learned is still there later when we need it.

Second, we need to keep learning and remembering all our lives.

Third, learning is an acquired skill, and the most effective strategies are often counterintuitive.

To Learn, Retrieve
Our current system of gigantic standardized tests that offer no concrete feedback for students to learn from is a complete waste. Meanwhile, smaller tests that are given regularly with quality feedback cause much better retention, recall, and application.

To be most effective, retrieval must be repeated again and again, in spaced out sessions, so that the recall, rather than becoming a mindless recitation, requires some cognitive effort.

When retrieval practice is spaced, allowing some forgetting to occur between tests, it leads to stronger long-term retention than when it is massed.

In all studies of testing that reported students’ attitudes, the students who were tested more frequently rated their classes more favorably at the end of the semester than those tested less frequently.

Frequent low-stakes testing helps dial down test anxiety among students by diversifying the consequences over a much larger sample: no single test is a make-or-break event.

Mix Up Your Practice
You don’t go to the gym and only work your arms every time. You shouldn’t go and do the exact same exercises for each body part all the time. Much the same, our brains need some diversity to maximize how well they learn. What you learn, how you learn it, and how often you review it are all important.

Interleaving the practice of two or more subjects or skills is also a more potent alternative to massed practice.

In other words, the kind of retrieval practice that proves most effective is one that reflects what you’ll be doing with the knowledge later.

The inference is that learning gained through the less challenging, massed form of practice is encoded in a simpler or comparatively impoverished representation than the learning gained from the varied and more challenging practice which demands more brain power and encodes the learning in a more flexible representation that can be applied more broadly.

Embrace Difficulties
The harder the learning is, as long as you can attach it to earlier learning, the more you’ll be able to consolidate in your memory if you stick with it. Retrieval becomes easier as we add to our knowledge base and form diverse connections.

The more you’ve forgotten about a topic, the more effective relearning will be in shaping your permanent knowledge.

**** https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...#

Throughout his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell repeatedly refers to the “10 000-hour rule,” asserting that the key to achieving true expertise in any skill is simply a matter of practicing, albeit in the correct way, for at least 10 000 hours.***

Would you rather read an article in normal type or type that’s somewhat out of focus? Almost surely you would opt for the former. Yet when text on a page is slightly out of focus or presented in a font that is a little difficult to decipher, people recall the content better.

It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution. It’s better to attempt a solution and supply the incorrect answer than not to make the attempt.

Long-term memory capacity is virtually limitless: the more you know, the more possible connections you have for adding new knowledge.

What Are You Going To Do About It?
What do you do to learn something you really want to know? Do you see these principles in your own approach to learning or in any apps or classes you are using to increase knowledge?

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Chapter 1

A common myth about learning is that re-reading is an effective study strategy – but it’s not. Re-reading gives students confidence that they know something when they actually don’t, a key example in which
“Learning is Misunderstood.”
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Chapter 2

In “To Learn, Retrieve,” the authors describe retrieval practice research in authentic classrooms. Experiments
in a K-12 school district demonstrated that retrieval practice raised students' grades from a C+ to an A-, with benefits lasting for an entire school year.
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Chapter 3

For this recommendation, “Mix Up Your Practice,” the authors present research on two robust teaching strategies:
spacing and interleaving. Research demonstrates that simply spacing out or rearranging concepts to be taught can yield a large boost in learning.

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Thursday, August 15, 2024

Review: Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin

Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin by Kenneth Womack
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This biography explores a "fifth Beatle" as his career interleaves with theirs. He starts from a time of limited technology with 10" records for pop and the 12" LPs for classical, etc. which also got the cutting edge technology, such as it was. Martin embraced variable speed recording and other tricks required for comedy recordings which fed into the advanced techniques that surfaced with Beatles recordings. It is interesting to see the arc of British popular music crushed by American trends -- performers expected to cover American songs, and then see the eventual domination of the US by The Beatles. This "Early Years" volume ends with Rubber Soul. Included is, of course, a career biography of Martin including how he was compelled to strike out on his own when under appreciated by EMI.

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Saturday, August 10, 2024

Review: The Stranger Beside Me

The Stranger Beside Me The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Based on the text, what connections can be made to the use of forensic odontology in the prosecution of Ted Bundy, especially in Florida?

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Analysis complete

The reference text primarily discusses the misuse of forensic odontology, particularly bite mark analysis, in several Mississippi cases. The text highlights the unreliability of bite mark evidence and the grave consequences of its misuse, leading to wrongful convictions.

While the text does not explicitly mention Ted Bundy, it draws a parallel between the questionable practices of Dr. Michael West in Mississippi and the reliance on bite mark evidence in Bundy's Florida prosecution. The text indirectly suggests that the same flaws and potential for error inherent in bite mark analysis, as exemplified in the Mississippi cases, could also have been present in Bundy's case. The overconfidence of experts, the lack of scientific basis, and the pressure to secure convictions might have played a role in both scenarios.

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Monday, August 5, 2024

Review: Dictionary of Saints

Dictionary of Saints by Alison Jones My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews