Maelstrom - a violent or turbulent state of affairs

I'm not going to make it to the "been a month without blogging" mark, so that's a shame, but in other news, I've decided to write a bit on a few of the books I've read in the past few weeks. 

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin - This was an excellent read.  The title and description I was given made the book sound more like a how to learn manual, when in reality it's mostly an autobiography of sorts.  Josh Waitzkin is the subject of the movie "Chasing Bobby Fischer" due to the incredible talent and potential he showed as a young chess champion.  He went on to win the 2004 world championship in Push Hands, a type of martial art competition.  He "conquered" two incredibly difficult and different disciplines with international recognition in both before he turned 30.  His stories alone were inspirational, and what he had to say about learning and psychology was also a bit inspiring.  He made the separation between people who believed most things to be talent and those who believed that everything could be worked toward.  The latter is more likely to be an expert in any one thing, because every difficulty or wall just becomes a challenge to work past rather than a peak of natural potential.  I've realized I'm not that, and am trying to adjust my mentality as much as possible, because I believe it does have the potential for more pay off.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Wow.  I feel that this is a must-read book for anybody who was raised in the American/Christian/western/etc. tradition.  It seems most people you talk to realize that Islamic societies can be pretty backwards.  Women's rights, praying 5 times a day, crazy terrorists, hating Jews, hating Americans, etc.  This book, Ayaan's memoirs, bring to life the horrible experience that was her childhood; of course, this is from my perspective.  She says in the book that she doesn't hate her family or anything, and it's astonishing after reading her experiences.  Also incredibly inspiring to be a Somalian Muslim girl with a mediocre education and end up a Political Science college graduate in the Dutch parliament.  This book was great on so many levels.  And I can't think of a single person I wouldn't recommend it to.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - This was a nice interruption in the amount of non-fiction I've been reading this year.  Excellent story, and also interesting how it seemed to tie into a lot of what Josh Waitzkin had to say.  It's about a kid named Ender who goes to "battle school" when he's 6 years old because he's a genius, and they're looking for someone to lead the galactic fleet against some alien race.  The entire time he's got a ton of adversity, and it's interesting to see how he deals with that and learning in general relative to the real life situations that Waitzkin describes.  I can't write too much, because there's so much of the book that is action-packed and surprising.  Finished it in a day, because it's short and pretty engrossing.

Candide by Voltaire - First classic I've read in a while, outside of some Alexandre Dumas I went through a few months ago.  I was pleasantly surprised by this book - I'd seen it referenced in a few other books I've been reading and decided to give it a run.  First off, it is really funny; you probably won't be roflcoptering, but this guy, Candide, just has a life full of strange coincidences and weird situations.  But the book was meant to be a commentary on some philosophers of Voltaire's day.  The philosophy, which Candide subscribes to through most of the book, is that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and it goes something like this: If God made the world, he would want to make the best of all possible worlds.  God made the world, thus this is the best of all possible worlds.  Or something like that - similar to "Everything works for the good of xxx person."  In the end, Candide come to realize that the "best of all worlds" is not such a helpful worldview after all.  Clever little book, with some insights into happiness and life in general.

One of a Kind by Mike Sexton - This book is a biography of Stu Ungar, one of the greatest card players to ever live.  And I had no clue until I read this.  I'd seen the name reading poker books and stuff like that.  Only guy to win the WSOP 3 times (the other guy (Johnny Moss) won the first WSOP on a vote).  Come to find out, he was the best gin player in the world by the time he was 16 - played world champs and took them 50 games in a row.  Another inspiring sort of story in a lot of ways, sad in a lot of other ways.  He won millions playing cards, and lost it all on sports betting, drugs, horse racing, etc.  But a great book, and a great character.

I Don't Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges - You apparently can't see the ratings I give books on the page, but this got a one star.  And I was reluctant to give it one star because of the title and thus the immediate conclusion that I have a bias.  First, this book has little to nothing to do with the title.  It was a tough read, mostly because his arguments, reasoning, and writing all seemed convoluted.  He's obviously got some intelligence, and a nice vocabulary as well; I just didn't feel he made any good points.  A lot of this book was about fundamentalism more than just atheism.  He included Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Christian fundamentalists.  He seems to defend Islam though.  As an example, he displays Sam Harris's warmongering, intolerant attitude by attacking a statement he made in The End of Faith.  Harris makes a very very contingent statement regarding fundamentalist nations (specifically muslim nations) obtaining a nuke.  He said IF they have one and IF they are likely to use it with as little provocation as a cartoon in a newspaper (my example), THEN the only thing to do MIGHT be to preemptively strike.  The statement evaluated by itself I feel is completely fine; it's a concern we need to address - what do you do if crazies get WMDs?  Hedges takes this statement and distorts it with sensationalism saying that his atheism is just as fundamental and warmongering as the Islam he's attacking.  This book was full of sensationalism. 

New paragraph, same book.  Another big problem I had is that he seems to claim Christianity, but talk about Christian fundamentalism as an out-dated thing that no one believes.  No one really believes the earth was created in 6 days; no one really believes that gays should die.  He never defines his brand of Christianity, but it feels nebulous.  My problem is that it's the sort of Christianity many people will claim when "cornered" about it.  If you don't believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, then what use is Christianity?  If Genesis is a metaphor, or extend that to the majority of the old testament, or that Jesus was never really raised from the dead, what use is it?  I've been told that I need to talk to theologians about such issues, but from my knowledge of Christianity and the bible, I've got a pretty basic idea about the foundations of the religion.  And the "moderate" religion that many people claim ignores many of those things.  So what use is it?  If you admit to a selective, subjective interpretation of the bible, how can you claim objective truth in any way?  Anyways - it was a horrible book, and that has nothing to do with any attack on any belief I might hold.  Some of his critiques of fundamentalism, both religious and non, were accurate, but nothing life-changing or deep, I felt.

Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-billion-year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin - I really enjoyed this one, and I think part of it stems from my evolutionary miseducation.  In 2004, Neil Shubin discovered Tiktallik, a fish with legs, pretty much.  There were a lot of things that were interesting, but he described a lot of the how's and why's of human development in evolutionary terms.  One of the things I found most interesting, which makes me feel really stupid, was how they conducted digs.  Of course they're expensive, so of course they do a ton of research before hand.  But when he explicitly stated that they went to X area because Y was the sort of fossil they were looking for, and then they find the sort of fossils they expect, it was exciting to me.  It's hard to explain, because it should be obvious - of COURSE they're going to find 300 million year old fossils in 300 million year old rock.  But my high school education always involved poking holes in the "millions of years" and "fossil layers" "theories."  So to see evidence of what scientists do and how it works out was exciting to me.  Anyway, he describes a lot of problems that humans have like hernias, bad knees, and such stuff and how it relates to evolution.  Just a lot of interesting stuff that probably shouldn't be so amazing to me, but it is. 

So there's the books I've read since my last blog post.  A lot of biographies, but I didn't realize it so much while I was reading them.  They all seemed to have more meat to them than just the story of someone's life; I guess that's what makes good biographies.

I'm having a tough time deciding what I want to learn.  I've got HTML, Javascript, and Jiu Jutsu on my plate as new things I'm doing, but I don't feel any passion for any of them.  It might come, and I've not even really started on any of them yet.  It doesn't mean I'm not excited, I just don't have that sort of instant emotional connection where I say to myself "Wow, this is awesome."  Who knows, they might be stepping stones, or skipping rocks; the future will tell.   And when he doesn't, I'll resort to waterboarding, because everyone knows that when a guy doesn't tell you what you want to know, you torture him.