While I love books, there is one type I loathe: instruction manuals, particularly those having to do with electronics or all things mechanical. I particularly loathe manuals with charts and diagrams. I tend to read a graph horizontally when I should be reading it vertically or vice ve
Question: If you were browsing through a bookstore and read the blurb below would you buy the book? The character-driven novel “XXX”* brings a distinct knowledge of literature and literary convention together with current knowledge on crime, punishment and “green” architecture
“Reason for Living: The good life without God” is a convoluted essay by Christopher R. Beha, editor for Harper’s, that reviews three books about morality without the existence of God. I touched upon this issue in my blog of June 12. In this recent piece, Beha reinforces the argu
I’ve expressed my view several times that each of us can change the world simply by making changes in ourselves. Personal responsibility is an important issue with me and while I understand the need to complain about the course of history which seems so much larger than ourselves, i
At lunch the other day a friend commented on a film she’d seen, The Invisible War. It had won an award at the Sun Dance Film Festival and the subject was rape in the military, largely offenses against women but a few cases of assaults on males were documented as well. While it’s c
Most research I’ve read says women are more verbal than men. Females babies are said to talk sooner than boys, for example, and the image of the nagging wife is almost universal. Women are noted for “girl talk,”“coffee klatches” and “hen parties,” while men presumably st
It almost reads like science fiction but there’s a new book out by Andrew Blum called Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. After a mishap with his computer, this Wired reporter started investigating the web world. What he discovered is that new technology depends heavily
I’ve just finished Part II of Larry McMurtry’s autobiography, Literary Life, and found it contained many surprises. One would think the author of Lonesome Dove and 29 other novels, a man who has won the Pulitzer Prize and written dozens of screenplays, including Broke Back Mountai
On June 9 of this year, the writer Michael Lewis gave the commencement speech at Princeton, his alma mater. In it he made an observation about luck that went viral on the web. Life’s outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. The truth of his st
I wrote a blog a few weeks ago questioning that religion was the sole basis for morality. (6/12/12) In my view, societies developed moral codes to provide cohesion and safety for its members. I was speculating, of course, as I have no degree in sociology or anthropology. So imagine my