5 comments about Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues.

1. Farmer, a physician-anthropologist and activist, examines both the way that poverty and inequality result in the spread of HIV and TB today and the flawed justifications for inequitable access to treatment. His ethnographic analysis provides a powerful complement to standard epidemiological work, and this treatise on the danger as well as the immorality of inequity in medical care is largely convincing.
   
   Farmer illustrates several broad themes effectively with case studies from Haiti and Peru. One is the idea that most studies overemphasize individual agency, failing to recognize serious "structural" factors, such as the pressure that extreme poverty exerts on people to engage in unhealthy behaviors and the problems introduced by economic inequality. (One example of the latter is that in unequal countries like Peru, second-line TB drugs are available because of demand by the rich, so doctors also prescribe them to the poor who can only afford them intermittently, which generates drug-resistant strains of the disease.) Another theme is that people in rich nations tend to place heavy weight on "strange" cultural beliefs and customs in explaining high disease prevalence, whereas actual epidemiological research tends to show that these factors carry little weight relative to poverty-related factors. While he uses AIDS in Haiti to illustrate this tendency, it applies perfectly to popular Western conceptions of AIDS in Africa: the popular media tend to emphasize cultural practices such as wife inheritance and a strong sex drive, whereas epidemiological research fails to support a major role for these.
   
   A third theme, which Farmer often trumpets but not as convincingly, is that many of the trade-offs voiced by policymakers are ultimately false. One example is the question of whether to treat tuberculosis with drugs or prevent it (e.g., by investing in economic development). He then uses the success of his clinic in Haiti as an example of both treating and preventing TB. The ultimate argument is that the wealthy have no right to withhold their wealth from the poor. However, he gives us no clear sense of how the resources to generalize this to the world at large should be marshaled. While the trade-off may be philosophically false, the practical application is unclear.
   
   But even without a plan of action, Farmer illuminates key problems in the analysis of infectious disease spread and makes a convincing plea to share the wealth (and the technology).



2. By claiming "social reform," Farmer contradicts his stance as an American citizen: Haiti has no money to support its own citizens, that's why the US and others are doing Haiti's job. But, the US has to care for its own citizens as well therefore has to first work on its own AIDS patients within its boundary. If the US does that as its social reform, Haiti instantly dries up.
   
   Irritating mistakes somehow got through inspection: PAligre Dam? PEligre? (P. 174) PuertO Plata? PueltA? (P. 119)



3. Too long . Written with sientific dicipline & detail and burdened by too much specialized medical terminology for the popular reader . The idealism is admerable and the conclusion are justified but it speaks to the medical profession more than to the general public . A slow diffucult book to read . Sombody else should write the same book for the popular reader and for leaders in public policy .



4. An enlightening and insightful book that passionately sets a higher standard for those involved in medicine or any type of humanitarian work. He is passionate about what he says, but careful not to make assumptions that have not been well documented and researched. The book challenged my thinking when it comes to health care, poverty, and our social duty to take action against injustices in the world.



5. The context of epidemics is important. What happens to the poor people who have drug resistant tuberculosis? Market mechanisms do not serve the interest of global health equity. The cost-efectiveness argument is weak. Poverty limits freedom of choice. AIDS education falls short. Arguments about limited resources should not prevail. There is a global web of unequal relationships. Structural violence and cultural difference have been conflated in AIDS studies.
   
   Anthropology and medicine have blind spots. Virchow understood medicine had biologic and social underpinnings. There is not enough high-tech medicine to go around. Inequality itself is a pathogenic force. The author's interpretation of modern plagues has been shaped by work in Haiti and Peru. As scientific and medical communities tried to make sense of AIDS, the author was drawn into the discipline of the sociology of knowledge. World systems theory, one of the newer anthropological theories, could posit that Paul Farmer of Harvard and Haiti is a conduit for resources.
   
   In many instances of disease emergence, social topography is more important than geographic topography. The differential political economy of risk is described. The major risk factor for AIDS is poverty. Personal agency has been exaggerated. From typhoid to tuberculosis to AIDS, blaming the victim is a theme in the literature. Being sick results from structural violence, not from bad personal choices. The author lived in a village in rural Haiti when both AIDS and political violence arrived. Haitian cases of AIDS defied the risk-grouping descriptions prevalent in the 1980's. The Haitian epidemic of AIDS originated in the United States.
   
   Recent circumstances in Haiti include deepening poverty, gender inequality, instability. The author and other physicians and health workers have learned that a belief in sorcery among Haitians does not preclude adherence to a biomedical regimen. Furthermore, high cure rates for tuberculosis, (often a twin affliction of AIDS), are possible in settings of extreme poverty. Juxtaposing treatment with prevention are false debates.
   
   The author has traced the march of inequality as it affects health care in a myriad of ways. Endnotes and an extensive bibliography follow the text of this excellent work. Everyone should buy it, everyone should read it.

5 comments about The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

1. Pinker argues in favor of evolutionary psychology in this book rather than a blank slate view of human nature (i.e., a view that claims that the mind is formed purely by sensory input with no innate characteristics). Although the arguments in the book mainly focus on the blank slate theory of the mind, Pinker also argues against both the noble savage and the ghost in the machine views; the first view claims that humans are corrupted by civilization (such that the pre-civilization communities lived in a sort of utopian setting) while the second view claims that human thought is controlled by something outside the mind (e.g., a soul). Pinker cites a number of studies in this book to support his thesis that the mind is not a blank slate but that it has some characteristics that cannot be explained by environment alone (many of the studies involve identical and fraternal twins where identical twins have identical DNA but fraternal twins have distinct DNA) and argues that human nature is heavily influenced by the evolutionary process from which the human species arose.
   
   This is the first Pinker book that I have read and I found it very thought-provoking. Pinker is a gifted writer and made what I thought were compelling arguments against both strictly environmental and, to a lesser extent, strictly nativist theories of the mind (i.e., the views that human minds are influenced either entirely by nurture or entirely by nature). It took me a little while to get into this book simply because the idea that our minds are silly putty never has held much appeal for me; thus, I had little motivation to read arguments against a viewpoint that I did not subscribe to in the first place. However, Pinker brought up many familiar views in areas like children, violence and politics and tied these views back to underlying, fundamental assumptions of human nature to illustrate how the various theories of the mind have influenced many popular views in ways that are not always apparent, even to those who hold these views.
   
   Pinker argues that our social views and attitudes, especially the most important ones involving ethical values, should not be made dependent on what may turn out to be a faulty view of human nature. For example, Pinker argues that a concern for human rights is important because a society full of inequality, abuse and torment is one that the majority of humanity would not desire to live in; the fact that we have the ability to empathize with our fellow humans and, in some sense, "feel their pain" creates an even greater moral imperative to work towards a reduction of suffering. Conversely, Pinker states: "It is a bad idea to say that discrimination is wrong only because the traits of all people are indistinguishable. It is a bad idea to say that violence and exploitation are wrong only because people are not naturally inclined to them. It is a bad idea to say that people are responsible for their actions only because the causes of those actions are mysterious. And it is a bad idea to say that our motives are meaningful in a personal sense only because they are inexplicable in a biological sense." I am inclined to agree with these sentiments and I would recommend this book to others who are interested in a discussion on human nature with an evolutionary bent.



2. I am a big fan of Steven Pinker, and this, in my opinion, is his master work. Beautifully written (as always), it is sweeping in its scope. It demolishes the idea that humans are infinitely malleable and have no fixed nature.



3. A friend lend me this book after a discussion. I am not impressed.
   
   In "The Blank Slate", Pinker attacks the concept, giving the book its title, that we are born without any behavioral predispositions, and "The Noble Savage", that pure humans were all complete, moral beings. Although I agree with him that both of these are wrong, I think he is clearly attacking straw-men here. I don't know anybody who has given the topic any serious thought who would think that way. Pinker gives some examples of opposition to the idea that human behavior has a biological basis, but I think these trends are more fringe than he makes them seem. You will always get a segment of society opposed to any politically relevant scientific insight - look at evolution. There is no serious intellectual discussion anymore that behavior has partially a genetic basis.
   
   But the main problem is that Pinker is at most half-educated when it comes to some of the subjects he writes about. He makes statements which are either plainly wrong or so overly simplistic that they are meaningless. He takes the fact that the cortical folds are relatively conserved across humans as an argument that our behavior is genetically imprinted. But really any type of "Blank Slate" hypothesis would still be consistent with a constant large-scale brain anatomy.
   Another striking example (also noted by another reviewer) is his claim that "Bonobos are some of the most peaceful mammals known, chimpanzees some of the most aggressive. Chimps have sex for procreation, bonobos for recreation". First of all, that is simply not true - there are highly interesting, but certainly gradual differences between these apes, but none of them that radical. No chimp can match a lion in terms of aggression (both as a predator and as a practitioner of infanticide). Sexuality equally has a social role in chimps (and of course a reproductive role in bonobos).
   Second, it is just not a scientific statement - I am not aware of any zoologist making a ranking of the most aggressive or peaceful animals, and these qualities can probably not be expressed in scalar values (and thus ranked) anyway. Pinker sounds like somebody who has talked at a party to someone who had read a book about chimps. The book is filled with such over-generalizations, exaggerations and mistakes. Especially neuroscience (my own field) is not Pinker's strength!
   
   So, a rather sloppily argued book falsifying some opinions which had been falsified a long time ago. I am not sure what this is supposed to achieve? It might be that I am not the target audience for this book, but it is not the type of reading material I want to better myself as an intellectual. This is clearly not an original contribution to any scholarly debate, and not a well researched popular science book likely to convince anyone still believing that biology has nothing to do with human behavior either.
   
   It is a great art to write science books interesting to the expert but understandable to the layman, readable and without jargon, but not dumbed down. Writers like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins have mastered this art, Steven Pinker has not.



4. Stephen Pinker does an admirable job debunking the myth of the blank slate in this tome. Yes, what he says should be common sense by now. No, it is not.
   
   There are many places in the book where Pinker's values and background become evident. However, these are a small price to pay for a great book.
   
   So, what does Pinker do that's so great?
   
   1) He takes his opponents seriously and mounts his case slowly, step by step, taking the reader along with him.
   2) He illustrates that having a blank slate view of human nature is not morally righteous at all. (important for all those disposed to the moralistic fallacy)
   3) He does not talk down to the reader. Contrary to another reviewer, this book is not overly simplistic. There are points here and there where debate is possible, but overall it is highly accurate.
   
   When you are done with this book, you should have no doubt that genetics and evolution were and are very important in human life. Natural selection is the only theory which can explain human behavior- period.
   
   On the more controversial side, Pinker devotes many pages explicating Judith Rich Harris' theory about child development. Her views are very contentious, but provocative. Her basic argument is that children are MORE influenced by peer group socialization than the parenting style they lived under. Harris reached this conclusion after studying the behavioral genetic evidence. In behavioral genetics, it is known that all measured traits are heritable. Further, after subtracting genetic influence, unshared environment accounts for most of the left over variation- not shared environment. This is perplexing to most because it suggests that most environmental influences on personality come from WITHIN families not BETWEEN them. In short, two adopted siblings are no more alike than two strangers on the street, even though they share the same environment. Wheras, two twins seperated at birth are no more different than two twins who grow up in the same household.
   Pinker largely accepts Harris' theory, with slight reservations. D.C. Rowe presented a similar theory years earlier as well. The controversy still rages. It is a bit premature to pick sides. Pinker seems to, but he does tell the reader that Harris' theory is the minority view.
   
   In the end, this book can be read with pleasure by anyone. It is especially usefull to cite as a reference when having vapid debates with soiciologists. Most of Pinker's statements should be truisms. Unfortunately, they are not; Fortunately, he took the time to synthesize the insurmountable evidence against blank-slaters!



5. Yeah, I dont mean to come across the wrong way but i do have a degree in philosophy and i honestly think this is one of the best books i have ever read. Even in light of Kant, Hume, Locke, (Descartes sucks), Aristotle etc... This book does NOT seem to create an original system of philosophical thinking, rather this book is a synthesis of all intellectual pursuits put together, Anthropology, psychology, neurology, philosophy, history, etc... His main thesis is determinism, which in my opinion will be the next revolution in the culture of mankind... Similar to the so called Darwinian Revolution... In a nutshell our brains, more than our environments or so called free will, control our actions...
   
   I highly recommend this book...

5 comments about Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society,.

1. the book is written by an american woman with mideastern roots -- she provides great insight into the traditionals of the bedouin and arab worlds. I read this before I went to Egypt and it provided great foundation for understanding the culture of the town and village. I like her writing style -- she makes anthopological analysis interesting by explaining in the context of her interactions with the bedouins.



2. "Veiled Sentiments" is academic. It is the outcome of the author's living in a Bedouin community in northern Egypt (the Western Desert) for two years, a feat of no mean proportions.

   Lila Abu-Lughod came to a deep understanding of such aspects of the culture as blood ties, veiling and poetry not only because of her talent and training but also because she has ties to that culture. She calls academics like herself "halfies" because they belong both "inside and outside the communities they write about." She realizes that such a situation benefits them in terms of gathering knowledge within close cultures.

