I liked this walk through the periodic table, and it works well with the book Quantum. I liked some of the smaller facts that they go into about the elements and how they were discovered. I wouldn’t recommend this book to many people, but it is better than Quantum for all of those who aren’t looking for something specifically about physics.
This book had a lot of good tips to keep yourself free of distraction. I was very surprised at how much they pulled on the Buddhist teachings about mindfulness. The entire book is rife with the Buddhist teachings and the practices that are taught in this book are just modernized versions of them. The goal of Buddhism isn’t really brought up, but the practice of mindfulness is key to the core fo the book. The book bases it’s teaching on a story of two people, a husband and a wife. They play out the scenarios in bad ways and then in good ways. The good ways have pretty much everything go right, and many times in serendipitous ways, which bothered me a bit. I think they should have done only outcomes that were resultant of being mindful, and using the techniques, instead of having everything go right even if it was mostly unrelated to the core tenants of the book.
This book goes into the Darwinistic past of religion and how it has changed into what it is today. They start out with prehistoric societal religions that held the groups together, and made them sacrifice themselves for each other. They then go into how early religions built on each other by taking narratives and festivals. They go into how the major religions of today started forming. Finally they get into how the current nationalism is a form of religion without calling out a specific deity (think manifest destiny). I really like the book and it makes me think about how the foundations of religion are group cohesiveness and the ability to drive people to the greater good of the group over the good of the self.
This was a very interesting book about how the mortgage backed security and credit default swaps. These methods of banking and investing were very interesting and made these huge webs of reliance. Once one part of the web broke all the others were start breaking. The idea behind these monetary devices was that if you create something and make it seem secure, but then let people know that it may not be as secure as it looks at first in the small print, you can sell it for much more than it will eventually be worth and externalize that risk. If the buyers of these items had just been people there wouldn’t have been a banking crisis, it would have just hit all the wealthy individuals that had bought them and all the people who had taken loans they couldn’t possibly pay back. This would have meant that no bailout would have occurred. Somewhere along the line the banks and investment firms thought that these investments were a great idea and that they were missing out on the money. Once that happened the market became larger and the interdependencies started to accrue. Then the monetary devices started to wilt and all hell broke loose. This makes me think that if you can create a monetary device that seems stable on the surface but is really just a front for a lot of unstable things that you can make an insane amount of money.
This book had a lot of good points on how to foster leadership, hard work, and efficiency. They talk about how the company makes it every persons job to be in charge of their station, and then makes it important for them to know all the things about the line. It stresses that building leadership and efficient, happy work are an ongoing process. Having the ongoing process where everyone has the authority point out better ways of doing things can make the company great.
The book has a lot of interesting information about how the first world environment, specifically that in America is causing boys to become emasculated, slothful, and distracted. He claims that the major factors influencing this are: endocrine disruptors, video games, stimulants for ADHD, teaching methods, and devaluation of masculinity. I agree with most of these, and see how some of them have impacted me, and those that I know. The focus of the book is the impact on men, but I think it can be said that the impact reaches to many women as well. I know a good number of women who fall into the same category, the big difference being that they aren’t necessarily expected to make something of themselves, and being a housewife is sufficient. I think housewives can be hard working and full jobs, like the way my mother approached it, but I see that as not being the norm.
Most of the books I’ve been reading recently on being great involve inspiring others. That is the core focus of this book, and describes well how to go about starting to inspire. The key that this book puts forth is give people a large goal of “Why.” When people have the “Why” then they can work towards the goals of the group without having to constantly ask the group if things are ok or not.
This was a nice and short overview of where skepticism and religious relativism come from and what the basic ideas behind them are. It doesn’t get in depth about it but give a lot of points to look into things further.
This book had a lot of great advice about how to inspire the people you work with and get them to realize their potential. I noticed how the leaders around me were like the leaders they mentioned in the book and how some of them were not like the leaders mentioned. I would like to think that I could use the methods applied in the book, but I tend to Blake getting my hands dirty. I’ll try as much as I can to inspire the people around me.
It's an Exciting World 