Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Mind of the Market: through chapter five


While reading Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics, I suddenly realized that the terms Shermer was teaching readers about in chapter five were mostly familiar terms from psychology and probability.

Some of them I learned at MIT, but I also read about many of these terms in a book this year or last year -- and I can't remember what book and it's driving me crazy! Maybe it was Tim Harford's The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World? Or Michael Mauboussin's More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places? Or Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break?

I just don't know, so I thought I would write a bit about each chapter of The Mind of the Market -- since the whole purpose of starting this blog is to help me remember what I've read and what I've learned from reading.


So here we go...

I've already summarized the prologue, Economics for Everyone, and chapter one, The Great Leap Forward, so let's start with chapter two, Our Folk Economics. Chapter two feels like a book report on the history of free market economics. The books mentioned through chapter two include:

I'm not complaining -- I didn't know much about the free market theory and I've only taken a handful of economics courses between high school and college so I found it very educational.

Still, chapters one and two feel like a two part introduction to the book (three parts if you include the prologue) and sets up Shermer's argument that economies are "complex adaptive systems" (CAS) -- "systems in which individual particles, parts, or agents interact, process information, learn, and adapt their behavior to changing conditions" -- and that we all owe our faulty economics instincts to our species' rapid evolution.

Chapter three, Bottom-Up Capitalism, continues with the book report -- William Paley's Natural Theology, Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Frederic Bastiat's The Petition of the Candlemakers -- and again I'm thankful for the education on the history of free market theory. Shermer teaches us that Charles Darwin (Origin of Species) was arguing with William Paley (Natural Theology), who was arguing against Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations), who was arguing against the mercantilists ("the belief that nations compete for a fixed amount of wealth in a zero-sum game"). This reminded me that I'd like to read Robert Wright's Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (click here to view the table of contents and excerpts).

Anyway, the mercantilists of Smith's time believed in reducing or eliminating competition from foreign producers. Today we call that "fair trade" or the "favorable balance of trade" add the government uses a myriad of ways to intervene in the economy:
  • tax favors for businesses
  • tax subsidies for corporations
  • regulations: to control prices, imports, exports, production, distribution, and sales
  • licensing: to control wages and protect jobs
  • taxes: through terms like "duties," "imposts," "excises," "tariffs," "protective tariffs," "import quotas," "export quotas," "most-favored nation agreements," "bilateral agreements," and "multilateral agreements"

Chapter three also discusses the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 -- which I hadn't thought about since taking AP US History as a high school junior -- which allows the government to indict individuals and companies on one or more of four crimes:
  1. price gouging: charging more than the competition
  2. cutthroat competition: charging less than the competition
  3. price collusion: charging the same as the competition
  4. monopoly: having no competition

The story of Charles Martin Hall's Aluminum Company of America (founded as the Pittsburgh Reduction Company and now known as Alcoa), which produced aluminum through a process far cheaper than otherwise available at the time. Hall found that aluminum was produced as byproduct of passing an electric current through a bath of cryolite and aluminum oxide. The Justice Department charged the company's directors with 140 criminal counts, including excessive prices when Alcoa in fact lowered prices dramatically.

Of course the example we all know of is the Microsoft Internet Explorer antitrust suit (bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and partnering with AOL, IBM, Intel, Compaq and others which "compelled Netscape to stop charging for Navigator).

The Wal-Mart tidbits from chapter three were also interesting:
By employing 1.3 million people (about as many as the military), and keeping retail prices low through quantity purchasing, a McKinsey & Company study estimated that Wal-Mart alone accounted for a whopping 13 percent of U.S. productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s. As the savvy social commentator and political analyst George Will noted, for every fifty retail jobs that Wal-Mart caused to be lost among its competitors, it created a hundred new jobs at Wal-Mart, making it "about as important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation."

I still haven't figured how I feel about Wal-Mart (especially after learning about the massive subsidies Wal-Mart receives from local and state governments) but I'd like to learn more about the economics of Wal-Mart.

Also in chapter three, Shermer quotes Nobel laureate economist Edward C. Prescott that the government's job is "to provide the opportunity for people to seek their livelihood on their own terms, in open international markets, with as little interference from government as possible" and not "to protect U.S. industry, employment, and wealth against the forces of foreign competition." Prescott's research found that "those countries that open their borders to international competition are those countries with the highest per capita income" and that open economic borders are "the key to bringing developing nations up to the standard of living enjoyed by citizens of wealthier countries" (the Treaty of Rome -- originally France, Italy, Belgium, West Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- and the subsequent increase in productivity compared with Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom).

Chapter three closes with the thought that anarcho-capitalism (the belief that political systems will eventually fall into disuse) and other free-market extremists are impractical as:
we need political states based on the rule of law, with property rights, a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system, economic stability, a reliable infrastructure, protection of civil liberties, a clean and safe environment, and various freedoms . . . a robust military for protection of our liberties from attacks by other states . . . a potent police force for protection of our freedoms from attacks by other people within the state . . . a viable legislative system for establishing fair and just laws . . . and an effective judicial system for the equitable enforcement of those fair and just laws.

The best politico-economic system to date is a liberal democracy and free market capitalism, or democratic-capitalism. In a system of democratic-capitalism, social liberalism and fiscal conservatism is a synergistic marriage that leads to the greatest prosperity, the greatest liberty, and the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

In case you couldn't tell, I liked chapter three -- I'm not sure I agree with Shermer on all his points but I still found it educational.

Chapter four, Of Pandas, Products, and People, starts out with Shermer's ode to cycling -- Shermer uses the massive changes in cycling technology during the mid-1980s through today to discuss how markets change. Also in this chapter Shermer explains many economics and evolutionary terms:
  • path dependency: "where markets become dependent on the paths they are already in"
  • historical lock-in: where markets "become locked into the channels in which they are operating"
  • bandwagon effect: where customers "gravitate toward products that they think will most likely become readily available"
  • network effect: "when producers and retailers, anticipating the bandwagon effect, produce and stock up on the products that they think will be most in demand by consumers"
  • Nash equilibrium: where "two or more players reach an equilibrium where neither one has anything to gain by unilaterally changing strategies"
  • Pareto efficient: allocation of resources is Pareto efficient when markets reach an equilibrium where an optimum level of win-win and win-no-lose trades (versus win-lose and no-lose-lose trades) is reached (where no further trades could be made without someone losing)
  • Evolutionary Stable Strategies: a strategy that when adopted by a population of individuals consistently outcompetes alternative strategies
  • exaptation: "a feature that originally evolved for one purpose is later co-opted for a different purpose"
  • continuities:"a contiguous and constant connection to the past, as change occurs gradually over time"
  • discontinuities:"breaks from the past as change occurs suddenly and dramatically over time"

Shermer's discussion of the QWERTY keyboard is fascinating. We've all been told that QWERTY was designed to slow down 19th century typists (who would jam the typewriters if they typed too fast). And (according the Shermer), more than 70% of English words can be produced with the letters DHIATENSOR but most of these letters are not in a "strong striking position" (home row struck by the strong first two fingers of each hand) and all vowels are removed from the strongest striking positions. Only about 100 words can be typed exclusively on th home row and the (typically weaker) left hand is required to type over 3,000 words alone (without use of the right hand). And the home row includes the alphabetic sequence DFGHJKL (minus the vowel I).

Yet the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK), which is supposedly much better, has never quite caught on. Historical research (according to Shermer) says that the inventor of QWERTY (Christopher Latham Sholes) designed his typewriter to separate keys whose type-bar letters (frequent letter pairs like T and H) were close to each other underneath the typewriter carriage. Shermer argues that "QWERTY may be suboptimal, but it is no less so than its erstwhile competitors."

Chapter five, Minding Our Money, is all about psychology and probability terms.
  • cognitive dissonance: "mental tension created when a person holds two conflicting thoughts simultaneously" (Shermer uses the example of rationalizations that doomsday cults make when their prophecies don't come true)
  • inattentional blindness: when attending to one task, many of us become blind to dynamic events (the gorilla suit during a basketball game is the typical example used and Shermer uses it)
  • blind spot bias: when people recognize the existence and influence of biases in others but fail to see those same biases in themselves
  • introspection illusion: how "people trust themselves to employ the subjective process of introspection but do not believe that others can be trusted to do the same"
  • self-serving bias: "we tend to see ourselves in a more positive light than others see us"
  • attribution bias: the tendency to accept credit for good behavior but to allow the situation to account for bad behaviors
  • framing: that whether choices are "framed" as penalties or rewards affects one's decisions
  • representative fallacy: "an event is judged probable to the extend that it represents the essential features of its parent population or generating process"
  • availability fallacy: "we assign probabilities of potential outcomes based on examples that are immediately available to us, which are then generalized into conclusions upon which choices are based"
  • anchoring fallacy: how once an initial value is set, we are biased toward that value (so don't be afraid to be the first to throw out a number during a negotiation)
  • hindsight bias: "the tendency to reconstruct the past to fit the present knowledge"
  • law of small numbers: "we tend to believe that small sample sizes are representative of the larger population"
  • law of large numbers: "if the numbers are large enough, the probability is that something weird is likely to happen"
  • Monty Hall problem: Whether you should change your choice on the classic television game show Let's Make a Deal (three doors with a brand new car behind one door and goats behind the other two doors) after Monty Hall opens one of the doors you did not choose and unveils a goat -- you should but most people would not
  • mental accounting: where we put monies into different categories depending on the frame or context
  • Wason Selection Test: thought experiment "designed to test symbolic reasoning" (four cards, each with a letter of the alphabet on one side and a number on the other side, with two cards showing numbers and two showing letters such as M 4 E 7; test the rule "if there is a vowel on one side, there must be an even number on the other side" by turning over just two cards -- the answer is E and 7 but most people choose E and 4)
  • endowment effect: bias toward the status quo (what you already have and must give up in order to change) versus what you might have once you choose
  • sunk-cost fallacy: how "we hang on to losing stocks, unprofitable investments, failing businesses, and unsuccessful relationships" based on our past costs and not wanting to sacrifice our sunk costs
  • confirmation bias: "where we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence)"
  • loss aversion effect: "shows that people tend to fear losses about twice as much as they desire gains"

Whew, that took longer than I expected . . .

I will write more about the other chapters later . . .

Happy Halloween!

Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie

I just read Natalie Angier's October 27, 2008 New York Times article "The Unappreciated, Holding Our Lives in Balance" which made me think of Scott McCredie's Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense. (Which, of course, I read after I heard about it in the New York Times; click here to read Daniel Smith's New York Times review titled "Without a Net" and published August 19, 2007.)

While I don't have any notes on this book (I read Balance before I started this blog), I remember finding this book thoughtful and well-written. While I wouldn't go so far as to agree with McCredie that Balance should be considered the sixth sense, McCredie did convincingly argue balance's importance on normal human function.

The book managed to be both educational and entertaining. The stories of Karl Wallenda were sweet while stories of pilot's disorientation (and how balance was a contributing factor in the death of John F. Kennedy Jr) were tragic.

I've always had a poor sense of balance despite my love of yoga. So I appreciated McCredie's appendix of exercises. The New York Times (of course) published a great article by Jane Brody in January titled "Preserving a Fundamental Sense: Balance" with simple balance exercises:
To increase stability and strengthen the legs, stand with feet shoulder-width apart and arms straight out in front. Lift one foot behind, bending the knee at 45 degrees. Hold that position for five seconds or longer, if possible.

Repeat this exercise five times. Then switch legs. As you improve, try one-leg stands with your eyes closed.

...

Sit-to-stand exercises once or twice a day increase ankle, leg and hip strength and help the body adjust to changes in position without becoming dizzy after being sedentary for a long time. Sit straight in a firm chair (do not lean against the back) with arms crossed. Stand up straight and sit down again as quickly as you can without using your arms. Repeat the exercise three times and build to 10 repetitions.

Heel-to-toe tandem walking is another anytime exercise, resembling plank walking popular with young children. It is best done on a firm, uncarpeted floor. With stomach muscles tight and chin tucked in, place one foot in front of the other such that the heel of the front foot nearly touches the toe of the back foot. Walk 10 or more feet and repeat the exercise once or twice a day.

Also try walking on your toes and then walking on your heels to strengthen your ankles.

Another helpful exercise is sidestepping. Facing a wall, step sideways with one leg (bring the other foot to it) 10 times in each direction. After mastering that, try a dancelike maneuver that starts with sidestepping once to the right. Then cross the left leg behind, sidestep to the right again and cross the left leg in front. Repeat this 10 times. Then do it in the other direction.

So in addition to your normal workout, make sure you aren't neglecting your vestibular system! Perform this test to assess your current balance:
  1. Stand straight, wearing flat, closed shoes, with your arms folded across your chest. Raise one leg, bending the knee about 45 degrees, start a stopwatch and close your eyes.
  2. Remain on one leg, stopping the watch immediately if you uncross your arms, tilt sideways more than 45 degrees, move the leg you are standing on or touch the raised leg to the floor.
  3. Repeat this test with the other leg.
  4. Now, compare your performance to the norms for various ages:
    • 20 to 49 years old: 24 to 28 seconds.
    • 50 to 59 years: 21 seconds.
    • 60 to 69 years: 10 seconds.
    • 70 to 79 years: 4 seconds.
    • 80 and older: most cannot do it at all.


Click here to view the table of contents and download an excerpt from the author's website or here to view the author's FAQ.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

$50 off Amazon Kindle

If you're thinking of buying an Amazon Kindle, you've got just a few more days to purchase it with a $50 discount (using the promotional code OPRAHWINFREY). Offer expires November 1, 2008.

I have wanted an Amazon Kindle for months now and have held back from buying one so far. I'm reconsidering since the price is about $300 with the OPRAHWINFREY coupon, but since I'm also considering buying a new computer I should probably hold off . . .

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer


Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics is interesting but I was totally wrong about the premise of the book.

As I've gotten further along, it's become clear that this book is Shermer's treatise on free market economies.

I don't know much about the free market theory -- though I generally believe in it anyway -- so I appreciate the educational aspect of this book, but I don't like feeling mislead about the book's premise.

Will write more when I finish the book -- click here to read an excerpt or here to visit Shermer's website.

Wordwatchers

I've been faithfully reading Dr. James W. Pennebaker's wordwatchers blog since reading Jessica Warner's October 13, 2008 New York Times article "He Counts Your Words (Even Those Pronouns)."

The intriguing blog "explores how we can learn about the candidates' personalities, motives, emotions, and inner selves through their everyday words."

As a MIT nerd, I'm fascinated.

Research over the past several decades have proven that "the ways that individuals talk and write provide windows into their emotional and cognitive worlds."

Dr. Pennebaker invented a software program, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, pronounced luke), to compare text samples to its vast dictionary -- with each word assigned to one or more categories (such as social words, exclusive words, religion words, and dozens of others) -- outputting how many words appear in each category.

This text analysis is so telling that Pennebaker even thinks his software can identify authors of anonymous blogs and e-mail messages. I certainly believe it!

Check out the LIWC website to learn more and make some time to take a look at the wordwatchers blog before election season is over!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Plan B 3.0 by Lester R Brown

A friend recently recommended Lester R. Brown's Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Brown is the author of more than 40 books -- including Outgrowing The Earth, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge, and The Earth from the Air -- and is a well known environmentalist thinker. Click here to read his biography.

I haven't read it but my understanding is that this is the third edition of Brown's classic Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. My friend says "the first half tells how we got in this situation and the second half has solutions; It gives you hope and makes you realize it is possible to solve the environmental problems if we realize the need and get busy."

Sounds interesting and since I've cut back on my book budget I'm happy to hear that while it's available for sale in hardcover and paperback it is also available as a free PDF format book on the Earth Policy Institute website here.

Click here to view the table of contents and download the entire book or specific chapters in PDF format (and the data from various chapters are also available in excel spreadsheet format).

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Fall Garden Update (Square Foot Gardening)


I just realized that it's been two months since I last wrote an update about my fall garden.

I still have not purchased Barbara Ellis's The Veggie Gardener’s Answer Book and I'm still a fan of Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening (click here to view all my posts on that book).

The fall garden has been as productive as the summer fruit and vegetable garden (with yellow pear and grape tomatoes, full size tomatoes, summer squash plants, eggplant, and more) and I've gotten used to eaten salad from greens freshly harvested, making stir-fry with bok choy or mibuna asian mustard greens straight from the garden, crispy roasted homegrown kale, delicious baby ox heart carrots, spicy hot scarlet globe radishes, and I'm looking forward to lots of winter squash.

I highly recommend Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening to anyone considering gardening.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Baltimore Book Festival Update

Last month I promised myself that I would check out the annual Baltimore Book Festival . . . well, I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't go.

In my defense, it rained the entire weekend. I heard the turnout was okay but that everyone -- attendees and organizers alike -- got soaked.

Oh well.

Maybe next year I'll finally go -- September 25-27, 2009.

Valerie Plame Lecture

Just as Kareem Abdul Jabbar will be speaking at Hopkins next week (on October 28, 2008) as part of the Milton S. Eisenhower Speakers Symposium "A More Perfect Union: Partnership, Progress and Prosperity in a Changing America," so shall Valerie Plame (on October 30, 2008).

Author of Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government, Plame features heavily in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

Click here to read about Hubris (an excerpt may be found here) and click here to read an excerpt from Fair Game.


Doors will open at 7:30 pm at Shriver Hall on the Homewood Campus the talk begins at 8:00 pm and will be followed by a reception in the Clipper Room.

This event is free and open to the public.

Shriver Hall Auditorium is on the university’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St., in Baltimore.

Visitor parking is available in the South Garage, 3101 Wyman Park Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21211.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Last night I renewed my interest in re-reading classics works, especially those I read in high school, by reading Robert Frost's often quoted The Road Not Taken on bartleby.com.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost, 1920


I still like it every bit as much as I did in high school.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer


Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics has been fun to read!

In this book, Shermer sets out to use the framework of evolutionary economics, "the study of the economy as an evolving complex adaptive system grounded in a human nature that evolved functional adaptations to survival as a social primate species in the Paleolithic epoch in which we evolved," to explain:
  1. How the market has a mind of its own -- how economies evolved from hunter-gathering to consumer-trading.
  2. How minds operate in markets -- how the human brain evolved to operate in a hunter-gatherer economy but must function in a consumer-trader economy.
  3. How minds and markets are moral --how moral emotions evolved to enable us to cooperate and how this capacity facilitates fair and free trade.

Some of the interesting concepts I've learned about so far include "reciprocal altruism" (I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine) and the correlating aversion to unfairness, "virtue economics" (Shermer's own term for the the principle that when someone gives us something we feel we should give something back), and "coyotes interruptus" (the initutive sense of how the physical world works, in honor of Wile E Coyote).

I'm not very far into the book so I'll write more when I get a bit further into it.

Also, I appreciated Shermer's Prologue, where he introduced readers to his personal history and the moments in his young adulthood that led to his current occupation and founding Skeptic magazine.

Shermer, who I didn't know much about before picking up this book, is the author of many books: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, How We Believe, 2nd Edition: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense, In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History, Race Across America: The Agonies and Glories of the World's Longest and Cruelest Bicycle Race, and others.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to visit Shermer's website.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Loving Frank Discussion

One of my book clubs has just started its discussion of Nancy Horan's Loving Frank, a fascinating piece of historical fiction that explores the love affair of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

Here's our first discussion question:

As the book begins, we see Mamah rushing to see Frank Lloyd W at a lecture. As she herself reflects, she "behaved like a madwoman, cranking the car until her arm ached, then racing on foot through snow and ice to get a glimpse of Frank, as if she had no choice." She seems to act like a schoolgirl with a crush at first, but as their affair deepens how would you characterize her actions? Was she being self-indulgent or was it honest self-realization?

Will write more later.

Monday, October 20, 2008

The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie

Just heard that Hugh Laurie -- of the FOX tv show House MD -- published a comic spy novel in 1996: The Gun Seller. It's supposed to be a spoof of the spy novel genre, inspired by authors like Robert Ludlum.

I did enjoy actor-writer Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday and Steve Martin's Shopgirl: a Novella (one of my all-time favorite books) so I'm willing to consider reading Laurie's The Gun Seller -- and not just write it off as another actor's attempt at being a writer.

Click here to read an excerpt and click here to read Christopher Buckley's New York Times book review published June 8, 1997 titled "Bertie Wooster Meets James Bond."

Hopefully my library carries it!