   The veiling of women (or rather women's veiling of themselves) is an important topic because of recent events including world politics and of the ongoing research in feminism. It is also important because it is so often misunderstood and so difficult to understand even when it is explained.
   
   After reading Abu-Lughod's renowned (in the world of academics) book, "Veiled Sentiments," I think I have a better handle on veiling than I ever would have had otherwise. It was not easy to absorb the concepts that surround it. That it took ¼ of a 315 page book to do it (a conservative estimate) is a testament to the intricacies of and the psychological motivations behind this cultural /religious practice.

   Learning more about veiling alone made this study one well worth reading. But the surprise for both the reader, and-as explained by Ms. Abu-Lughod-the author herself is the discovery of this culture's use of poetry. To take it one step further, the insight into how societies in general (at least ours and that of the Bedouins) similarly use their poetry and relate to it.

   Abu-Lughod finds that poetry is used somewhat differently among women in the Awlad ` Ali tribes than it is used by men. Because I am writing my own book of poetry called "Skyscapes: A Woman's View," I was especially interested in this aspect of "Sentiments;" it also was, by the author's own admission, an amazing and important cultural discovery. A group of women in China have their own secret language apart from the men; now this anthropologist brings to our attention how the poetry and veiling customs of these women reveal their emotions and are rooted in the traditions of a society in which they live quite separately from men.

   Though this book is not meant for mainstream readers, I hope that many who have no ties to anthropology will make an effort to read it. I believe that women will find it especially interesting but men will also find pertinent information for today's political climate within its pages. No amount of travel could impart the depth of understanding of this culture, and-by extension-similar cultures that this book does.

   (Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of "This is the Place..." )




3. I agree with the other reviewers. It was the best ethnography I can remember reading. What struck a chord with me was her description and explanation of the women's submission to the men, that the submissiveness was valuable only when it was voluntarily given. The idea of women being submissive to men is not only Islamic, but exists also in Christianity.



4. Lila Abu Lughod, an Arab American woman, lived among the Awlad Ali tribes of the North West of Egypt for two years. Veiled Sentiments is the book she wrote on the lives and poetry of Awlad Ali. Abu Lughod field work was clearly not carried out from a "superior" stance; she sympathized with her subjects and dealt with them as equal human beings rather than inferior specimen or cultures. Abu Lughod attitude, intelligence, training and tremendous analystical ability helped her in developing great insight and understanding of this fascinating culture.
   
   Abu Lughod analysis of concepts such as "hishma" was truly incisive and shed a great deal of light on the nature of modesty between women and men and amongst men and women. The analysis seems to explain behaviors and norms witnessed elsewhere in Egypt and indeed other parts of the Middle East.
   
   An important thesis of Abu Lughod is that the Awlad Ali people often communicated in very conservative and modest way directly through words; they only said what was proper and fitted the norms. Yet a second mode of communication far more true and expressive was found in their little songs or poems.
   
   Abu Lughod discussed gender relation amongst Awlad Ali at length and the relationship between women and the families of their husbands and the society at large. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it. For an excellent work on veiling and gender issues, I would recommend Leila Ahmed's Women & Gender in Islam.



5. 
   
   What is most interesting about this book -- which centers on the poetry of the Bedouin tribe of Awlad Ali -- is not the poetry per se, but that it gives an insider's view of the craft of Ethnography. It shows, through the eyes of a skilled ethnographer, and almost by indirection and in reverse order, how meaning is attached to cultures by the people who live in them.
   
   By peeling back the skin of the Awlad Ali culture - one of the nomadic tribes that once hovered around the edge of the Western Egyptian Desert -- we learn, not just "the ways" of this and similar Nomadic tribes, but more generally, the steps needed to attach meaning to the onion called culture. This analysis reveals, layer-by-layer, the structure and texture of the Awlad Ali worldview. It also reveals the various ideologies that supported its construction.
   
   The Awlad Ali tribe is a society based on blood kinship, on honor, and on a kind of fierce tribal autonomy and independence. And however abstract these categories may seem, and however much they may seem settled at birth, they are in fact constantly being re-negotiated in the tribe's everyday efforts to survive: "lived deeds" in the Awlad Ali culture always trump ascribed status and words. The culture has especially derogatory names and references to those who talk, but fail to act.
   
   Moreover, cultural meaning and societal rules remain close to the ground: that is, closely attached to survival needs. Ascribed status - that is patrilineal genealogy, maleness, etc. definitely have a pride of place in the culture, but these do not settle the matter of status once and for all: What one does with these is the final arbiter of ones position and status within the tribe.
   
   As an American peeping into another culture, what I learned in a somewhat painfully indirect way is that most of rest of the world - even primitive tribes -- still speak and relate to each other in the language of humanity: poetry, songs, prayer, proverbs, folklore, tales, myths, etc. To them, these are not mere cultural trinkets, ornamentations and affectations, to be tossed about during holidays, or to be commercialized and then tossed aside, or just the colorful tools used to promote a particular kind of politics or political organization, but they are the real meat of human discourse. They serve as the actual conduits through which deep human feelings are conveyed and transmitted.
   
   As a backdrop to our own culture, there are at least two lessons to be learned (indirectly and in relief) from this book:
   
   (1) That it is possible to construct a cultural worldview (a complete cosmology of meaning) entirely without the need for a category called "race" or without reference to the idea of a "religion." The author, who was Christian and a partly-white female, lived in the home of the tribe she was studying for two years, which was nominally Muslim, but with all of the many intersecting categories of meaning: race and religion, were never mentioned to her or ever played a role in tribal discourse.
   
   (2) That we Americans live in a social world that is bereft of normal meaningful human attachments and discourse. In comparison to the Awlad Ali tribe, we live in a world of greatly diminished humanity in which racism, acquisition of things, commodification and consumerization of those things, rationalizations and political spin, false piety, rationing of intangibles qualities, knee-jerk bipartisanism, sublimated hatred, and artistic shallowness, are substitutes for real meaning.
   
   Is this all just an inevitable part of modernity? It is difficult to know, but we must be grateful to this author for showing us with great skill that there are other images of, and paths to meaningfulness.
   
   Ten Stars

5 comments about Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder.

1. In the physical world, we have to abide by the laws of physics - atoms can only be in one place at a point in time. Hence, store layouts, filing structures, or even the mess on your desk comes to down optimization, context, and often, personal bias. However, in the digital world, as David Weinberger points out, we have no such limitations. If we can get rid of the idea that there is a best way to organize our digital world, we'll end up with a world of meta-data and systems that can dynamically construct faceted trees to exactly meet your immediate needs.
   
   "Everything is Miscellaneous" is a great argument against Aristotelian trees and the notion of 'perfect order'. Let's face it, we're all different, we all have our context, and our information systems should exploit these facts. Migrating towards meta-data is the first step.



2. It always frustrated me that I could never get a group to really achieve consensus on the best way to organize a website. Arguments about how to label pages, what to include and not include, etc. dominated discussions. You always ended up with a compromise that people outside of the room end up questioning.
   
   Until you realize, there IS no one right way to organize a web site.
   
   David Weinberger's book, Everything is Miscellaneous, dramatically details why I was having such a difficult time and the good news -- that increasingly in the digital world, we can stop worrying about how to organize the information and concentrate on providing information that contributes to meaningful understanding.
   
   We're not constrained by front page real estate, column space/sizes, peer-review editorial boards and other feedback filtering mechanisms that came to dominate what he calls the 2nd order of organization. People access knowledge in the digital world through a variety of means and it becomes less important who you are and more important what the perceived value of what you contribute is.
   
   Of course most businesses currently operate under the model he describes of providing the engineered customer experience. They have spent tons of resources building a brand based precisely on who they are and why you should listen to them. They could probably care less about adding to meaning, they just want sales or readers or whatever.
   
   I highly recommend the book to anyone who has ever been frustrated by an attempt to classify or organize -- whether it's organizing a closet, file drawers, deciding where to put a file on a shared drive at work, grading 3rd grade papers, planning a web site or whatever.
   
   Similarly anyone who has ever looked for something and couldn't find it, especially if you consider yourself organized -- you will love how this book opens up your perspective on finding, organizing and searching in the new digital world.
   
   Of course, if you're under the age of like 19, you've grown up with this and the book won't have as much meaning potentially.



3. Order reduces options. Classical education inclines the mind to idealism.
   Through the ages we have grown heavy with hierarchical matter, isolated by divisive, absolute, classified ideologies in the name of order maintained as truth by authority. Now "Everything is Miscellaneous" glories in a new vision of hope, transparency, understanding, freedom, and peace--a newly enlightened collective consciousness. Weinberger's work is fascinating and exuberant with optimism that we can emerge out of the chaos of messy, unfettered knowledge to global understanding. Western civilization (essentialism) from Plato to Aristotle to Dewey to Jimmy Wales is up for review and the prognosis is good. Read the book; play with tools; enter the conversations; navigate the cosmos, indeed, let knowledge at long last lead to understanding.



4. I totally disagree with the reviewers that pontificate against this book. It is not a techno-geek book, or a philosophy book, it is simply a common sense overview that I personally consider to be educated, helpful to the point of essential. At $16, with the Amazon discount, this book is a bargain.
   
   I started with the index, and immediately discovered Meta-Data had 18 lines.
   
   The book opens with examples from Staples ("hacking the physical") to Apple iTunes (end of bundling) and I am immediately charmed by the combination of an end to fraudulent store organization (Giant supermarket moves everything from one week to the next to force searching which increases impulse buying) and an increase in focus on serving the individual rather than serving up a "one size fits all" solution. Separately I am looking at Chinese medicine for a health intelligence book, and this resonates.
   
   Early on one sees the author agreeing with Jean Francois Noubel (the end of the pyramidal organization) and Jim Rough (rise of the circle of citizen wisdom)--I myself enraged the secret intelligence mandarins by announcing in the 1990's that "in the age of decentralized information central intelligence is an oxymoron." The author is one of the gurus of what is becoming known as the axis of Cognitive Science and Collective Intelligence (the Art), and he and another 54 authors are brought together in the first collective work of its kind, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace which is also free online in full pdf or chapter docs. Disclosure: I published the book--I do not know the author personally, but Jock Gill, a gifted communicator, exposed me to the author's earlier work on Open Spectrum, something that inspired my own informal views on "Open Everything" and unlike most of the other contributors that were identified by Tom Atlee or Mark Tovey (the editor), I personally sought his contribution to the book because of my very high regard for his "take" on all this.
   
   I bought the book as a fan already, but the content easily validates my appreciation The discussion of first order pigeon-holing (the Weberian concept of bureaucracy applies), second order cross referencing (naturally limited and often wrong in early generations--Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal System are toast), versus unlimited tagging, chunking, clustering, socially-informed selection, and other aspects of the power of the collective, are all illuminated by this book.
   
   I am further impressed early on with his stellar discussion of Mortimer Adler and the limitations of alphabetization. I was a penniless graduate student when I discovered the Great Books, and as a young officer, spent my first $700 acquiring a set. The Syntopicon that the author mentions in the book is better understood by the image I introduce above, something I created in 1979, my second of four analytic models (the first was on predicting revolution across all domains).
   
   I have two notes at this point:
   
   1) Truth or what can be known constantly changing, a fixed or slow to adapt "index" process cannot scale or survive.
   
   2) 2008 election is already lost--neither candidate offers us what we deserve: listening instead of stump speeches; appointed cabinet and balanced budget now, as part of the campaign, instead of empty promises; and 24/7 interaction with all 65 political parties, instead of focusing on the one third that is their base and a slice of the middle third.
   
   He emphasizes that knowledge is not top down, and with a tip of the hat to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and also facilitator for the nation-wide network of 27 separatist movements, I also post above an image of Epoch B "bottom up" leadership that none of our world leaders understand.
   
   Page 80, discussion of Ranganathan (India) Colon Classification system impresses me. I think to myself, wow, needs to be integrated into Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language, or IEML.
   
   The middle of the book discusses--engagingly, I feel--how the digital world enables infinite variations in relationships and labels that can in turn create infinite variations of just right, just in time, just enough visualizations.
   
   Crowd tagging leads to sub-set clustering which leads to contextual sense-making.
   
   He spend time on Wikipedia. I admire Jimbo Wales and try to attend the Wikimanias, but I have given up on Wikipedia because in the case of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) page, I had to give up--while the author would have me engage and patiently lead the recalcitrant along (I have 20 years experience with that in the real world) I have come to a different conclusion: I believe that anyone should be allowed to CREATE, but only master moderators should be allowed to destroy.
   
   The summary of the book's message is offered by the author with four concepts:
   
   1) Filter on the way OUT, not in (this is the difference between the read only publishing model, and the read-write Creative Commons model)
   
   2) Put each leaf on as many branches as possible--unlike the physical world, each leaf can have infinite lives
   
   3) Everything is meta data and everything can be a label (he provides a fine discussion of bar codes, RFIDs, and Thinglinks)
   
   4) Give up control. He admires Wikipedia for doing precisely that. When I first started the modern OSINT movement in 1992, I coined the phrase, "Give up control to gain control" meaning that centralized intelligence had to give way to decentralized sharing and sense-making. The spies still don't get it, but public intelligence in the public interest is here to stay. A corollary here is that the best approach is to include all--optimize inclusiveness and diversity; and where there is conflict or disagreement, postpone exclusion or resolution, more data later will make it easier and easier to come back to...
   
   The final section of the book deals with mapping the implicit, mining the clouds of tags, creating an infrastructure of meaning with infinite potential. I have a note: unites the eight tribes of intelligence (governmenbt, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-profits, and civil societies including religions and labor unions).
   
   Other flyleaf notes:
   
   + Stupid works. Keep it simple and let it evolve on its own.
   
   + Bit by bit, not all at once. Provide for innovation at the intersections and on the margins
   
   + Kind of and sort of rule, not the black and white that did rule
   
   + I learn of Valdis Krebs and his concepts of social cartography
   
   + I am engaged with the discussion of information sprawl and natural typologies
   
   + The author concludes that the search for knowledge will constantly struggle between the simple and the complex (sources and methods).
   
   + Going meta is what is so cool about web ecology and evolution.
   
   The author does NOT say this, but I mark his book down as being in favor of the human web of sense-making beating out the semantic web and machine learning schools.
   
   Page 230, this is a quote that really grabs my attention: "It's not about who is right and who is wrong. It's how different points of view are negotiated, given context, and embodied with passion and interest. Individual thinking out-loud now have weight, and authority and expertise are losing some of their gravity." The rest of this page is equally good.
   
   I am surprised to learn that the author holds a PhD in philosophy, and that he advised Howard Dean. I am not surprised to learn that he has been twice renewed as a fellow at the Berkman Center.
   
   Other books that have engaged me and for which I have reviews:
   The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
   The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
   The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
   One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
   Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
   Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
   Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
   How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
   
   There are many others, most obvious. Please do see the two images I post above--I firmly believe that the last eight years were a gift from heaven, a necessarily catastrophic gutting of our Nation so that we might properly conclude that both political parties stink with corruption, and it is time we put We the People back into the Republic, 24/7. This book is a solid brick in our foundation for understanding why this is both possible, and necessary.



5. . . . unlike the Internet, our time is not infinite. So, while the Internet has allowed for total randomness, for the sake of each individual's time, there needs to be some order. And, while it's nice to think that tags and other technologies will do this, so far, they have created their own disorder and randomness.
   
   So, what has actually happened is a site like Wikipedia has become our defacto "rule of order". Just do a search on any topic. Most likely, the Wikipedia entry will be in the top 3. And of course, there is a reason for that: We the people want order.

2 comments about Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

1. Here you can witness Freud not as the straw man stereotype that so many despise but as a warm, humorous man with a great deal of vision. The man you encounter in this book is so different from what you would expect that I warmly recommend this to anyone with an inquiring mind.

   He was a genius.




2. This is the best introduction to Freud's ground-breaking psychological theories, now so much maligned and obscured by the apologists for the pharmaceutical stupefaction and mollification that now passes for psychiatry and keeps our bankrupt culture lurching forward.
   
   It takes courage to read this book with an open mind, but if you do you can't but gain new insight into yourself and the people around you. The prose is delightful-- erudite, lucid, penetrating (ha!), and illustrated with beautifully observed examples from literature, history, and Freud's own life and practice.

5 comments about How the Mind Works.

1. I bought this book to gain insight. Instead I found an alchemist trying to discuss chemistry. I should have known from the title. We have/are a brain not a mind. Reading this book is painful. One of his first tasks Pnker undertakes is to criticize behavioral science. He calls it stimulus response. Behavioral science gives six causes for human behavior:
   1. Genetic Endowment
   2. Pre-natal chemical environment
   3. Post-natal chemical environment
   4. Classical conditioning(Pavlov)
   5. Operant conditioning(Skinner)
   6. Traumatic factors
   Even Skinnerian conditioning, which he singles out for being stimulus response involves consequences as a major determinant. Behaviorism is a science that like evolution it is selective. Anyone who calls this stimulus response shows complete misunderstanding. Pinker then carries on his ignorance by saying that if a person runs from a burning building it is because they "Believed" they were in danger. He basically uses what he would believe and puts it in the brain of his example. First of all he knows nothing of what another person believes. Second thinking a person that would have to escape any dangerous situation by formulating a belief and then acting on it is just ludicrous. A brain couldn't evolve to function this way. Beliefs are effects. Belief's are conditioned and behavior is conditioned. Just because a belief goes along with a behavior doesn't mean it causes it. Thinking that is superstitious behavior. Our education system is really pathetic. Glad behavioral techniques that were 100% effective in increasing learning skills and self confidence were shelved to fund teaching techniques that saw dramatic declines in learning skills and self confidence. Of course this could only happen in a society where worldviews are conditioned and logic is never automatic, but Pinker hasn't learned observational skills to recognize this. Back to the example. Just because you didn't see all the variables that caused the girl to run from the burning building doesn't mean they don't exist. Your criticism of behaviorism because it can't predict behavior is so inane it is beyond words. Like people that criticize evolution it is because they have no understanding. Behaviorism never would claim to predict behavior. There are billions of variables that determine every unique behavior and the science is a framework to make effective changes through trial and error. You continue your archaic catalog of already answered criticisms by saying Skinner said men don't think. He never said this. Thoughts are superfluous. If they were causes as you claim then what people thought and what they did would be the same. They aren't and never will. Thoughts are unverbalized speech that are triggered and sometimes go along with behavior. It is real world stimuli(experiences) and their interaqction with the brain that determines behavior. If you weren't conditioned to swallow all the cultural BS maybe you could see science always disproves the presuppositions our culture conditons many to accept. No the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth. Yes we are products of our environment. This may be predictably dismissed by a culture conditioned to shiver at these words, but understanding this is the only way we will ever make effecdtive, positive changes to improve the human condition. A shame your book is doing everything one can to set us back hundreds of years. What is your real name? Nim Chimpsky. BTW your language book is another pathetic exercise in ignorance. B.F. Skinner's book is definitive and actually creates a philosphy that allows for effective changes. Time will expose your ignorance, but I am living now, so I want to let everyone know B.F. Skinner was the only person that was right and did useful work. His science is evolutionarily sound and hope our culture has of making effective, postive changes. This book is sad.



2. this was the first book of steven pinker's that i've read. it was very interesting at times, but the material was a bit too dense in some parts. it was difficult to glean a point very easily. and not all of the diagrams were helpful in elucidating whatever the text was trying to say. it was an okay, long, read. nevertheless, that hasnt discouraged me from tackling pinker's "the language instinct" next.



3. Steven Pinker, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, argues that the mind is a computational computer. He uses Darwin's concept of reverse engineering to show how most of man's mental and emotional traits evolved.
   
   Pinker also shows how the mind was designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their hunter/gatherer existence, which may be why we have such trouble explaining such esoteric concepts as consciousness and sentience.
   
   Pinker does not have a whole lot of respect for Freud, B.F. Skinner, or the Standard Social Science Model, which views the mind as a blank slate at birth. He disdains a moral approach when discussing natural selection, which gets him in trouble with feminists among other value-laden "isms". Instead, he argues for a "module-packed mind" that "allows both for innate motives that lead to evil acts and for innate motives that can avert them."
   
   When discussing the computational mind, Pinker spends a lot of time on the eye. He shows how the eye evolved from light sensitive skin tissue, how humans developed stereoscopic vision leading to a bigger brain, how the brain tricks us into believing that matter is solid, and how seeing in color and in three dimensions led to more brain capacity. Pinker even shows us how the "Mind's eye" works. The eye connects to the brain, but the brain also connects to the eye.
   
   Emotions began with the family and extended to non-family because foragers lived in groups. We love people who carry our genes. Pinker shows how the emotions evolve from the family to non-family relationships using reciprocal altruism. If you grant a favor to another (such as supplying him with meat) and he later returns the favor, you like him. If he cares for you when you are sick with no apparent compensation, you grow to love him. Cheaters inspire other emotions such as anger and resentment and the list grows. Guilt happens when we're cheating and we know it. Sympathy is an emotion for gaining gratitude. Body language ensures that emotions are hard to fake. Most people have scam detectors; you can tell the difference between a real smile and that of a beauty contestant.
   
   Pinker also discusses bi-products of natural selection such as religion, music, philosophy and art. As mentioned earlier, we are blessed (or cursed) with a forager's brain. "The intellect evolved to crack the defense of things in the natural and social world," not answer such questions as "Why do bad things happen to good people?" We are lucky our stone-age minds do as well as they do when tackling complex scientific problems.



4. I found this book to be excellent and a fun read.
   
   It goes into detail about how one can view the human mind from a logical and behaviorist stand-point. He discusses a computer program type analogy for how a mind can work with a minimum of sub-programs or data types.
   
   I did find the book a little too heavy on the logical and strictly behaviorist point of view. The human mind or any mind for that matter seems a bit more than a simple set of instructions - but this may not be the case.
   
   All in all, I thought this book was excellent and was a good introduction on how to think about how the mind works or could work based on a simplified set of programs and data types and instructions - if you will.
   
   I highly recommend it to anyone interest in psychology or logic.



5. I also read Steven Pinker's `the Blank Slate', which had been recommended by a friend who knew of my interest in the brain and brain-mind area. I was also, as many other reviewers here, impressed again by Pinker's prose style. The witty asides are often apropos and lighten what might otherwise be a dry description of the findings of neuroscience. However, though I like his style, I don't always agree with Pinker and in the cases where I perceive him being wrong, this witty and cheeky style can verge on the snide or smarmy. There is nothing like a dismissive, cynical remark to deal with those who do not share your point of view. But it's a cheap shot and not worthy of Pinker, who can be much smarter when it suits him. E.g. he does this in his critique of two writers who he implies are almost heretical in daring to challenge the computational theory of the mind: John Searle and Roger Penrose. His cynical put down of these 2 writers implies that they were foolish and justly criticized by the majority of philosophers who favor the computational theory. However, the majority was not as large as implied by Pinker. There are quite a few philosophers who argued for the ideas of Searle with his Chinese Room thought experiment or Penrose with his application of Gödel's theorem to the non-algorhythmic side of thought. Pinker thinks that Searle was only exploring meanings of the word `understand' with his Chinese Room: my own take there is that on the contrary Searle omitted an aspect that didn't sit well with his conscious-brain/digestion-stomach analogy: what was missing in the room was a light floating round the library corresponding to the qualia of understanding the Chinese queries which the western librarian did not understand. Also, the book, being written in 1998, can be excused for putting so much emphasis on identical twins whose behavior is bizarrely similar. But since the Human Genome Project completed in 2003, we know that there are only 22,000 genes corresponding to about 10 megabytes of data. But this data is scarcely sufficient to specify the complexity of the 200 different types of cell in the body, it's 12 or more physiological subsystems and all the (rough) structure of the brain. That is true even if the non-coding RNA is considered to have a control function Thus it is ludicrous to suggest that genes could be responsible for the remarkable synchronization between separated twins as reported by Pinker. Indeed, Pinker's detested ghost in the machine might be a more reasonable explanation for this synchronization - via non-local mind or telepathy. So maybe a new edition of this book is due where some of these anachronisms are tidied up.
   
   There are some good points about the book: I like his dismissal of the behaviourists: his jokes about their predilection for rats etc. are justified. And though he pushes the computational theory further than he should, and re-hashes some older findings from cognitive psychology, his position, though mechanist, is less extreme than that of Skinner & co. and he acknowledges the 'residual' mystery of subjective consciousness and in this sense is justified to call himself a sort of 'mysterian'. This is more than can be said of Dennett or his ilk.

5 comments about Influence: Science and Practice (4th Edition).

1. I can't even begin to tell you how many books I have read on the subject of "influence". I have been sorely disappointed by all of them. They range from books on magic tricks, to new age ideas and pop-psychology.
   
   But this book, FINALLY, is the real deal. It is based on good, solid, scientific research and is beautifully written. There are eight chapters which essentially take one particular technique of influence (used by the advertising industry typically)and the chapter explains in detail why and how it works. All of the other books I've read give techniques and explanations that seemed doubtful to me at best. As you read this book you KNOW it's right!
   
   I am not a marketer interested in techniques of influence to sell my product - but certainly if you are - you will find what you are looking for. But for me, the most important part of the book was that it not only showed me the techniques they are using, but how to protect myself from those same techniques.
   
   The book is well worth having and if you are interested in this subject, I don't think you'll find a better book.



2. This is one of my favorite social psychology books. It is about compliance. It is about influencing others.
   
   It is probably one of the most important works available to the general public regarding the science of compliance. How to get customers, counterparties in negotiation, etc. to be primed to act in a targeted way (i.e., to get them to say "Yes", or to do something you want, etc.).
   
   The top people on "Madison Avenue" (advertising, marking, publicity, etc.), campaigning, political action, interrogation, etc. know these concepts. You should too. If only to be aware of the subtle factors that could influence you in acting in a manner you are initially opposed to, not necessarily to use them. However, if you are a negotiator, or are in marketing, or involved in campaigning and spreading "messages" or involved in "thought leadership" - you definitely need to read this book and learn its concepts and techniques. Consumers - which these days is basically everyone - should read this - so they don't get taken in or advantage of by advertising and marketing campaigns.
   
