Category: books

Categories
books pandemic

The Wisdom of Plagues

Book cover for The Wisdom of Plagues or Lessons from 25 years of covering pandemics

Donald G. McNeil released his new book, The Wisdom of Plagues, last week.

He summarizes it thusly:

Some sections are memoir. I describe moments like trying to get my New York Times colleagues to believe me that a pandemic was coming. Moments like almost being kidnapped in a gorilla-hunting village in Cameroon. And moments like recently discovering that, at the very dawn of the pandemic, some top scientists misled me when I was trying to check out rumors that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese lab.

Some sections are historical. I describe the roots of human illnesses in our decision 11,000 years ago to domesticate animals, and enumerate the effects of pandemics on Athens and Sparta, the crumbling Roman Empire, the Renaissance, Napoleon’s conquests and World Wars I and II.

Some sections are journalistic. I describe why the world failed for decades to protect women in Africa against AIDS. I detail successes like Vietnam’s fight against tuberculosis, Egypt’s against hepatitis C and Cuba’s against AIDS.

Some are prescriptive. I explain why I think we need a Pentagon for disease, should ban religious exemptions to vaccines, should sometimes let Big Pharma break antitrust laws, and should recruit “witch doctors” into the medical system.

Categories
books writing

On Writing Well

Earlier today I finished reading On Writing Well1, by William Zinsser. In it, Zinsser outlines not only what it takes to write well but also rouses ones love for writing. The book is great, it’s not only fun to read but inspires me to write.

Zinsser died in 2015, and at that time Open Culture honoured him by posting 10 tips from his book which is a worthy summary:

Zinsser stressed simplicity and efficiency, but also style and enthusiasm. Here are 10 of his many tips for improving your writing.

  1. Don’t make lazy word choices: “You’ll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.”
  2. On the other hand, avoid jargon and big words: “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.”
  3. Writing is hard work: “A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”
  4. Write in the first person: “Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.”
  5. And the more you keep in first person and true to yourself, the sooner you will find your style: “Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.
  6. Don’t ask who your audience is…you are the audience: “You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for.”
  7. Study the masters but also your contemporaries: “Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.”
  8. Yes, the thesaurus is your friend: “The Thesaurus is to the writer what a rhyming dictionary is to the songwriter–a reminder of all the choices–and you should use it with gratitude. If, having found the scalawag and the scapegrace, you want to know how they differ, then go to the dictionary.”
  9. Read everything you write out loud for rhythm and sound: “Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.”
  10. And don’t ever believe you are going to write anything definitive: “Decide what corner of your subject you’re going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop.”
  1. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, first published in 1976, has sold almost 1.5 million copies to three generations of writers, editors, journalists, teachers and students.[↩]
Categories
backmasking books Politics

Political Tribalism in America

I just received a copy of the book, “Political Tribalism in America” in the mail today. Subtitled, “How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix it” this book (Amazon.ca) by Timothy J. Redmond includes a paragraph on the expectation bias and uses my backmasking page as an example of how being primed can change your perception.

From p.79-81 of the book:

The expectation bias occurs when our expectations about an outcome influence our perceptions of that outcome. To illustrate this point, go to http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/stairway-to-heaven-backwards.html, click on the “play forward” button, listen to the clip of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, and follow along with the accompanying lyrics (Figure 4-2). Trust me. It’s well worth the effort.

After walking through my backmasking page, he goes on to compare the priming one needs to hear the backward message to the priming we bring with us when we watch the news.

And as supposed backwards messages in rock music go, so go allegations of media bias. When Democrats and Republicans expect to find partisan biases in the news, they tend to find them. A study by Matthew A. Baum and Phil Gussin presented subjects with a transcript of a news report on the 2004 presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry, and asked them to evaluate whether the material was favorable, neutral, or unfavorable toward either of the nominees. Each participant received an identical transcript that was painstakingly crafted to be balanced “in terms of positive, negative, and neutral references to the candidates.” The first section of the transcript, reproduced below, is a case in point (bracketed remarks are mine).

Good evening. We start tonight with the presidential candidates on the attack [neutral]. Today with just 13 days left in the campaign, John Kerry was explaining why he believes the president does not understand the problems of ordinary people [anti-Bush] while, for President Bush, the message was mostly about why Senator Kerry’s plans will leave Americans worse off [anti-Kerry]

But there was, of course, a twist. While the content of each transcript was the same, some subiects were told that the news report originated from CNN while others were informed that it came from Fox News. The result? Participants who believed that CNN was liberal concluded that the CNN version of the transcript favored John Kerry. Yet those who presumed that CNN was conseryative thought that the CNN news report was partial to George Bush.

Likewise, those who considered Fox News to be conservative, maintained that the Fox News version of the transcript favored Bush, while those who believed that Fox News was liberal concluded that their report privileged Kerry.

He went on to explain that some of the priming comes from party leaders themselves.

In a 2010 study. political scientist Jonathan Ladd similarly found that Democrats and Republicans were more likely to evaluate the media as biased when they were told that their party leaders believed that the media was “being too friendly with President Bush” or “being overtly critical of President Bush,” respectively. We see what we expect to see.

The scientific evidence belies the charge that the mainstream media is infused with a partisan bias. Unfortunately, when we’re repeatedly told otherwise, we expect the media to be slanted and will discern it as such. Thus, if we want to perceive the news media more clearly, we must first relieve ourselves of the expectation bias. For if we heed the scientific evidence — as opposed to the screeds of politicians or pundits — we might just start to see things a little differently.

I look forward to reading the rest of it.

Categories
books

Brian Sibley’s Signed Books – Adventures of Tom Bombadil

Quite a few Christmases ago, my uncle Dennis gave our family a copy of The Hobbit radio-play on tape. A few years after that I learned that the Hobbit had a great sequel called, “The Lord of the Rings”. I loved the books and enjoyed BBC Radio 4’s 26-part adaptation of that one too.

In the credits of each episode I kept hearing the producers name and one day, on a lark, I decided to look him up. I discovered Brian Sibley’s blog which is full of interesting reading.

During my first reading of The Lord of the Rings, I remember not even liking the parts with Tom Bombadil when I first encountered the enigmatic figure. I didn’t get the weirdness of it all — who was this guy and why was he slowing down what was otherwise turning out to be a pretty great adventure? When I talked to friends who were fans of the book they encouraged me to expand my mind and appreciate the poetry, novelty, and esoteric nature of the character. Hearing that they loved Tom Bombadil made me reconsider my own opinion and I even found myself being disappointed when it was cut from the radio-play and subsequent movie.

But, it appears Mr. Sibley didn’t make the cuts lightly and eventually tried to make things right. From his post about his signed copy of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil he explains:

in 1992, eleven years after the BBC radio dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings, I attempted to make my peace with those fans who had been so outraged at the character’s omission from the original broadcasts. I created a six-part series for BBC Radio 5, based on Tolkien’s shorter fiction and, alongside Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major and Leaf by Niggle, included The Adventures of Tom Bombadil which was, essentially, the previously-ignored chapters from The Lord of the Rings…

I’m going to add it to my long list of audio I’d like to listen to on my way to work.

Categories
books

The Man Who Kept House

From the 2nd grade reader, “More Friends and Neighbours” comes a classic tale of a husband biting off more than he could chew. He learns an important lesson along the way.

I’m not sure where the book came from, but I’ve been reading it to my kids lately. I enjoy reading the old fashioned style as well the gender norms of a bygone era are also interesting. I remember my mom (or possibly grandma) used to tell me this same story at bedtime. Enjoy:

Once there was a farmer who thought his work in the fields was too hard.

Every night when he came to his house on the hillside, he was very, very tired. Then he would say to his wife, “What do you do all day while I am working hard in the fields?”

“I keep house,” said his wife.

“Pooh, pooh! That’s so easy,” he said. “I wish I had nothing to do but churn and boil porridge and keep the house clean.”

One night the man’s wife said to him, “Tomorrow I will change work with you. I will go to the fields to work, and you shall keep house and watch the baby.”

“Pooh, pooh!” he said. “That’s easy. Boiling porridge and churning will be a pleasant change for me.”

Continue reading “The Man Who Kept House”
Categories
books

Create Your Own Luck

A little gem from the book, The Natural Language of Selling:

Create Your Own Luck

You can’t buy it and you can’t sell it…

And what’s more, the harder you try to hold on to it, the more likely it is to vanish faster than a gambler’s lucky streak.

Because, whether good luck or misfortune, it is not a thing; most often, it’s the label we put on something that has already happened. So, assuming that we all would prefer good luck to the opposite, what is this thing called luck? The following might give us some real insight a real-life story about creating your own luck, be seeing opportunity in problems, and by expanding into the demand.

As the story goes, if you were in the market for a pocket watch in 1880, where would you get one? If you wanted the best watch, you went to the train station. This is because the station agents were also skilled telegraph operators, which was the primary method of communication with the railroad stations in those days.

Of course, they had to know precisely when trains left the previous station and when they were due at their next station, so the telegraph operators had to have the best watches.

A man named Richard, a telegraph operator himself, was one who could see opportunity where others only saw a problem. He was on duty in the North Redwood, Minnesota train station one day when a load of watches arrived from the East. It was a huge crate of pocket watches but no one ever came to claim them. So Richard sent a telegram to the manufacturer and asked them what they wanted to do with the watches. The manufacturer didn’t want to pay the freight back, so they wired Richard to see if he could sell them.

And sell them he did, by sending a wire to every agent in the system asking them if they wanted a cheap, but good, pocket watch. He sold the entire case in less than two days and at a handsome profit.

Then things started getting interesting. He ordered more watches from the watch company and encouraged the telegraph operators to set up a display case in the station offering high quality watches for a cheap prices to all the travellers. It didn’t take long for the word to spread and, before long people other than travellers came to the train station to buy watches.

Richard became so busy that he had to hire a man named Alvah, a professional watchmaker, to help him with the orders. The business took off and soon expanded to many other lines of dry goods. Richard and Alvah left the train station and moved their company to Chicago — and it’s still there.

The name of the company started by Richard Sears and his partner Alvah Roebuck was Sears, Roebuck and Co. From its mail order beginnings, the company grew to become the largest retailer in the United States by the mid-20th century, and its catalogs became world-famous.

Where others saw only problems, he saw opportunity and [went] into action to expand into the demand.

Sears hasn’t been doing so well lately. Just last month, Sears announced they would be closing 39 Sears stores and 64 Kmart stores. These stores would be closing by April 2018, leaving Sears Holdings with 555 stores. According to MSN money, at this rate, Sears along with sister company Kmart, has an extremely high chance of disappearing and going defunct in 2018. It looks like 2017 may be Sear’s final holiday season as an independent brand.

Categories
books

Forrest Gump

Without getting into it, I’ve reluctantly found myself with a lot more free time than I know what to do with, (a break-up if you must know). I’ve been walking in the coulees to get exercise and on occasion listening to audiobooks and podcasts.

Yesterday I took a trip into The States to pick up a package for my brother-in-law and listened to almost all of Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom. It’s the book that inspired the movie, and I use the word inspired loosely because while there are some similarities there are also a lot of unexpected differences.

In the book, Forrest is a lot bigger — huge actually, which makes more sense for him as a football star, he’s a savant at math, and many of his adventures are nothing like the movie. For instance, after throwing his medal of honour away and injuring a high level government employee, Forrest finds himself on a low earth orbit crashing toward earth, attacked by cannibals and head-hunters, later becoming a stampede wrestler, a chess champion, and during which time he adopts an escaped NASA orangutang as a drinking buddy. While the differences from the big screen adaptation make it an interesting read, I found the novel to be so outlandish and crazy that I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. This is one of those rare exceptions that the movie outshines the book.

While on my walk yesterday, I was finishing up the book. Forrest inadvertently gets into some trouble and as a result Jenny breaks up with him. Although treated poorly for being mentally challenged his whole life, he says that losing Jenny was the first time he really knew what it was like to feel like an idiot. Losing Andrea, I feel like an idiot too.

Categories
advertising books

The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture

age-of-persuassion-how-marketing-ate-our-cultureOne of my favorite radio shows has been turned into a book. The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture is now available in book stores across Canada!

Authors Mike Tennant and Terry O’Reilly have known each other for about 20 years; they began their career together making radio shows in 1995 with O’Reilly on Advertising. They’ve followed that up with “The Age of Persuasion” and a book based on that show which hits bookstores today.

Last Tuesday I took advantage of an opportunity to talk on the phone with Terry and Mike about the show and their new book “The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture”. My questions are in bold text.

Continue reading “The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture”
Categories
books

Malcolm Gladwell on The Advantages of Disadvantages

In preparation for the release of his new book, Outliers, next week, Malcolm Gladwell has published an article, The Uses of Adversity, explaining that sometimes disadvantages come with unexpected advantages.

Writing about the piece afterwards, Gladwell expounded the approach that being an outsider, having a disability or coming from a social-economic disadvantage, can sometimes be exactly what one needs to succeed.

From Gladwell’s blog:

If dyslexia can—under certain circumstances—be advantageous, what are other disadvantages that can have the same effect?

In the article, I mention, in passing, the question of class size, and the data on class size is really quite fascinating. Time and time again studies fail to show any significant advantage to reducing the size of classes—except in the case of very poor children in the very earliest of grades.

This, of course, defies common sense. We know that teacher feedback is a big component in learning. So why wouldn’t learning be enhanced by lower teacher: student ratios? One answer might be that large classes are a disadvantage with advantages: that in coping with the difficulty of competing for teacher attention, kids learn something more important—namely self-reliance. This might also explain why the highest achieving schools—those in places like Japan and Korea—tend to have much larger classes than in the United States.

Aside from the many, many variables that might make comparing class sizes across nations and cultures difficult, I also wonder if teachers instructing inconsistently large or small classes might not be changing their styles to meet the particular needs of a particular class size. It stands to reason that one would teach a class of 10 quite a bit differently than a class of 30—however it’s also very understandable that teachers tend to teach the same way from lesson to lesson and stick to it—regardless of class size.

Categories
books

Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t

I’ve been super excited for Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t”. The release date of November 18, 2008 was just announced on Amazon, as well they’ve got a product description up too:

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

Here’s a list of writings and talks by and about Gladwell that cover genius/prodigy, education, and working: