God's Equation by Amir Aczel

Amir Aczel wrote God’s Equation following the 1998 announcement of studies that indicated that we live in an open universe that will continue expanding without end. This is in contrast to theories that the universe might be closed, with gravity eventually pulling everything back in to a great collapse, or stable, with the universe continuing to expand at an ever slower rate. He attempts to show for a lay audience how these discoveries were built on the work of Albert Einstein and complex forms of geometry.

It is complex. Aczel does not dive too deep into the math. Most of his intended audience wouldn’t understand it—it is beyond any math I’ve mastered. It is rooted in Einstein’s general theory of relativity and his field equation, which describes it mathematically. Many people are familiar with E=mc². It is simple and it is fairly easy to understand what it is describing. The field equation may look fairly simple when written out, but behind it is very complex math that has complex ramifications.

I think a lay person could read this book and have no better understanding of the physics and math of our expanding universe than he did before. I’m not sure that understanding complex physics is the great value of the book anyway.

To me, the value of the book is the way it shows how science works. Aczel demythologizes the process, especially in relation to Einstein, without devaluing it or the accomplishments of leading scientists. For instance, the myth of Einstein is that he came up with the theory of relativity in an instant due to his extraordinary genius and it instantly revolutionized science.

The reality is that, even though Einstein was way ahead of his contemporaries, it took him years of effort and false starts to develop general relativity. He had help and input from other physicists and mathematicians. His work was met with skepticism. It took many years for Einstein and others to flesh out the ramifications of his theory, and for astronomers and other experimental scientist to confirm them.

Another bit of demythologizing is that Einstein wasn’t good at math. He simply wasn’t interested in math for its own sake, so he didn’t put in the effort as a student except to the degree he found it useful. Though Einstein came up with ideas with imagination that did not always depend on math, the fleshing out of his theories into sound physics required a lot of math. He applied himself diligently to mastering it, and it was quite advanced.

A physicist will seek more technical books on the subject of cosmology. Arguably a book that is nearly 20 year old may be a bit dated, too. However, I think it is still interesting history and how our understanding of the world is developed over time with imagination, diligence, debate, testing and the effort to many people.

Amir Aczel also wrote:

Chance

Descarte’s Secret Notebook

Why Science Does Not Disprove God

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Aczel, Amir D. God’s Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999.

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Learning is not easy. It takes effort. Too often, people squander their effort on ineffective activities. Ulrich Boser seeks to correct this by describing effective, research-based learning techniques in Learn Better.

Learning begins with value. You won’t put effort into learning something you don’t care about. When I was in third grade, I found very little value in memorizing how to spell words or recite multiplication tables. When my teacher tied my performance on multiplication tables to my attendance of recess, something I valued quite a bit, I found the will to exert myself.

“Motivation is the first step in acquiring any sort of skill,” Ulrich Boser, Learn Better

Once you’ve squared away the motivation, you can get on with the doing of learing. Learing is at heart doing. It is a mental activity, though it is often paired with, supported by, or supportive of physical activity. If you’re actually learning, you’re probably experience some struggle and feel like your pushing yourself a little, but not so much that you’re lost.

In a sense, Boser’s book is organized around different types of doing appropriate for different stages of learning. In the early stages of learning, you decide what you want to learn and plan you learning process. When you have a foundation, you can concentrate on improvement. As your skills improve, you can shift to deepening your knowledge and exploring more complex applications. The best experts add to this a strong sense of the patterns and connections. From beginning to end, learning requires humility, and the people who sustain and grow mastery over time evaluate their knowledge and reflect on what they are doing.

The book is full of ideas you can use. For instance, I created for myself a simple process of spaced-out learning to polish some skills I wanted to improve at work. When I started writing reviews and summaries of books, even before I started this blog, it was because I found I could remember the major points better if I summarized them in my own words, even if I did not return to my notes. I was using form of retrieval practice, which is one of several techniques Boser describes.

Though Boser draws on research, the book is intended for a broad audience. If you’re looking to improve your own learning or for ways your children or employees can get more out of their learning efforts, you’re likely to find something you can understand and use in Learn Better.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

How to Improve Your Memory by James D. Weinland

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Boser, Ulrich. Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything. New York: Rodale, 2017.

Learn Python 3 the Hard Way by Zed A. Saw

I’ve been putting some effort into learning to code in Python. One of the books I turned to is Learn Python 3 the Hard Way by Zed A. Shaw.

Shaw leads one through Python coding by providing an example of code in each chapter. You can enter it in your editor and run it. He then provides a set of exercises to break, test, modify or improve the code or come up with something on your own.

Actually, this isn’t a particularly hard way to learn coding. It takes time and effort to work through all the exercises in the book, but learning anything challenging and worthwhile takes time and effort. You’ll learn a lot about Python, what works and how to approach programming computers in general as you work through the book.

I don’t know that I have a good way of elaborating on a book like this. It is a workbook. You work through it slowly, step-by-step at the keyboard of your computer.

If you’re a beginner in programming, this is a good place to start. Python is reputed to be easy to learn, but is a powerful general-purpose language the you can use to do about anything you want. The early chapters and exercises are quite easy and Shaw builds skill upon skill as you proceed. In that sense, Shaw makes it easy, you just have to put in the work.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

How to Build and Android by David F. Dufty

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

Shaw, Zed A. Learn Python 3 the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2017.

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Beliefs can powerfully affect our success in life. In her book Mindsets, psychologist Carol S. Dweck describes two prevailing, overarching beliefs that can color our assessments of everything in life and affect our willingness to do what it takes to achieve our goals.

Dweck refers to these two beliefs as the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence, character, and personality are unchanging. You have the talent or knack for something or you don’t. The contrasting growth mindset is that people can improve their abilities by their efforts. If you’re willing to do the work, you can learn and get better.

These mindsets affect the way we view ourselves and interpret everything that happens in our lives. People with a fixed mindset see problems, setbacks and failures as a reflection on who they are. If they have difficulty with a subject, maybe they aren’t smart enough. If a relationship is troubled, maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. The fixed mindset comes with a lens of judgment, through which one sees success as a validation of talent or specialness, and difficulty or failures as proof of inherent shortcomings.

People with a growth mindset see failure as a sign of where they are, or their current status, which they can change. If they have difficulty with a subject, they can study harder or ask for help. If a relationship is troubled, they can reflect on things they or their partner are doing that may be producing negative results. With the growth mindset, failures become opportunities to learn and successes are evidence that your efforts are paying off.

Though written in an informal style, Dweck draws on her own and others’ research. She also draws examples from business, education and sports. She illustrates the mindsets in the lives of CEOs, teachers, students and coaches.

There are few points I’d particularly like to remember from this book. First, the fixed mindset is essentially rooted in pride. A person with a fixed mindset sees himself as special or superior to others, and much of he does is oriented to proving that point, at least to himself. A person with a growth mindset doesn’t expect to be good at anything, at least at the start, because he has much to learn and much effort to put into improving; he is humble.

It is important to praise rightly. Praising someone’s talent or ability tends to put them into the fixed mindset. This may make them less likely to take on challenges or put forth effort in the future. Instead, praise the effort, which puts people into the growth mindset and makes them or open to taking on challenging work, even at the risk of failure, in order to learn and improve.

Change is not easy. In particular, one with a fixed mindset must put aside the idea that he is special and let go of the strategies he used to protect that status. He must embrace a new, less idealized, image of himself that is open to challenges, setbacks, and even failures for the sake of learning—all things the fixed mindset guards against. When you adopt growth-minded strategies that produce positive changes, you can’t let up on practice and learning. People can easily slide back into old habit, and the fixed-minded judgment of the backslide can be worse than the judgment of the perceived failures before the change.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

9 Things You Must Do by Henry Cloud

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006.

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Spiritual growth is the heart of mental health as described by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled. The path of growth Peck describes is not often taken because it involves pain, discipline and stretching. The rewards of this life are great, but they are obtained through effort.

People forgo growth, and sometime develop mental problems, because they refuse to accept a difficult fact: life is hard. Unfortunately, they often put themselves through a lot of extra pain for a longer period than they might have suffered if they would accept and deal with challenges in the first place.

Later in the book, Peck characterizes this as a kind of laziness. It is refusal to extend oneself and put effort into mastering life. The extension of oneself for the purpose of spiritual growth (your own or another’s) is the essence of love in Peck’s view. Laziness is the opposite of love.

Love is one of the main elements of spiritual growth. This love is not primarily emotion. It is commitment. It is respect for others and the distinction of others as unique individuals. It it is the effort one puts into growing and helping others to grow.

Emotions are important. They are fuel for action. To be effective in supporting growth, emotions must be disciplined.

“Passion is feeling of great depth. The fact that a feeling is uncontrolled is no indication that it is in any way deeper than a feeling that is disciplined.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Discipline is another major practice for growth. Discipline is not beating up on yourself. It is accepting responsibility for your life and dealing with reality. It is the practice of giving up things for the purpose of taking hold of more valuable things. Proper discipline is not rigid but it helps us to be flexible and enlarge ourselves.

Love and discipline work together. As Peck frames it, successful psychotherapy occurs when a patient is ready to discipline himself and a therapist can create a relationship of love that supports that discipline.

This is just the beginning of growth. In the latter chapter of the book, Peck shifts to other elements, particularly religion. For Peck, religion is your conception is your conception of how the world works. Even a scientific worldview is a religion.

Religion is also where we can grapple with mystery, especially the mystery of grace, which is important to growth. Peck sees grace in many areas, such as serendipity and the strange knowingness of our unconscious minds.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth. New York: Touchstone, 1978.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

We may convince ourselves that we are decisive beings, making choices and reasoning our way through problems. Duke University researchers found that 40 percent of our daily activities are habits. Psychologist William James put it more starkly: “All of life, so far as its definite form, is but a mass of habits.” These are just a couple of the sources Charles Duhigg draws from in The Power of Habit.

Habit formation is built into the structure of our brain, as Duhigg describes in the early chapters of the book. It is a matter of efficiency. Thinking and deciding are demanding mental tasks. The brain gains efficiency through automation, chunking together even complex activities into routines we can perform with very little mental effort or attention.

The difficulty with this biological economy is that we form many habits without consciously choosing. Some of those habits may have negative consequences. This is the central point of the book. Habits can make or break us, so it is important to understand habits, how they are formed, and how they can be changed.

There is good news and bad news about habits. The bad news is that the encoding of habits in the brain seems to be permanent. The good news is that they can be overwritten with new, more powerful habits.

Duhigg breaks habits down into parts. A cue triggers the habit. We perform routine. Finally, that routine produces or acquires a reward. Eventually, we conflate the cue a reward, having a strong anticipation of the reward that creates a craving. This craving gives the habit its power. Changing habits involves inserting a new routine between the cue and reward that satisfies the craving (and hopefully producing a more positive result than the bad habit you’re hoping to change).

Changing a habit is difficult. Some habits can only change with much time, effort, and support. There is not one-size-fits-all approach to changing habits, but Duhigg presents a general framework.

·         -First, identify the routine you want to change.

·         -Next, experiment with rewards. By substituting different rewards, and tracking how you feel about it, you can isolate what you are really craving.

·         -Isolate the cue to see what is triggering the habit. Duhigg offers a simple handful of questions that can narrow down your search. Figure out what is happening just before you feel the craving.

·         -Finally, develop plan to implement a new routine that satisfies the craving. It will also be good to plan how you are going to handle the inevitable setbacks you’ll experience as you change your habits.

I was surprised by the moral stand on habits Duhigg took in the latter chapters of the book. He argues that if you know you have a habit that is dangerous or destructive, you have an obligation to do something about it. Fortunately, awareness of a habit puts you on the path to being able to do something about it. Unfortunately, that may be a rocky, uncomfortable, and difficult path.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

No Excuses by Brian Tracy

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012.

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Eggerichs, Emerson. Love and Respect. Nashville: Integrity, 2004.

When I first heard about this book a few years ago, it was misrepresented a little. There was a lot of discussion about the concept that wives should give their husbands unconditional respect. This was a novel idea, which may be why it got most of the attention, and many women met it with confusion and suspicion.

The book has just as much to say to husbands, and it directs them to give unconditional love to their wives. In fact, as the title implies, love and respect go hand in hand.



The basic premise is that women value love and men value respect. This leads them to have very different perspectives. In a marriage, these differing perspectives can cause serious misunderstanding that spin out of control.

Eggerichs refers to this situation as the crazy cycle. Trying to get love from their husbands, women do things that seem disrespectful to men. Trying to get respect from their wives, men do things that seem unloving to their wives. Without live, wives react without respect. Without respect, husbands act without live. Unless one of the spouses steps up to try something different, this cycle accelerates, damaging the marriage.

That leads to the alternative, which Eggerichs calls the energizing cycle. A wife’s respect motivates her husband’s love. A husband’s love motivates his wife’s respect. I doesn’t matter which spouse starts, but someone has to start even though it can be difficult. Eggerichs' confidence that this will work is in his assumption that each spouse has good will. It not a spouse’s intent to be disrespectful or unloving, they’re just trying a misguided strategy to get the respect or love they desire. When one spouse makes the effort to treat the other respectfully or lovingly, the other will be won over and respond with love or respect. It is an application to marriage of Zig Ziglar’s axiom that you can get what you want by helping others get what they want. A couple that makes a concerted effort to treat each other this way can keep themselves energized and spend a lot less time on the crazy cycle.

In the life of a Christian, there is a relationship that is even more important than the marriage. Our relationship with God is the basis of the rewarded cycle. Regardless of how our spouse reacts, when we treat them with love and respect, we are being loving, respectful and obedient to God. God, who is looking to give eternal rewards to his children for good works, takes pleasure in this. (Eggerichs’ isn’t saying we earn salvation through any kind of good work because that is the free gift of God in Christ and something we could never get on our own merits.) This life of obedience can lead to a freedom, maturity and relationship with God that is joyful and valuable even for those who can draw their spouses onto the energizing cycle.

Most of the chapters are devoted to the energizing cycle and how wives can show respect to their husbands and husbands can show respect to their wives. Eggerichs uses helpful anagrams. Each of these chapters ends with a short list of practical ways to show love or respect to a spouse. The appendices also include ways to remind ourselves to be loving or respectful and to ask for the love or respect we need.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

It can be tough to be an engineer. You live in a world in which everything falls apart in spite of your best efforts. Constraints abound, not the least of which is that even the most enduring materials last only so long. If economics is the dismal science, engineering is the dismal art.

If the technical aspects of rust, more broadly corrosion, do not impress most readers, the economic aspects of it might. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) estimated in 2011 that it spent $21 billion annually dealing with corrosion. One might guess that corrosion is costing us at least as much in our civil infrastructure, private businesses and homes.

Of course, corrosion isn’t a sexy subject. To make its awareness videos on corrosion more appealing, the DOD recruited LeVar Burton, known for his roles in Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation, to host. Journalist Jonathan Waldman attempts to hook his readers by starting his book, Rust, with a story of an American icon, the Statue of Liberty.

When the Statue of Liberty was built, her makers unintentionally created something like a giant battery. While this current worked well to preserve the copper shell of the statue, atoms of the iron framework began to shuffle away, leading to serious corrosion. By the 1980s, the problem was serious enough to inspire a major renovation effort.

Waldman approaches the problem of corrosion through stories. In the Statue of Liberty we see that is something historically overlooked by engineers and actively ignored by administrators who can pass the problem on to a successor. Similarly, the military resisted Congress’ push to make it more responsive to the issues. Since then, the DOD has integrated corrosion concern into the way it does business, but civilian agencies are mostly dragging their heels.

Only a few of the stories come from government. Waldman also looks at the issue from the perspective of the aluminum can industry and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline—his recounting of a pigging of the pipeline surprisingly conveys some of the sense of drama that the people who undertake the effort must feel. He also dips into the early history of corrosion prevention in the work of chemist Sir Humphrey Davy for the British Navy and Harry Brearley, a discoverer and popularizer of stainless steel.

Waldman’s book is not a textbook on corrosion by any means; it is written for a popular audience. He does try to present how serious an issue it is—especially how costly it is. Fortunately, reasonable solutions to some of our most pressing rust problems are within reach if we have the will to do something about it.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Waldman, Jonathan. Rust: The Longest War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”

-Herm Albright

New & Interesting Stuff March 14, 2013

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort

Gas Taxes

Gina McCarthy Nominated to Lead Environmental Protection Agency

He that has not mastery over his inclinations lacks the first principle of virtue and industry

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

Literature Review: Cost Overruns & Delays in Municipal Construction Projects

March Featured Book

March Featured Category

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

New & Interesting Stuff March 5, 2012

Seize this very minute

The success of the West rested entirely on religious foundations

Victory is not won in miles but in inches

Smartcuts by Shane Snow

In Smartcuts, Shane Snow explores the methods used by successful people and businesses to achieve remarkable results in short periods of time. The short answer is they use lateral thinking. Rapid success is achieved by putting aside conventional thinking and finding new way to frame and approach problems.

Fortunately, lateral thinking is not limited to the realm of natural geniuses. Snow believes lateral thinking strategies can be learned. Most of the book is devoted to describing particular strategies or patterns of lateral thinking.

He places these strategies into three broad categories. Success hackers shorten the path. Innovators use leverage to get more out of their efforts. When they achieve success, they continue to move forward to higher achievement or to make progress in another endeavor.

Shortening the path to success often means getting off the conventional path. People who climb the ladder to success quickly often prove themselves in one field move laterally into another. They also seek feedback from experts, markets, and many trials, making improvements as they go.

Leverage is largely about building on what has already been achieved. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or repeat what others have done; you can start where they left off. Not only can you leverage the knowledge and skills of others to start at a higher level, you can leverage the connections of others to make the connections you need. They also recognize opportunities and catch waves that propel them forward. People who use leverage successfully put in the work learning to use the tools that are available, deliberately looking for trends, and paying forward the generosity they have received.

Continuing success is largely a matter of momentum, continuing to make progress in one way or another. Focus helps to, concentrating on what is essential and stripping away distractions. In particular, it means dreaming big. Making and order-of-magnitude leap is sometimes as easy as making and incremental improvement, and it has an energizing effect on those involved, drawing in other excited dreamers to help make it real.

For each strategy, Snow provides illustrations of people who’ve applied them. Some of them a people he interviewed personally. Some are famous, though I think I was more interested in those who were unknown to me.

Even with lateral thinking skills, there is no way of getting around work. Lateral thinking may lead to new solutions that save a lot of time and effort, but implementing solutions to some of the biggest challenges is still demanding. In many of Snow’s illustrations, the “instant success” followed a lot of creative and diligent work. Smartcuts are not necessarily shortcuts.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

Snow, Shane. Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. New York: Harper Business, 2014.

Waste and Want by Susan Strasser

An old proverb relates trash and treasure as a matter of perspective. In Waste and Want, Susan Strasser describes American’s changing perspectives on waste from the colonial era to our own day.

In the colonial and revolutionary period of American history, manufactured objects were rare and expensive. Repair and mending were common even among the wealthy because it was difficult and costly to replace objects. In addition, the various types of home industry practiced by both men and women equipped them with skills in handling materials that made them adept at repair. Even when and object was beyond repair, it parts, or the material it was made of, might be usefully repurposed themselves or as part of an assembly. This lack of goods and facility with handling materials made bricolage common. Because things had durable value, people had a sense of stewardship relating to them.

Strasser establishes this as a beginning state. The development of industry and consumerism led to a current state in which all of these have been reversed. We have an abundance of goods, and many of them are inexpensive. We work in factories and offices where we do not develop skills for repair, and particularly have lost familiarity with materials needed for practical bricolage. These and other forces, particularly those related to health and cleanliness, have resulted in waste being something of the home where additional value may be extracted to something that is the realm of specialists that is taken away and handled by government agencies or specialized companies.

There are many stages in this development. It is interesting to me that the value of household waste as raw materials American industry provided a mechanism for poor and rural people to purchase manufactured goods. Even so, as industrialization made more goods available, along with larger quantities of more manageable waste, household waste became less valuable, and reuse and recycling became associated with poverty.

By the end of the 1920s, consumer culture was established in America, and it reinforced the trends identified by Strasser.  Planned obsolescence was developed in the automotive industry, and along with the craze for fashion, it took hold for almost all consumer goods. Even during the Great Depression, when lack of credit and unemployment made doing it yourself attractive, there was an assumption that people had access to new and old consumer goods and their packaging. Even during this period of economic distress, demand for certain types of consumer goods grew. Thrift was reimaged for a consumer age. For instance, refrigerators became commonplace, and instead of being presented as luxury items they were sold on the notion of thrift, allowing housewives to save on food by keeping leftovers and buying in bulk.

People were encouraged to conserve and recycle to support the war effort during World War II. However, this did little to reverse changing attitudes that valued the new over the old and saw little value in trash. People had jobs and money, and wartime rationing created a pent up demand for goods that was unleased after the war. Disposable goods and packaging represented cleanliness and convenience; it was freedom from dirt and drudgery. There was no value in trash, which was taken away by collectors.

There were reactions against this even in the 1950s. They grew into the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, which were skeptical of corporations and consumerism. The environmental movement also grew out of this counterculture. Reuse of second-hand goods became more acceptable for even middle-class families, though few had the skills needed to rework these items to make them seem new or adapt them to current fashion. Little used goods were seen to have some value that could be recovered through yard sales. (I grew up on a stretch of highway that now boasts and annual 100 mile yard sale.)

This counterculture has not resulted in a broad return to a stewardship of things. Strasser suggests that a rising ethic of environmental or resource stewardship may lead to the mitigation of problems related to the abundant trash created by disposable and rapidly obsolete goods. There is no turning back, but we might find new reasons and ways to reduce use, reuse, and recycle.

Stasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Prior to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, I had seen it referenced by others in relation to the so-called “10,000-hour rule.” This is the concept that mastery of a complex skill takes about 10,000 hours of practice. This idea is not original to Gladwell, but his book popularized the concept.

That is not at all the point of Outliers. Instead, Gladwell takes on myths of success, especially the myths of genius and the self-made man. Certainly people of extraordinary achievement are intelligent and hard-working, but Gladwell shows that they also the beneficiaries of opportunities provided by their culture, sometimes very unique opportunities.

To start, Gladwell tackles our enchantment with intelligence (or talent). He describes research that shows that intelligence matters very little after it reaches some threshold. Once someone has enough intelligence to succeed at something, whether he succeeds for the degree of his achievement is not determined by intelligence. Other things are more important.

One of those other things is the amount of work someone puts into improving a skill (going back to the 10,000-hour rule). Even for a very motivated person, it is hard to put 10,000 hours into learning and improving any complex skill, especially while relatively young. Drawing from many cases (including Bill Gates and Mozart), high-achievers were enabled by opportunities provided by the culture (family, economic situation, law, technological development, etc.). In addition, they gained their mastery at a time when those abilities were highly valued (another cultural contribution that is often time-limited).

After establishing this foundation, Gladwell looks at other aspects of culture and success. Culture can contribute to success and hinder it. Cultures are persistent, yet some have found ways, at least in certain contexts, of overcoming limits to opportunities and opening the doors to success.

Culture matters. We like stories of the lone genius or plucky rag-to-riches go-getter. Without discounting their talent or effort, Gladwell shows that these stories typically veil the many opportunities and lucky breaks that were available to these successful people that very often were not available to others.

The implication is that we rely on luck to produced highly successful people, and luck doesn’t strike often. We could create cultures that provide more opportunities for more people. There are plenty of smart-enough people. Many of them are willing to work hard at something meaningful (itself something that is a cultural heritage). We might have many more successful people, and even more of those extraordinary performers, if we got serious about providing opportunities for everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell also wrote

Blink

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Good Naked by Joni B. Cole

Writing can be challenging, outstanding writing usually is, but writers don’t have to be miserable. Author, editor and writing instructor Joni B. Cole offers some perspective for writers in Good Naked.

Cole dispels myths of writing. For instance, writers rarely produce perfect first drafts; mediocre writing is okay because it is a place to start. You don’t have to suffer to produce art, but you do have to put in the effort and deal with the difficulties.

Writers need a balanced optimism. Acknowledge the challenges, but believe you can overcome them. Add to it a touch of humility; Cole believes real writers put aside pride and get the help they need to reach their goals, such as joining a writing group.

Cole also runs counter to some popular advice on writing. She doesn’t believe in outlines. Instead, work the parts that are meaningful, that call out to you. You can arrange them and fill in the gaps later as the big picture forms in your mind. It’s easy to imagine her chapters coming together this way, with images, stories, ideas and remembrances being assembled and reworded until they flow together.

Each chapter of the book is an essay. Though the book as a whole has an order and flow, one could read or reread a helpful chapter without needing to flip back to preceding pages to make sense of it.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender

Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

Shut Up & Write! by Judy Bridges

Write Naked by Jennifer Probst

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Cole, Joni B. Good Naked: Reflections on How to Write More, Write Better and Be Happier. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2017.

The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden

Devlin, Keith, & Gary Lorden. The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS: Solving Crime With Mathematics. New York: Plum, 2007.

The Numbers Behind NUMBERS is not a math textbook. Like the television show it accompanies, it aims for a broad audience. Where NUMB3RS is chiefly a crime drama, this book is about how math is and can be used to solve real word crime and other problems.

Even for a popular book about math, there is very little use of mathematical notation. The only complicated equation in the book is in the first chapter. It is Rossmo’s formula, which is used in geographic profiling of crimes to determine a likely home of a criminal. Devlin and Lorden describe the formula in plain English, as they do all the math in the book.

One of the notable things about Rossmo’s formula, and nearly all the math in the book, is that it simply attempts to describe actual things in numerical terms. Because we have tools for handling numerical information, the hope is to predict behavior and uncover hidden patterns using these tools.

An interesting thing that is brought out in the book is that the mathematical contribution is not always about numbers. Math is also about logic and abstract reasoning. The contributions Charlie, the mathematician character in the show, makes are often about approaches and perspectives and may not involve any calculation.

Also highlighted by the book and the show are how much applied math uses computers. One of the things that makes math so powerful is our ability to automate calculations. Going back to Rossmo’s formula as an example, you will find in it operations that would be familiar to most people. However, if you applied it to a grid that might have hundreds or thousands of squares, you would soon run into an insurmountable mountain of calculations if you had to do it by hand. Because computers can calculate very quickly and repeatedly, math can be powerful and timely.

Even so, using math to solve problems, just like using standard investigative techniques to solve crimes, can be slow. This is something the book admits, but it does not work well in a television show that fits in and hour along with some commercials. Real world math must deal with real world data that is often disorganized, incomplete and inconsistent. Even a straightforward analysis may take a long time because of the effort needed to gather, organize and standardize the data.


Numbers is a surprisingly easy read. People who enjoy the show and would like a little better understanding of the math without needing a graduate degree will likely enjoy this book.

Keith Devlin also wrote The Unfinished Game.