No comments about Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition (Oxford Biology).

5 comments about Working Minds: A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis (Bradford Books).

1. Gary Klein and his colleagues have been studying for many years what kinds of mind-sets different jobs need, and this book reports on how that field of study is shaping up. A methodology has been developed, wherein investigators study knowledgeable workers (experts) to get the skills baseline, then write up a (series of) template(s) on their findings, whereupon these templates become teaching guides for new recruits.
   
   This book gives a number of case studies of all phases of CTA projects. Even before interviews begin, there is a Preparation phase, wherein the CTA practitioners learn enough about the job, profession, and field of work so that they can ask intelligent questions and recognize relevant answers. Then Knowledge Elicitation follows, through interviews, questionnaires, brain-storming sessions, etc., usually involving two analysts, one to lead the enquiry, the other to record the results.
   
   In the Analysis phase the results are collated, correlated, and represented in some graphical or tabular form so that the pattern of cognitive capabilities and their inter-relations can be depicted and understood. The patterns that may emerge include Hierarchical Task Analysis (the task logic of entailment and subsumption), and Procedural Task Analysis (the linear and concurrent sequence of activities), and these may be represented with Skills Lists, Mind Maps, Dimensional Distributions, etc.
   
   The motivation to engage in this type of analysis is often the need to train new recruits more proficiently or replace retirees more efficaciously. So Cognitive Training is a very important part of the exercise, and the findings must be interpreted in such a way as to facilitate this process. Instructional Analysis is therefore based on the previous findings, and both the content and the process of training are improved as a result. In the Knowledge Society this is by far the most sensible approach to training. How many of the Knowledge Working Skills are analyzed, formalized, and instructed in this way? Not nearly enough so far - not even in Learning Facilities or Knowledge Factories - but it is a waste of time, money, and effort to train in any other way, so we can hope that CTA is the wave of the future!



2. The authors described the What, Why, When, Where and How of Cognitive Task Analysis from multiple aspects. One aspect concerns analyzing the cognitive tasks of incumbents in a situated setting. Another aspect concerns analyzing the cognitive task content of an envisioned role in a foreseen situation. Another aspect concerns analyzing the cognitive tasks of those who research cognitive task analysis methods, aids and tools. Another is analyzing the cognitive tasks involved in reflecting on and improving oneself as a practitioner of cognitive task analysis. Yet another is the challenges that must be mastered by educators of cognitive task analysis practitioners. The versatility and value of Cognitive Task Analysis was thusly demonstrated without causing the reader undue confusion. A significant, complex task well done.
   
   Working Minds brings the `intuitive' aspect of decision into focus with the `rational' aspect. This is one, very large contribution. A small disappointment was the absence of teleonomics and its relationship with cognitive task analysis. Also, perhaps a sequel will say more about principles and rules for selecting human vs. automatons during a system design activity.
   
   As computers in general and process formalization in particular encroach further into our lives and as litigation looms larger over those who cannot show that they exercised due process in their work, cognitive task analysis becomes basic, foundational, in business, government and academia. Working Minds helps discover how to lay such foundation.



3. This is a really helpful book. I've read quite a bit about Naturalistic Decision Making and CTA's so I was already familiar with most of the concepts. As with any relatively complex subject there is often a large gap between what's in the textbooks and how things actually happen in the field. This book is much more of a "how-to-do-it" guide than any others I've read. It is a very easy read and an excellent introduction to the subject.



4. Just like the skilled behavior researchers try to study, being able to conduct a good Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) is a critical skill in itself. Up until now, it was also one that had to be developed by trial and error. This text breaks it all down and provides a wealth of details on the techniques used and challenges faced in conducting a CTA. It also provides some historical context on the study of cognition and the role of CTA in research and system design.
   
   Highly recommended for anyone in the field - I only wish it had come out sooner.



5. This is an important book for the engineering of complex systems and information technology systems. Cognitive systems engineering methods described in this book can go a long way toward helping engineers overcome the pervasive problem of inadequate requirements in the development of these systems, unite human and technology concerns in system design, and produce systems that are usable and helpful.
   
   The book makes cognitive systems engineering and its methods much more accessible and comprehensible than any resource I've previously encountered. The book makes the methods described accessible to the novice who has never used them, while also providing details of interest to people who have experience using the methods. For example, it includes a very practical, descriptive, and well-organized walk-through of the cognitive task analysis process that extends from preparation all the way through to its contributions to system design and evaluation.
   
   The book also includes a primer on cognition geared toward the systems developer and which is arguably an important foundation for anyone involved in developing technology that interacts with people performing cognitive work (e.g., information processing, decision making, anomaly detection, troubleshooting,...). The book addresses cost factors associated with cognitive task analysis and other cognitive systems engineering methods (and describes what cognitive systems engineering is and is not - thank you!) throughout, and is full of examples used to demonstrate how cognitive systems engineering methods have been successfully used in the past.
   
   Every systems, human factors, and software engineering student and practitioner needs to read this book!!

1 comments about Learning and Behavior: A Contemporary Synthesis.

1. Bouton's "Learning and Behavior" provides one of the best current introductions to the science of animal learning. This book might feel "hard to digest" at first due to the great amount of literature reviewed in it, as well as because of the many connections the author makes among different findings and theories (in my opinion, these are feats, rather than flaws). Don't desist... keep reading it! The beauty of this journey lies in its many different paths. If you view psychology as a scientific endeavor, you will enjoy the openness of this book to different interpretations, rebuttals, refutations, and alternative accounts. A patient, persistent reader won't be disappointed with this book, and will reach the end of the last chapter with the irreplaceable satisfaction of realizing that much has already been done in the science of associative learning, but there's still plenty of room for further research too.

5 comments about Tristes Tropiques.

1. One way to gauge who's in among fashionable academics is to read the catalog for the "Writers and Readers' Documentary Comic Book" series. Sartre has an entry, and so does Derrida, and Lacan. Thirty years ago, you would have expected to find an entry in this index for Claude Levi-Strauss. No more. Translations of his principal works appear to persist in print, but the sales numbers are look low, and he seems almost to have disappeared from the trendy book reviews and such. This is perhaps a matter for at least idle curiosity: Levi-Strauss is surely no more abstruse than his magisterial contemporaries - but no less so; one is perfectly willing to be relieved the obligation of ever picking him up again.

   With one exception. In style and temperament, Tristes Tropiques is so different from almost everything else Levi-Strauss wrote that it is hard to believe it is written by the same man. Oh, the primitive tribes are there, and a brief personal intellectual history, that offers a bow to Freud, and Bergeson, and Saussure. In my own copy, which I first read about 1980, I even have a pencilled notation "structuralism" - this at page 375 (Pocket Books edition, 1977). But there is almost none of the portentous vacuity that you had to cope with in the so-called "serious" works.

   What you get instead is Levi Strauss the raconteur, full of travelers' tales. He dines on roasted parrot, flamed with whisky. The termites make the earth rumble. Virgins are made to spit in pots of corn, to provoke fermentation - but "as the delicious drink, at once nutritious and refreshing, was consumed that very evening, the process of fermentation was not very advanced." You almost expect the anthropophagi and the men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders, that you meet in the Voyages of Sir John Mandeville, Knight.

   Laced through it all, you get a kind of austere sadness which is either (a) a tragic view of life; or (b) a kind of self-indulgent posturing, depending on your temperament for skepticism. "Every effort to understand," he says, "destroys the object studied in favor of another object of a different nature." Or: "Anthropology could with advantage be changed into 'entropology', as the name of the discipline concerned with the study of the highest manifestations of [a] process of disintegration."

   Well, call me anything the like, they say, as long as you call me for dinner. It might even be an elaborate con. But so, for that matter, might the stories of Herodotus were you get the same mix of the eclectic and the tolerant, the surreal and the sly. Herodotus, we may note, is one of the first great works of Western literature. Let's hope that Levi-Strauss is not one of the last.




2. This is Levi-Strauss most readable book, and it is a fantastic introduction to the "why" behind his interest in structuralism. There are hints of the various methods and approaches that he uses in later works, but this book shows why he was to develop structuralism in later works. The writing is clever and eloquent, and various conclusions he made about cultural diversity address contemporary concerns in a highly articulate and responsible manner. Read this book before delving into the other writings of one of the 20th Century's most important anthropologists.



3. Tristes Tropiques, surely one of the great books of the twentieth century, is Levi-Strauss at his intoxicating, idea-overloaded best and an elegy for a world that colonialism and then globalisation have doen their rational best to annihilate.
   
   Levi-Strauss, like most thinkers who come up with new ways of describing the world-- those who Richard Rorty calls "inventors of philosophical vocabularies"-- has of course been mis-read and his ideas mis-applied, as we see with the much-hyped "creation" and then "demise" of "structural anthropology." The real pleasure of this book, which mixes fascinating accounts of Levi-Strauss' travels in Brazil in the '30s with autobiography, and adds chapters on the Maya and ancient Hindu (Indian) civilisations, is in its sheer mass of artfully arranged detail and its endless, provocative play of ideas.
   
   Levi-Strauss stays conversational, descriptive and straightforward, avoiding academic jargon and obscure references. He assumes you know the basics about people like Freud, Marx, Darwin and the Buddha, and then shows you a trip through largely non-industrial societies which unfolds from anthropological description into deep philosophical speculation on the meaning of society and life.
   
   In Brazil, Levi-Strauss watches an illiterate but canny chieftain use his anthropological fieldnotes to intimidate his illiterate tribesmen subordinates, and speculates on the parallel origins of writing and slavery. In Matto Grosso, he meets a butcher fascinated with elephants, since "he could not imagine so much meat in one place." On the banks of the Amazon, a non-industrial tribe is dying, hypnotically lost in the symbolic intricacies of an ancient social system that makes its citizens inbreed. In India, Levi-Strauss watches Islam and Hinduism-- the "locker room" and "mother" religions-- wage symbolic and then real war post-Independence.
   
   The book starts as anthropology, turns into philosophy, and ultimately becomes a critique of the West, driven by "reason" and technology to shake off what Levi-Strauss calls the "thick blanket of dreams" with which non-industrial civilisation arranges the Universe into Meaning, which remains for the industrialised world the greatest and unanswered question.
   
   But Levi-Strauss does not idealise the primitive. His point is that through the study of those and that which are different, a kind of "ideal model" of society-- one which will never exist-- can be built in the imagination, and people can evaluate their world by reference to this community of mind.
   
   This is a remarkable book-- easy to read, engrossing, and endlessly thought-provoking.



4. I often review works which I have read long ago. Upon beginning to write about them I invariably discover how much time I gave to something which seemed so worthwhile at the time, and which I have almost completely forgotten. I then ordinarily do some catch- up learning about the book. And my review becomes an amalgalm of distant past and most recent present impression. And meanwhile the heart of the book is forever unknown to me and lost. And my review is only a minor tracing an impression both of the book itself and what of my mind knew when reading through it.
   This certainly applies to my reading of this particular work, ,the one work of Levi- Strauss which I remember reading with any degree of real understanding and pleasure. His making of a life and career as an anthropologist which are a good part of the first part of the work interested me then.
   The long travelogue and explorations into Amerindian society and mind, interested me less.
   I understand though that the real voyage is into and along with the mind of Levi- Strauss itself, a mind much more complicated than I was ordinarily used to meeting and ingesting .
   I do remember however the somewhat majestic tone, the tone of restrained sadness of quiet mourning which seemed to go through the work as Levi- Strauss met with worlds being lost and deterorating , in part through their meetings with the very kind of Western mind he himself exemplified. It is the mind destroying the object in the process of knowing it , as the Western explorers of these tribal societies transformed them out of their own natural state by meeting with them.
   For Levi- Strauss and this I remember, the ' primitive mind' is not ' primitive at all' and may be in its linguistic complexity and social structure far more intricate than the ' civilized ' as it were sophisticated worlds we believe we live in.
   I read this work as a way of being acquainted with a great mind, a mind which to my mind proved to be quite elusive and even distant.
   But clearly the exploration made by Levi- Strauss of his own inner and external worlds is one which calls to the curious human mind and heart in its quest for understanding ' of the other'
   Montaigne took a trip in the Brazilian jungle in the twentieth
   century, looked in the mirror and saw the face of Levi- Strauss.



5. I like to travel and to observe the cities, landscapes, the plants and animals and the human inhabitants of the countries I go to. So does Levy-Strauss, and he is a fantastic observer, much more sharp-eyed than I could ever hope to be, and a highly entertaining writer. In this classic he talks about a wide range of observations from a number of corners of the world, but mainly about South America.
   The book deals with Levi-Strauss' time as a teacher in Brazil and his trips into the South American hinterland; his escape from Nazi-occupied France; His later expeditions to visit remote tribes in the Amazon; and an assortment of observations about such diverse topics as the frustration of the traveler to never encounter the true, pristine state of a culture, the Indian caste system and the division of public and private space in different parts of the world. The book is full of fascinating anecdotes: My favorite one is how a native chief from observing Levy-Strauss grasped the social importance of writing, but not its role in information storage and transmission. He bluffed to impress his underlings and drew freshly invented line configurations on a paper. This leads Levy-Strauss to observe that from the invention of writing to its universal knowledge a few millennia passed, during which it did not serve to liberate the masses, but to control them. Such wide-ranging philosophical associations are frequent and were very enjoyable to me. The book is, however, definitely not only a collection of anecdotes, but in parts a very detailed description of the life of some of the native tribes he visited in the Amazon. Drawings of artifacts, patterns used in body-painting and photographs supplement the text. We are given both anthropological descriptions of the lifes of these peoples, their social organization, attitudes and material culture, as well as Levy-Strauss' personal experiences when living among them, sometimes his friendships with members of these tribes. Of course these people were strongly affected by the contact with European civilization, often to the worse. We also learn about these developments. There isn't really much direct explanation about his theoretical approaches to anthropology. This is the kind of book which made me wish that I could have been an expedition member of Levy-Strauss' team. Highly recommended.

3 comments about Halloween: Romantic Art and Customs of Yesteryear.

1. Halloween in the United States wasn't always a children's trick-or-treat holiday. In the beginning of the 20th century Halloween was a time when young adults peered into the murky haze of things to come and used all manner of methods to try to prophesy their romantic futures. Parties were the rage where bobbing for apples wasn't just a game but a chance to search the omens found in apple seeds and peels. Auguries in candle flames, in pumpkins, seeds, nuts and mirrors all were employed by the curious. This wonderful book uses the illustrations of full-color vintage postcards that were the rage in the early 1900s to show the many delightful and quaint oracles that were consulted. It includes numerous Halloween poems and party ideas from a bygone era, even some super costume ideas that could be used today to stunning effect for a nostalgic Halloween celebration. The text is filled with detailed history about the customs of yesteryear and the abundant appeal of the postcard images, pictures of antique table favors and invitations is sure to delight. Do not miss out on this book if you love Halloween. It contains a forgotten and very charming aspect of Halloween and Americana that I found very enjoyable and I think you will, too.



2. When I first got this book, I flipped through it and thought,"hey,where's the 'wish list' postcards(Winsch,etc.)?". After I started reading it I realised that the postcards shown were perfect in illustrating the subject matter in each chapter. Also, the "reason" for some of the unusual images (cabbage people, etc.) I had seen on Halloween postcards became clear. A fun and informative book.



3. Not quite as good as her second book: "Halloween Merrymaking," but still absolutely beautiful. The layouts and pictures of the Victoriana are crisp, clear and totally enchanting. There's only so much you can do with virtually the same poems and romantic prophesies, but who cares?

5 comments about Skin: A Natural History.

1. Drawing from many fields, this work is an excellent overview of its subject. I would recommend it both for the casual reader and as a good supplemental text for an upper division class in anthropology or biology.
   
   Nina Jablonski does a great job of presenting complex material in a very readable format.