   This book is all about influencing behavior - influencing the behavior of others - as well as being on guard from being the subject, or target of, these influencing techniques to your detriment.
   
   Briefly, you can understand these influence techniques by understanding the concepts that Cialdini in Influence elucidates (with multiple cases and examples found in the book):
   
   1. Reciprocation - People tend to help people that help them.
   
   2. Consistency - People tend to act consistently over time. Small moves (especially when those moves - actions or statements - are public) towards a goal are hard to reverse. Small gains thus become leveraged into larger gains (i.e., gains being equal to the subject's behavior moving towards the target behavior). Past behavior can be used to influence future behavior.
   
   3. Social Proof - This is when third-party's lend their credibility (for e.g., "Lance Armstrong uses product x" - the implication is so should you, etc.) or "Everyone likes x" - so should you. This is the "bandwagon" appeal which is also used in advertising and propaganda techniques.
   
   4. Liking - People tend to like their friends and people who are nice to them, people that are ingratiating.
   
   5. Authority - Similar to social proof, but here, this is based on the background of the person making a statement. For example, "Tom Smith is a Ph.D. in economics. He says the economy is going down." Thus you take his advice or conclusion (claims) as true just based on his credentials and not based on his argument and the evidence he provides (if any) in support of it.
   
   6. Scarcity - People think that if something is scarce that it is valuable. This is not necessarily the case. An example: "this sale only lasts for three days, hurry and buy this car". Or another example is an executive or other person who feigns "busy-ness") to influence someone - to feign importance.
   
   This book is very important in our age of mass media. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in advertising or marketing, negotiation, or the general public (i.e., consumers).



3. I did not buy the book to find out how to schnook the unsuspecting, but that's pretty much what I learned. Or learned a -bit- of. After reading Woodward and Denton's far superior Persuasion & Influence in American Life, Cialdini's work seems like densely worded overkill attempting to concretize a mere seven worthwhile, but very simple concepts.
   
   These seven concepts could have easily been dealt with in a magazine article: 1) Conditioned, co-dependent, people-pleasing "reciprocation;" 2) post-purchase "committment" to fend off cognitive dissonance; 3) peer-conscious, approval-seeking, run-with-the-pack "social proof" in place of actual evidence; 4) acquiescence to seduction or "liking the friendly thief;" 5) socially conditioned acceptance of "authority;" 6) anxiety-driven fear of "scarcity" (or not getting what we want because we think it won't be available "next time"); and 7) the "instant influence" created by informational overwhelm and perceived lack of time or resources to examine the evidence for and against a decision.
   
   If Cialdini dealt with these at such length with concrete examples that were more easily grasped, I might have given this -three- stars, but his writing style is so opaque, it flows like molasses in winter on the south shore of Lake Ontario. Hey! It's cheap, but even so, I'm scratcing my head as to why "over one million copies [have been] sold!" ...unless most of them were bought by used car salesmen, stock brokers, real estate agents and telephone solicitors.



4. Its an older book so the information might be a bit dated. Its a lot of what you will learn in an intro psych course or soc psych course.
   
   Good book for lay person though. Its entertaining and well orgainized.



5. What lets some people be listened to while others are completely ignored -- despite saying essentially the same thing? "Influence: Science in Practice" has sold over a million and a half copies is an examination of the concept of Influence and its effect in the world of business. The new and improved fifth edition adds more supportive anecdotes, the effect of popular culture, technological advances, and cultural issues that appear. Now in a newly updated and expanded fifth edition, "Influence" is a must for anyone who wants to be heard in the world of business.

5 comments about The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.).

1. The only way to describe this book is 'excellent.' Starting with our evolutionary origins, Jared Diamond examines possible reasons for many uniquely human (or so you'd think) behaviors and oddities, ranging from art to relative penis size (after reading this book you will be able to say that you're better hung than a gorilla). Next, Diamond turns his focus to some of the nastier behaviors of human societies - genocide, racism, etc - and explores what recent findings mean to us as a species. Finally, in the last few chapters, Diamond goes on a conservation crusade, convincingly arguing the case for working toward a sustainable future. Read it - it will change the way you think of yourself and others in relation to the world.



2. I took away the following:
   
   1. Humans are descended from animals. Diamond shows that the things we think distinguish humans from animals - art, language, lifecyle (long child rearing period, menopause, long lives) - have strong roots in our biological history. There is a TON of fascinating detail covering a wide range of topics, and is essentially an articulate reinforcement of the latest science showing the truth behind Darwin's theories.
   
   2. Language is the key to rise of humanity. It's obvious, though, that humans are somehow unique, and the book postulates that language is the key. If humans are 98% the same genetically as chimpanzees, what small thing could make the huge evolutionary difference? The voice box and ability to form languages allow humans to cooperate, form more complex social organizations, and advance knowledge from one generation to the next. Language is the foundation of innovation, which has been essential to our rise. As someone who enjoys languages and can speak a few, I really liked this idea.
   
   3. All humans are equal. Differences among humans in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia, the Artic, and so on are not based on genetic selection but rather sexual selection. I've read Stanford research that tracks maternal genes through the millenia and shows that humans spread from Africa to all corners of the world. Diamond postulates that the reason people look different is perhaps due to genetic adaptations to local environments (fairer skin in colder climates, etc), but more likely due to random changes reinforced by our predilection for choosing mates who look most like our own families. My favorite detail: people are more likely to choose mates with similar index finger length (0.6 correlation coefficient) than economic background (only 0.2).
   
   4. Random distribution of geographic resources makes some cultures and societies more successful. From #3, Diamond goes on to say that the reason European culture has come to be pre-eminent in today's world is not because of genetic superiority. Rather, it is simply due to the fact that Europe (and its culture progenitors Greece and Rome) happened to be lucky enough to have the best natural resources. If you've played Risk, Civilization or World of Warcraft, this is pretty obvious. You want to found your cities or capture the areas where there are the most resources that allow you to build the biggest and most advanced armies (Diamond expanded this theory in his more famous book Germs, Guns and Steel, which I haven't read yet). But, I don't know. Though this theory is interesting and powerful, it sparked the biggest reaction in me. I found it somehow...Marxist, stating that all human history can be reduced to economic drivers. While I know resource advantages are helpful to some degree, my humanist side rejects this as the primary driver of history. Where is the role of the individual, of the struggle to grow and learn? Could it really be that Western culture produced Plato, Newton and Churchill simply because it happened to have plentiful deer, while other places didn't? Do I go to work everyday, invest time into my children and bust my tail without a single ounce of impact on the fate of my culture? Of course not, so though Diamond postulates this as a strong theory it gives only a partial explanation of history.
   
   5. The end is near: beware of nuclear weapons and environmental catastrophy. In this area Diamond seemed to leave the field of science and enter that of personal political view. Most of the book felt deeply analytical and data driven, the last sections felt light on science in comparison. That said, I don't disagree with the point. It's just hard to accept when his argument for protecting endangered species is "you never know which one matters."
   
   Overall, an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.



3. I thought this book made many interesting and intellectual connections between human nature and the evolution of primates. The author does an excellent job of substantiating his hypthesis with scientific and established facts. His predictions for the future of humans are logically explained.
   
   That being said, some topics are over explained and repetitious.
   
   Overall I think this book is very much worth reading.



4. Hey, my review is going to be broken down in to four sections, the introduction, the information that you can retain from this book, the interest level of this book, and the age group I recommend this to. This book (The Third Chimpanzee) talks about how us humans are what we are today and what came in the process of it. This is an interesting topic to speak about because it is a surprise to know what we came from and how our great ancestors chose the "right" mates for them, which eventually created us in the end.
   I will be talking about a few of the subjects Jared Diamond covers in his book, the evolution of human sexuality is a very important subject, you will learn about how your ancestors chose their mates and what made them do it. You will learn about male jealousy over a female and the evolution of extra-marital sex. The chapter on how we pick our mates and sex partners will make you want to read even more, Diamond talks about the scientific studies about this subject and how we subconsciously become turned on by different characteristics in a male or female without even realizing it, as example the temperature of their hands or as funny as it sounds the way they give you a hug may allow you to make a subconscious decision for mating. The information you retain from this book is amazing, if you are looking to find as much information as possible about human evolution, this book is for you. Now, how interesting this book is to me, I do not know, even though this books hold a lifetime worth of information, there is also a lot of ranting and raving, so many people might become very bored with this type of writing. This book is just a very hard read, to get into it you MUST give it your full attention or else you wont really learn anything about. I found part three to be one of the most interesting subjects because it spoke about the origins of art and how some societies elaborated on it and how some did not. The reason this book is a crucial read is because Jared Diamond does not just question the reader he also provides them with answers that have been long awaited. I recommend this book to a 16+ age group, not necessarily because younger children could not understand the book, but it is long and tiresome and certain points, so they may lose interest. This book is excellent for any information seekers, that are looking for theories and scientific studies to back a book or essay they are writing about, yet I would not really recommend this to someone who just wants to read for fun. Jared Diamond also covers an interesting topic which might spark an interest in high school readers which talks about why people smoke, drink and use dangerous drugs. This book is full of fun and interesting information so you kids who are in high school or you students who are in college, I recommend you read this for it will benefit you in the future.



5. One thing I admire about Jared Diamond is his ability (like Carl Sagan) to take complex issues and scientific concepts then molding them into comprehensive bites that the average reader can swallow. The Third Chimpanzee a book that Diamond had published in 1992 has come back into print because of the success of Collapse and Germs, Guns & Steel which is terrific since it tackles a very different series of subjects from the ability of animals to communicate with each other, natural selection and why homosapiens managed to come out on the top of the heap, how/why we find certain people attractive and select our mates to whether or not aliens are listening for our radio signals (and why we might be in big trouble because we gave them our address IF they were listening).
   
   All of this falls under the general theme of the book which focuses on the nature and future of humanity. Diamond has a breezy, enjoyable style that most readers will find inviting and that makes the more complex scientific ideas that much easier to swallow (whether it be how scientist calculate how often we go through evolutionary change or which theory about why men have bigger...you know what than our nearest relatives).
   
   Diamond's book is over 15 years old so things have changed a bit since he first wrote it although interestingly the very things that he suggested could happen do appear to be coming true in many cases so he's added a post script discussing some of these new ideas, etc. that weren't available when the book was written.
   
   As with Diamond's other books he is very upfront about his thoughtful opinions on the subject he focuses on. Whether or not you enjoy the book will probably depend on whether or not you like to have your preconceptions challenged, you agree with him or both.

4 comments about Psychology of Learning for Instruction (3rd Edition).

1. Marcy's book was the text for a course I attended, and it was packed with useful information. Her writing style is clear and organized into meaningful content areas. I found her examples to be practical and they easily conveyed the essence of the context. In general, the book exemplified the principles discussed in the materials by being student-centered.



2. Just finishing my masters in secondary education, this is the book I find myself using as a reference most often. Just about everything is here in regards to the psychology of education from the elementry stuff like Behaviorism through a hoard of theorists like Piaget, Asubel, Brunner, etc. etc. etc. The contrast presented at the end of the book between Gagne and the constructivists makes the book feel particularly relevant.

   Who knows, maybe it is just that so many of the other books for teachers seem lackluster (am I the only one who didn't find Wong particularly useful???), but Driscoll's book is one of the best reference books for teachers I've come across so far.

   And yeah, I don't think it was meant as a 'reference' book per se, but this will definitely point you in the right direction and while it is certainly readible, I found it stood out most for me as a stepping stone to the literature.




3. I had the pleasure of being an online graduate student at Florida State University where Dr. Driscoll was teaching. Having Dr. Driscoll as an instructor, using her own book as a textbook for the course, was an invaluable experience for me. Anyone who needs a deeper understanding of cognitive learning theories need not look any further than this book. The logical formatting and presentation, the examples and explanations of theory from a variety of sources, makes this book a true gem, and one I still refer to, years after attending Dr. Driscoll's course.



4. Driscoll outlines various behavioral, psychological, and educational theories. Her focus on the applications and implications of learning theories is quite extensive.

2 comments about Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (with Coglab 2.0 Online Booklet).

1. for such a boring subject. Why, oh why are textbooks so ridonkulously expensive, though? This one had a black and blue color scheme- not exactly "no expense spared" for a hundred dollar textbook.



2. To be completely honest the only reason I bought this book was because it was required for one of my classes. Overall though the book is a fairly easy read with lots of demonstrations throughout. In the center of the book there are also several color "plates" as they call them, that are refered to during the reading. This book also comes with a Coglab manual. If you are not taking a class that requires the manual, then I would look for just the text book. To use the online part you need a special code from a school to access it. The Coglabs are fun though and a vaild learning experience that teach you a lot about yourself. This book is a far easier read than a lot of textbooks I have had to read. If you are interested in the subject of Congnitive Psychology then I would recommend this book as an introduction.