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Brenda Avadian Lecture

Brenda Avadian, author of eight books, is speaking at the 11th Annual Louis Mary Battle Lecture on  Monday November 3, 2008 at the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Auditorium, Mercy High School.

Dr. Rebecca Elon, director of the Lorien Columbia Nursing and Rehabilitation Center,  will also be speaking.

Avadian's books include:



The event posting I saw gave this description of the speakers:
Rebecca Elon, MD
The Absence of Presence: Lessons from American Medicine
Dr. Rebecca Elon is the founding medical director of Erickson Health Howard County (EHHC). The outpatient offices of EHHC are housed within the Lorien Columbia Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where Dr. Elon has served as medical director since 2006.

Brenda Avadian, MA

Finding the JOY in Caregiving: When Tears are Dried with Laughter
Brenda Avadian, The Caregiver's Voice, is a spokesperson and advocate for caregivers and their loved ones with dementia. An eight-book author, she offers sprinkles of JOY from her own experiences caring for her father with Alzheimer's. For caregiving information, please visit thecaregiversvoice.com.

Reception starts at 6:00pm and lecture starts at 7:00pm at Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Auditorium, Mercy High School, 1300 East Northern Parkway, Baltimore, Maryland 21239.

Open to the public but reservations are required; call 410-252-4500 x7208.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces by Frank Wilczek

I'd like to read Frank Wilczek's The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces.

If it sounds familiar and you don't know why, it's probably because you've heard of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Fantastic novel (set in Prague), but totally different.

I didn't realize that Wilczek chose this name partly because his favorite novel is The Unbearable Lightness of Being until I took a look at his website just now.

Wilczek, a physics professor at MIT and a Nobel Laureate, also wrote with his wife Betsy Devine Longing for the Harmonies (which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and Fantastic Realities: 49 Mind Journeys And a Trip to Stockholm.

Here's what the publisher has to say about this book:
Physicists’ understanding of the essential nature of reality changed radically over the past quarter century. MIT's Wilczek has played a lead role in establishing the new paradigms. Transcending the clash and mismatch of older ideas about what matter is, and what space is, Wilczek presents here some brilliant and clear syntheses. Space is a dynamic material, the engine of reality; matter is a subtle pattern of disturbance in that material.

Extraordinarily readable and authoritative, The Lightness of Being explores the implications of the newest findings in physics for basic questions about space, mass, energy, and the longed-for possibility of a fully unified theory of Nature. Along the way, Wilczek presents new perspectives on many strange aspects of our fantastic universe. Pointing toward new directions where the great discoveries in fundamental physics are likely to come, he envisions a new Golden Age in physics.

Sounds pretty nerdy huh? It's been some time since I've read a serious science book...

Some of Wilczek theories will be among the first to be tested at the controversial Large Hadron Collider, a $9 billion machine outside of Geneva at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Click here to read an excerpt, click here to view the table of contents, or here to read more about this book from the author's website dedicated to The Lightness of Being.

Also, Wilcek will be speaking about his book on Tuesday, October 28,2008 at 6:45 PM with the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program at the Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC. Tickets cost $20 for the general public, $13 for seniors, and $15 for members.

Click here to register.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Farmer in Chief

If you haven't read Michael Pollan's open letter to John McCain and Barack Obama, published in the New York Times, you ought to take a look.

It's lengthy but worth reading, particularly if you haven't read his recent books In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto (click here to view all my posts about this book) or The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (click here to view all my posts about this book).

And if you have read Michael Pollan's books or essays on food, you'll enjoy this recent essay even more.

Whether the next President of the United States has read this essay or will in any way change his policies based on Pollan's suggestion remains to be seen...

The Big Necessity by Rose George

Just heard about a new book by Rose George -- author of A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World -- about poop (feces, crap, doodoo, dookie, doody, shit, poo, turds, kaka, excrement, you get the gist)!

In this book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, George teaches us that 2.6 billion people have no access to clean food or water and lead lives surrounded by human poop, either in the bushes outside their villages or in their city streets, leading to more than 2 million deaths per year.

And she also teaches us about our "modern" sewer systems that are now overloaded and outdated.

Makes me think a bit about Liquid Assets.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to read more about this book on the author's website.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

National Book Award Finalists!

National Book Award finalists were announced yesterday, and I haven't read any of them....

Fiction



The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner (Click here to read an excerpt or here to view a reading group guide)
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen (Click here to read an excerpt)
Home by Marilynne Robinson (Click here to read an excerpt or here to view a reading group guide)
The End by Salvatore Scibona


Non-Fiction



This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust (first woman President of Harvard; click here to read an excerpt or here to view the table of contents)
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
by Jane Mayer (Click here to view the table of contents)
Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler (Click here to view the table of contents)
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham (Click here to view the table of contents or here to read an excerpt)

Poetry



Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart
Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems by Mark Doty
Creatures of a Day by Reginald Gibbons
Without Saying by Richard Howard
Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Young People's Literature



Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (Click here to read an excerpt or here to read a reading group guide)
What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp (Click here to read an excerpt)

Winners will be announced November 19.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Sylvia Earle Lecture

The National Museum of Natural History recently opened its Sant Ocean Hall, an interpretive exhibit that presents the ocean from a cross-disciplinary perspective, highlighting ongoing research in marine science and the biological, geological, and anthropological expertise and scientific collections of the Museum.

And marine biologist Sylvia Earle -- author of Sea Change: Visiting The Coral Reef , Hello, Fish!: Visiting The Coral Reef, Dive: Visiting The Coral Reef, and many other books -- will be giving a lecture with her co-author of Wild Ocean: America's Parks Under the Sea, Wolcott Henry, on Saturday (October 18, 2008) at 11AM at the Natural History museum's Baird Auditorium as part of an ongoing series of events related to The Sant Ocean Hall.

In 1998, Earle was named Time magazine's first "hero for the planet"and she has been a true pioneer in the field of marine ecosystems.

Not sure if I'll be able to make it down to DC for this talk, but I'd guess it'll be quite interesting. And I'd love to see The Sant Ocean Hall!

More Library Books

As usual, I went to the library with the intent to leave without picking up any books and failed.

I borrowed Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

I hadn't heard of The Mind of the Market but with the economics crisis I've been drawn to learn more about economics and the psychology of financial market.

This book focuses on the new field of neuroeconomics, investigating how psychology and biology affect the way we think about money. I had a friend in college who did some undergraduate research in this field so I'm looking forward to seeing if his work is featured in this book.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to visit Shermer's website.



Friends have been recommending Legacy of Ashes for months.

I don't know if I believe that this book, based on 50,000 documents (including CIA archives), will be everything folks say it is but I expect it will be full of drama and intrigue. It's been highly praised by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many others -- it even won the National Book Award.

Interestingly, the CIA has condemned this book as incorrect and deceptive . . . I wonder what my friends who work in government think of this book. Hmm . . .

Click here to read an excerpt or here to read a New York Times review by Michael Beschloss titled "The C.I.A.’s Missteps, From Past to Present" published July 12, 2007.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics by Joe Biden

Well, I've finished reading Joe Biden's 2007 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics (click here to view all my posts about this book).

And while I would still recommend it to folks who want to learn more about the Senator and the Democratic Nominee for Vice President, I found that as I got further and further into the book it became clear that it was written as a campaign tool (for his 2008 presidential attempt).

The first half of the book -- Biden's childhood, the love story of meeting his first wife Neila, Biden's Senate campaign, the tragic death of Neila and his baby daughter Naomi in 1972, meeting Jill and rebuilding his family, and coming into his own as a Senator -- is beautiful and moving.

But as the memoir moves into September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq, I started to lose interest because it felt like Biden was trying to sell readers on a Biden Presidency.

Click here to view the table of contents, here to read an excerpt from Promises to Keep, or here to visit the Senator's website.

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford

James Bamford -- author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization, and A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies -- has a new book out about the NSA's spying on average Americans. Click here to read a recent article from The New York Times about the author.

As I understand it, Bamford (with the help of former intercept operators) exposes how private contractors have done the sensitive work of storing and processing the voices and written data of Americans and non-Americans alike and that the NSA has created a massive facility in Texs to store such data.

I realize national security isn't of much interest to most folks with the current financial crisis, but The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America seems like an important book.

Click here to submit a question for the author for his 3pm online discussion today (October 14) on the Washington Post website.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Nobel Prize Winners 2008

I always like reading about each year's Nobel Laureates.

The Nobel Prize Winners announced last week and today are:

Physiology or Medicine
Harald zur Hausen, for his discovery of "human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer"
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and
Luc Montagnier, for their discovery of the "human immunodeficiency virus" (click here to watch a PBS Frontline video about it)

Physics
Yoichiro Nambu, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"
Makoto Kobayashi and
Toshihide Maskawa, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"

Chemistry - "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" (isolated from jellyfish)
Osamu Shimomura
Martin Chalfie
Roger Y. Tsien

Literature
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, French writer of more than 40 books

Peace
Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland who is knowsn for his peace efforts and cautious diplomacy (particularly in Africa)

Economic Sciences
Paul Krugman (MIT PhD ’77), "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity"

I'll have to see if I can get a copy of one of Le Clézio's books and Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics (click here to read an excerpt and click here to view the table of contents) or any of his other books at my local library.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Promises to Keep by Joe Biden

The more I've seen of Joe Biden these last few weeks, the more I've come to like him.

I've started reading his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics (click here to view all my posts about this book) and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the Democratic Nominee for Vice President.

Since Biden took the title of his book from a line from Robert Frost's famous poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," I thought I'd share it here:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Click here to view the table of contents or here to read an excerpt.

Financial Crisis Books

As the stock market continues its massive decline, I find myself wanting to read more books about economics and financial history.

I've read The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (which I highly recommend) and The Power of Gold: the History of an Obsession; I'd like to read the recently published books about Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs and there are some other books that seem relevant.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

I'm going to write something that may shock some of you and may make you never read my blog again.

Here is goes...

I'm not 100% sold that global warming  is for real.

And many of my friends feel the same way.

And so do many scientists, even highly regarded ones at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other world-renowned institutions.

This may come as a surprise to you.

After all, I am a devoted reader of Michael Pollan's New York Times articles and books. I even planted a garden this spring. I recycle. I prefer to eat grass-finished, growth-hormone-free meat. I usually bring my own shopping bags to the grocery store. I refuse to buy wrapping paper -- I even SAVE and reuse wrapping paper. I often ask cashiers to let me walk out of other stores without a bag. I kept my last cell phone for 5 years and only replaced it when the screen gave out. I have lots of single-serving insulated travel mugs for coffee. I try to conserve water. Sometimes, I'll even go a day or two without showering. I only open the shades when I am in a room, to conserve energy by keeping unused rooms insulated. In the winter I keep I keep the house at a chilly 65 degrees; in the summer I keep it at 80 degrees though I prefer to not use the AC and stick to opening windows and using fans. I use a water bottle. I still wear clothes I bought 15 years ago. I keep a large stack of old printouts as scrap paper. I've participated in countless beach clean-ups. My used television set is not HD, which is totally fine since I don't have cable. I buy used books. I like organic fruits and vegetables. I reuse cardboard boxes, yogurt containers, and more. I don't wash my clothes after just one wear. I'm adamant about turning out the lights in rooms I'm not using. I prefer to walk and not drive. Growth-hormone-free brie is my favorite snack. Most of my furniture are hand-me-downs. I even enjoy carpooling.

It's not that I don't believe in global warming, I just haven't read enough of the science on either side of the argument to have made a decision. And as a scientist, I believe in understanding the science.

But with the public gone mad over global warming and eco-friendliness, it's hard to know where to begin looking for the hard science and research on both sides of the argument.

Which is why I've decided that as much as I ridiculed this book when it first came out, I've got to read Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

I'll read it with a grain of salt, but I'm hoping it'll at least give me the names of some scientists who have done studies that show evidence that global warming is not real.

Here's another shocker for you: I'm not convinced of the economics of recycling nor am I convinced that it really does help the environment.

And just a few years ago it certainly didn't make sense to recycle in terms of the economics. But I recycle anyway -- I figure it can't do any harm. And maybe by now it does make sense economically and in terms of the environment.

In any case, it has been important to me since I was a child to live in a way that conserves resources -- water, energy, gas, etc -- though I've never preached eco-friendliness. I'd rather just tell people about what I've read from reputable sources.

Don't hate me.