2. This book has the rare combination of two positive traits: being genuinely scholarly and being easily approachable. We read this book for my Anthropology 101 class for these reasons (and also because it was written by a BMC alum). Jablonski's research is sound and her credentials are superb; however, the book is never above its reader's head. While topics such as the function of melanocytes and the effects of UV radiation on folates and calcium absorption may sound impossibly abstract, they are explained expertly and easily in this work. In addition to the biology of skin, this "natural history" also examines skin's function, skin diseases, decorations of the skin, and the future of medicine for skin. Throughout, the book is fascinating and well-written. It was one assigned reading that I couldn't put down!



3. I work a lot with skin and though this book might be a good review of the subject without too much "crazy biology".
   
   This book does exactly that. The author gives a good review while concentrating on her personal experiences and interests.
   
   This was a quick and easy read and left me a little more educated on the subject than I was before this book (although I've studies human physiology in detail before).
   
   I recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, no matter their technical skill level.



4. Jablonski's book is well written, well informed, and a deeply insightful discussion of one of our least appreciated, but most important organs. She deftly, gently guides the reader through some basic scientific principles governing the functioning of the skin, and provides compelling explanations of such topics as the role of pigmentation in evolution. She also highlights the role of skin in human culture through such practices as tattooing and scarification. I have some research interests in the topic of the book, and it repays careful study. At the same time, though, Jablonski is such a fine writer, and her explanations are so clear, that I'd have no worries about giving the book as a gift to non-academic friends who are just curious about this amazing organ. (Warning: After reading this book, you'll probably never again want to sit out in the sun tanning yourself, at least without slathering on the sunscreen first!)



5. This review just touches the surface, to flesh this book out, read it.
   
   Skin is amazing - it's strong, resilient, sensitive. Skin protects us from microbes and chemicals, shields us from heat, water, abrasion, and punctures. As Jablonski puts it "this is a list of qualities that make the epidermis sound more like a revolutionary new type of carpeting than a natural material".
   
   We have as many hairs on our bodies as apes, but ours are much thinner, practically invisible in most places. We can't communicate emotion by standing our hair on end like angry chimps or cats (piloerection), so we've evolved other ways to show anger, such as pursed lips.
   
   I've always liked Morgan's aquatic ape theory, but I've had to give it up after reading so much criticism. Jablonski points out that we couldn't have lived on the water's edge in our ancestral environment because we'd have been killed by crocodiles and other predators lurking at waters edge. Since we're quite vulnerable to water parasites and show no sign of an evolved immune system to fight them, it isn't likely we spent much time in the water. Nor is skin is an advantage, due to thermoregulation issues. Walrus and hippo's are so huge that heat loss is not a problem. Otters and other water mammals have thick fur they don't get cold in the water or back on land.
   
   Sweat
   
   Everyone zeros in our big brains to define humanity, but what about our sweat? Sweat has played a huge role in how we evolved.
   
   Our nakedness is a great advantage in hot weather. If we had fur, we could only produce 10 to 20% of the sweat we're capable of to cool us down. Fur is great in the heat until it gets wet, and then it's hard to dissipate and animals can die if they stay out in the sun then. Though of course, only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun". Furry creatures are safely in their dens or in the shade during the worst heat of the day. Which leaves a niche open for us to be out and about, hunting.
   
   We're so good at sweating to cool down, we can sweat 12 quarts of water a day, or even up to 3.5 quarts in an hour.
   
   Sweat keeps our enormous brains cool. If you get a temperature of 103 F, you enter delirium territory, where your thinking, reasoning, and communication skills start to go haywire. At 106 F you die.
   
   We also keep our brain cool by walking, less surface area is exposed to the sun, and our head hair protects us from UV radiation, especially frizzy hair, where the surface can be quite hot, but lower down, the air is cooler.
   
   Once the outdoor temperature goes over 98 F and the humidity is higher than 90%, sweat is 90% of our ability to cool down. You must keep drinking water at this point to stay alive. If you exercise, your sweat glands better be in top form. It's good to be tall and lean with thick limbs to provide more surface area for sweating.
   
   Skin color
   
   Sunburn interferes with sweat, so that's a good reason to have dark skin if you live where there's a lot of sun. In fact, we have a wider range of skin colors than any other species, and you can predict roughly what skin color a native population will have by how far they are from the equator. What seems to determine the optimum skin tone is vitamin D - a greater selective force than skin cancer, because women need to produce twice as much calcium when they're pregnant, which you need vitamin D to pull off.
   
   Although dark skin gives you an SPF of 10-15 (not as much as I'd expected), dark skinned people need to spend about 5 times more than a light-skinned person to get enough vitamin D (which is why lighter skin evolved). The Innuit are not as light-skinned as you'd expect, because they get a lot of vitamin D from their diet, and their darker skin protects against UVA.
   
   People who live in 23-40 degrees of latitude have excellent tanning ability to cope with the wide UV fluctuations. These tans offer a protective level of SPF 2.5 (very little). Tanning does not protect against UV damage and leads to premature aging of skin, visible wrinkles, and uneven pigmentation.
   
   People with freckles are at much greater risk of developing skin cancer and need to use sunscreen or cover up outside.
   
   Touch
   
   Being touched is incredibly important. The young grow better if touched. Touch leads to friendship and ultimately, perhaps, sex. In orphanages where infants weren't touched, they often died, or suffered chronic disability from the stress caused by a lack of caresses.
   
   In cultures all over the world, babies are massaged in oil, vigorously stroked, then swaddled. Mothers swear babies are calmer, sleep and grow better, and this seems born out by premature infants who do better if cuddled and held. Mothers with postpartum depression are less depressed if they massage their babies. A few hospitals are experimenting with massage in normal infants. Children with autism given deep pressure massage seem to be calmer and have better relationships.
   
   Grooming is the social glue that holds primates together - it resolves conflicts, helps maintain alliances, and reduces stress. High ranking common baboon infants get more grooming and mature faster than lower-ranking babies.
   
   Touch deprivation harms immune systems as was shown in macaque experiments.
   
   We humans groom too with reassuring touches and hugs, but it's not nearly enough, and so we go off to get massages and spa treatments.
   
   How much people touch each other varies considerably from culture to culture. High touch cultures hold and massage infants and shun any kind of device that isolates babies from people, like cradles and strollers. Non-touching cultures only hug and touch babies a small part of the day, which only grows worse as children get older.
   
   Maybe we could get people off andi-depressants and other drugs if we hugged each other more. Jablonski points out that in non-touch cultures, like America, institutions and workplaces often have strict rules against touching. She concludes that no wonder there's so much depression, anxiety and other social pathologies.
   
   Children who are routinely punished physically rather than nurtured, are likely to be especially disturbed, addicted to drugs, and commit physical violence themselves.
   
   Nursing home elderly who were massaged and hugged "acted younger" and seemed more alert than those who didn't receive this contact.
   
   Some final random facts:
   Fingerprints aid in gripping.
   Body lice descended from head lice about 40,000 years ago. They're more deadly since they can carry typhus.
   Melanoma: detect by one or more of these qualities: non-symmetric, irregular border, mixture of colors, larger than a pencil eraser.
   Tattoos aren't as visible on dark skin, so in these cultures, branding and scars are more common.
   Botox: over time, this will leave your face deadpan. Great for poker, but you won't be having animated conversations, you've lost your power to "emote".
   
   I wish Jablonski had spent more time on how how much skin protects you from chemicals. Although she mentions lead is bad, there are thousands of other chemicals found in many products we all buy. If you google "cosmetic safety database", you'll see that some hair color, skin cleansers, skin lotions, lipstick, etc., products are highly hazardous.

No comments about The Humanistic Tradition, Volume 2: The Early Modern World to the Present (Humanistic Tradition).

2 comments about Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior.

1. If you've ever wondered what forms the foundation of a person, read this book and learn about everything that makes the brain work as it does. Readable book and very fulfilling experience. You'll never look at people's behavior the same way because you'll know what drives them!



2. Excellent. This book is a significant step forward from the pack of current offerings. I wish it was available when I was a student. The book is clear, concise, informative, and mot importantly a joy to read.

No comments about Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind, Third Media Edition.

No comments about The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and Comparative ... on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition.