27 March 2009
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mdconnelly (
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Published on March 27th, 2009 @ 05:55:32 pm, using 303 words, 43 views
Admit it. There are people you think were just born bad. Not badly. Bad. Mean. Hateful. Just as soon hurt someone as breate. Turns out you may be right. Seems there are folks with extreme Borderline Personality Disorder (wouldn’t that mean it wasn’t “borderline"?), and they have done more than their share of damage in history, and it may be due to genes.
Why do we think this? Well, go read Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend, or at least this review of it at Living the Scientific Life. The book’s author apparently had one of the real a**hole sisters of all time, not to mention precocious, who considerately left a diary trailing her death. That got the author to wondering why some folks just start out mean and get worse. Which led to the book, which led to this paragraph in a review of the book:
. . . The author then launches into detailed analyses of the reported personality and documented behaviors of Slobodan Milosevic, “The Butcher of the Balkans,” Chairman Mao, and Stalin, alternating between historical writings about their personalities and behaviors, and her sister’s letters and diaries and behaviors, and relying on the DSM-IV as a touchstone throughout. The conclusion? A touch of deviance is often helpful for political success. Since most people with BPD are not bloodthirsty world leaders but instead, are our colleagues, relatives and even our friends, the author then provides the reader with signs for identifying a borderline when we encounter one, along with coping strategies and referring to additional useful books on the subject.
Again, admit it. You know this person, right? And having a book to help you negotiate them, or destroy them, would be nice, right? Unless you’re BPD. Then forget I mentioned this.
22 March 2009
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Published on March 22nd, 2009 @ 03:01:21 pm, using 988 words, 34 views
We mentioned Lincoln and His Admirals during our reviews of books on Abe for his bicentennial, but now Brian Dirck at A Lincoln Blog has checked in with one of his usual excellent overviews. Dirck does reviews the way everyone should, a summary, the good, the bad, the bottom line, rarely substituting how he would have done it for the way the author(s) did. And, as we did, he feels that Admirals is a unique book on Lincoln and the Civil War that fills a real need and gives insights not found in the usual Lincoln books. Here’s a brief excerpt before you go over to his site to catch the entire review:
Symonds’ analysis of Lincoln is balanced, careful, and in my opinion absolutely correct. He does not give short shrift to Lincoln’s failings and mistakes, but he also does a nice job of highlighting the president’s strengths. He particularly emphasizes Lincoln’s over-arching pragmatism, and his willingness to step back and allow subordinates to direct the naval war whenever necessary. Symonds also has a really nice narrative feel for vivid vignettes: Lincoln trying to sleep in a compartment that was far too small for him, for example, while visiting the blockade runner Malvern–so much so that he had to “draw up his knees or angle his long frame from corner to corner.” “‘You can’t put a long blade in a short scabbard,’” he quipped at breakfast the next morning (p. 361). Wonderful stuff.
Another point that we made frequently in our Abe reviews was the complete misuse and, in fact, the danger of the rush to “bipartisanship” we’ve seen infect and dumb down the goofy Beltway crowd, particularly as others try to pin “unity” and compromise over principle on Abe. The Boston Globe today has a good piece along the same line, pointing out that unfortunate thing called history as evidence that “bipartisanship” is frankly one of the poorer approaches for dealing with our problems, especially in a democracy. Here’s your excerpt from that:
It is not hard to understand the appeal of bipartisanship: it sounds mature, suggesting a harmonious pursuit of lofty ideals. The combined crises facing America and the world seem to require a broad marshaling of national talents, a great cooperative effort that transcends party bickering. What’s needed, in the bipartisan ideal, is for Democrats and Republicans to pitch in and go to work, united in moderate agreement.
History suggests that would be a disaster. There is little evidence that solutions to big problems are to be found through bipartisanship, and plenty to suggest that they are not. The ideal of bipartisanship is what historians call an invented tradition, a new thing that cloaks itself in venerability as a way of obscuring its lack of accomplishment. When it comes to crisis - and there are now a few - the record of bipartisanship is particularly weak.
In fact, it is partisanship that enjoys a more distinguished place in American history. America’s existence as a nation, its civil liberties, its principle of equality before the law, and some of the most popular and successful government programs all began as highly partisan causes. Accomplishments of deeply partisan origin are so core to national life that it is often forgotten that they initially once divided the people, sometimes violently.
Democracy depends on partisanship - the kind of strong and critical advocacy that opens public debate, forces the parties to explain their ideas, and clarifies choices for voters. Partisan causes are often bold ideas that originate outside organized parties. Though such ideas can initially be divisive, they can also offer the electorate a genuinely new path forward. By contrast, bipartisanship can cloak corruption, obscure chasms between politicians and the people they are supposed to be serving, or simply show that the leadership of both parties has become a closed club. In principle and in practice, a serious partisanship - one that brings fresh reason to bear on orthodoxy - is fundamental to a healthy democracy.
The whole thing is much longer and that good. Look, most of the valuable changes in American history, the ones that have verified and validated the principles of our American Legacy, have come through challenges to the easy, complacent, and/or illegitimate status quo, that is, IOW, through conflict and confrontation. In fact, I’m very afraid that the more recent lack of passionate outlets for outrage and needed change for the bulk of us in the last few decades is not “good” and will eventually, sooner rather than later, if history is a guide, lead to far worse outcomes for the US than eeeevvvvvvillllll partisanship would have. As the author notes, bipartisanship has given us slavery and its decades of failed compromises, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Vietnam and Iraq, the current economic and climate debacles, and refusal to call out the morons (lookin’ at you, Rush, Fox, and CNBC) who have dumbed down everything from government and media to education and mutual support and care. Partisanship got us free from the British, ended slavery, got minorities and women the right to vote and hold office, minimum wage, our social safety net (which “bipartisanship” threatens to destroy), and clear choices for the future instead of compromised and broth-like disasters. What’s this got to do with Abe? Just the last paragraph of the review, which sums up the point we kept making here and hope at some point during his presidency our current leader [sic] will wake up to:
As much as politicians like to invoke Lincoln as a uniter, it is also worth remembering that his election began the most dramatic partisan shift of any period in American history. By his own admission, Lincoln did not seek this change, and did not consider himself a radical. But when radically partisan ideas presented themselves as the best - or the only - solutions for the crises facing the nation, Lincoln’s “sense of unity” did not stop him from taking a side.
Amen.
21 March 2009
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mdconnelly (
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Published on March 21st, 2009 @ 07:29:16 pm, using 396 words, 35 views
A couple of quick hits of book reviews you might be interested in. If you’re into historically turbulent times, one of the more recent such periods in human history was 1848. It wasn’t that big a time in the US, comparatively anyway, so we don’t tend to pay much attention. But Europe saw it as a revolutionary time, perhaps because of the events related in the book reviewed so well here at Understanding Society. Here’s a taste before you go read the whole thing:
The revolutions of 1848 were the stage upon which the “spectre haunting Europe” danced. Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Alexandre Herzen, Alexis de Tocqueville, and numerous other critical observers of Europe’s trajectory looked at 1848 as a moment of continent-wide social and political revolution. Mike Rapport’s 1848: Year of Revolution is a very interesting effort to synthesize the movements and events of the year in a specific attempt to try to assess the degree to which events in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Milan, and dozens of other European cities hang together as a “year of revolution.” It’s worth reading – even for those for whom the history is pretty familiar.
If, OTOH, you’re into the history of altruism, this is the place to go. After all the B.S. about Rand and Galt and “dog eat dog so eat me” that has gotten us where we are today financially, maybe an overview and understanding of altruism is particularly timely right now. Here’s your taste of it:
This focus on mother-child bonds as the root of human sociality, away from social relations among adults, is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting, plausible, and far-reaching suggestions that the book offers. So often, arguments for the evolutionary value of social traits (like altruism) are premised upon mating scenarios, which seem much less plausible because pair bonding between mothers and fathers is much less pressing than the mother-child bond. Any argument that pair bonding in humans is ‘universal,’ for example, must contend with the painfully obvious evidence that humans are not always so good at pair bonding and fathers do not inevitably stick around to help raise children. If pair-bonding is the evolutionary reason for humans’ pro-social traits, than its surprising that we’re so lousy at pair bonding, even though we’re quite adept at social life.
That should make you curious about the paragraphs on either side, shouldn’t it?
19 March 2009
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Published on March 19th, 2009 @ 07:07:59 pm, using 105 words, 51 views
The kind folks over at My Mind on Books have a good reference list up on some mind & consciousness type books, not the “buy these crystals and rule the world” kind of mind & consciousness but the cog science kind. So if you’re interested on some of the latest works by some of the better researchers, head on over. And, as a double bonus, they also have a list of a few new books if you’ve invested in that newfangled Kindle thing. And of course, they have their usual cadre of regular book summaries. All in all, a nice place to visit right now.
18 March 2009
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Published on March 18th, 2009 @ 05:11:26 pm, using 403 words, 33 views
Feeling a tad lonely as you read this? You say the inability to think of anything better to do is what got you here? Hey, a**h . . . sorry. Here’s a little something to help you understand it better. Lonely’s not being alone, as anyone who’s ever been serious about it knows. It’s feeling isolated, wherever you are, however many people are around. The guy being interviewed here at Neuronarrative gets it and spells it out. Good book, good topic. Check out this section of the interview and then check out the full thing. Remember–if you’re engaged in reading, you’re not isolated. Hence . . . .
Humans are such meaning making creatures that we quickly determined that perceived social isolation was more critical in most instances than objective social isolation, so we compared people who felt they were socially isolated (i.e., lonely) with those who did not feel isolated (i.e., nonlonely). To be sure the effects we were finding were attributable to loneliness, we also performed experiments in which we randomly assign people to conditions that induce feelings of high or low loneliness, and we performed longitudinal studies to compare the effects on individuals when they felt lonely and when they did not feel lonely. Bill Patrick and I wrote Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connectionbecause the results of this research suggested a very different view of human nature than the rugged, rational individualist we have seen championed for so long.
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People interact with more people now than in the 20th century, and the distances at which people interact are greater than ever before. But loneliness is more strongly related to the quality than number of interactions, as anyone who has rushed by family members en route to a long traffic-congested commute to work can attest. We regard loneliness to be a biological construct, a state that has evolved as a signal to change behavior - very much like hunger, thirst, or physical pain - that serves to help one avoid damage and promote the transmission of genes to the gene pool. In the case of loneliness, the signal is a prompt to renew the connections we need to survive and prosper. Viewed in this way, loneliness - either ours or those of our friends and family - can signal us to re-prioritize how we are spending our time so that we can nurture our connections with those in our lives who are especially meaningful.
11 March 2009
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Published on March 11th, 2009 @ 08:17:48 pm, using 76 words, 28 views
Yesterday it was a new photograph. Today it’s Abe’s watch. With words engraved on the inside lamenting Ft. Sumter and extolling the government in DC. Words Abe himself likely never saw, unless he took the watch apart and put it back together for sh*ts and grins. How would you like to have been the guy the National Museum of American History hired to open the watch up to see if the old legend was true?
08 March 2009
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mdconnelly (
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Published on March 8th, 2009 @ 08:36:01 pm, using 733 words, 32 views
Before we start, no, the period in the title isn’t a typo. It’s in the original and makes the point (get it?) that enough really is enough.
When we get the histories of this period of American life, the excess will stand out. Not just the robbery that’s going on in our financial industry, aided and abetted by the last and the current administrations. Not just the Britneys and Lindsays and Parises, the T.O.’s and Ocho-Dumba**es, the “Saw"s and the Freddys, the White Broncos and the dead interns. But the complete loss of any appreciation that too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. Sports, for example. Baseball starts when it’s snowing now and ends when it’s snowing. Little cities around the country used to have minor league ballteams with some regular quality when the major leagues had two leagues with eight teams each. The whole nation was crisscrossed with connections from Single A to the bigs, the reason it was called the national pastime. But that wasn’t enough, didn’t make enough money, didn’t glitz up the cities that didn’t have major leagues teams but could support them. So multiply by 4, dilute the quality of both the majors and the minors, and charge a hell of a lot more. Oh, and make sure you get key games in primetime viewing, even if that means kids can’t stay up and develop the same love of your game that their dads and grandpas did. And please, who didn’t know that the love of homeruns came with a steroid price tag?
You could pick your own topics. There isn’t an area of American life that didn’t go there. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Spending on prisons. Higher ed as overpriced mirror and corrupt disciplines. Politics and media as professional wrestling. And then there’s that whole dot.com and then the meltdown of meltdowns that we’ll be digging out from for a long time. All of it, all of it, could have been avoided with just a serious sense of “enough,” of the moderation in all things that stands at the heart of all great wisdom about life.
Enough., by John C. Bogle, former chief guy of Vanguard Group, stands out as one of the few observers of our current situation and marks at least the financial debacle as the failure to understand Enough. (Should I put two periods there?) Here and here you will find a couple of the few reviews of his thoughts on the need for more character and less flair in business, more morals and less greed, more Ben Franklin and less Donald Trump. The fact that one of the reviews is from a Shanghai paper and most of the American media can’t seem to be bothered more than substantiates his points. Here is a teaser to get you to go hunt the reviews and the book down:
. . . John C. Bogle reviews his own career, rattles off a pack of technical criticisms about funds, regulators, and chief executives, and argues that many businesses have lost their values by focusing on the dark arts of money-counting rather than on their core products.
“What we call business today is largely about finance,” he writes, charging that too many business leaders care more about investment returns than about creating value for customers, shareholders, and employees. What’s “enough,” essentially, is that which enables you to do “your best to join the battle to build anew ourselves, our communities, our nation, and our world.”
Now, you may think it takes more than a little ego to write a book extolling what you claim to look like, but Vanguard seems to be one of the few principled companies in finance (and Ben Franklin wrote one of the most famous autobiographies in history). It is a tad offputting to hear him put himself up as an example, but the points need to be made. In more areas than just business. We’ve been an unserious people with no sense of enough for a very long time, running up bills that we would still dearly like our grandchildren to pay for after we’re dead and gone. Maybe Bogle’s book will start the talk that’s needed to correct our drunkard’s walk. Or at least to lead us back to Ben and Abe and the others whose talk and walk were always the same.
06 March 2009
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Published on March 6th, 2009 @ 07:25:03 pm, using 61 words, 33 views
Doesn’t happen all that often in my experience but, over at Neuronarrative, they can get you hooked up with a free book on brain facts, if you’re interested in brains. And just in time for Brain Awareness Week!!! Impress your friends. Or embarrass them. But get the book. There are such things as free lunches, you know, despite those econ guys.
05 March 2009
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mdconnelly (
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Published on March 5th, 2009 @ 02:39:31 pm, using 497 words, 49 views
Brian Dirck at A. Lincoln Blog has finished his series of the ten worst mistakes Abe Lincoln made, and, while our admiration for Dirck and his work has been frequently stated, maybe it’s a sign of how good Lincoln really was that the list and the justifications for calling them “mistakes” are so weak. He was an indulgent father? A bad manager? He underestimated Southern devotion to the Cause and the Missouri guerillas’ capacity for mayhem? The only one I really wholeheartedly can back is Abe’s work in a slavery case in the wrong direction, which came back to bite him in the a** when he sought the anti-slavery vote and when historians have tried to defend him for not being as racist as the times. Lincoln’s been quoted, rightly, who knows?, for advising attorneys to back away from bad cases and clients. He didn’t back away here, for reasons Dirck hypothesizes, but it was a bad call for someone who asserted his virtually lifelong opposition to slavery.
Dirck’s No. 1 mistake of Abe’s? Picking Andrew Johnson as his VP in 1864. Hard to argue that Johnson was a major dickhead (think basically any current Senator south of the Mason-Dixon line right now), but, as Dirck notes, Abe wasn’t planning on turning over the office to him. Political Abe went with a Union-supporting Democrat, which may have been a good idea with swing states that were still slave-holding in the 1864 election. Not a great idea when you get killed at the theater one night. Johnson is one of the few who might keep the last White House occupant from occupying the top of the “worst presidents in US history” list, so that’s reason enough to consider his selection a bad choice. And it also is likely one of the things the current White House occupant admires and takes away from his readings of Lincoln as one who put bipartisanship above getting the right things done in perilous times. Only Lincoln didn’t. He expected to live and to leave Johnson drunk in whatever office they’d stored him away in until that awful night at Ford’s Theater. None of Obama’s silly courting of those Maine moderates [sic] fits the same, but Obama might just be one of those guys who tests well and can read a speech. While the outcome of Abe’s choice may end up being far worse than the temperate Dirck sees, however, it’s hard to blame Abe for getting an ignorant alcoholic out of the Senate (even if he did support the Union) and maybe picking up a few votes at the same time. Like I said, if this is the worst we can lay on Abe, unlike, say, fathering children with a slave you never acknowledged or starting an unprovoked war on a country while the perpetrators of what you claimed were the cause sat in caves and laughed, then maybe he is really does deserved to be placed at the bottom of that “worst presidents” list.
04 March 2009
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Published on March 4th, 2009 @ 07:02:53 pm, using 336 words, 32 views
We’ve praised and defended Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide here for both its content and its author’s style. He’s clearly on his way to being one of the nation’s best science writers, barring any unfortunate name changes to Britney or Lindsey. He has a terrific blog over at Science Blogs (check them all out), and he also reviews books and does articles for newspapers and magazines. Here’s one he has out on Out of Our Heads, an attempt by a philosopher to locate “consciousness” not in the mind but in the combo of our minds with our contexts. There aren’t “consciousness” cells or groups that define who we are. Consciousness is . . . well, he’s a better writer. Let him prove it:
. . . he begins the book by comparing consciousness to a dollar bill. He notes that it would be silly to search for the physical correlates of “monetary value.” After all, the meaning of money isn’t in the paper, or the green ink, or the picture of George Washington. Instead, it exists in the institutions and practices that give the paper meaning. Similarly, our awareness of reality doesn’t depend entirely on what’s happening inside the brain, but is a side effect of how we, as individuals, interact with the wider world.
Although Noë is a philosopher, his argument is carefully built on scientific evidence, as he considers everything from studies of cells in the visual cortex to examples of neural plasticity. In each instance, he interprets the data in a startlingly original fashion, such as when he uses experiments showing that ferrets can learn to “see” with cells in their auditory cortex as proof that “there isn’t anything special about the cells in the so-called visual cortex that makes them visual. Cells in the auditory cortex can be visual just as well. There is no necessary connection between the character of experience and the behavior of certain cells.”
See what I mean about Lehrer? Go on over, learn about the interesting book, and decide on both for yourself.
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