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May 08
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Nat
is currently reading:
A Time of Gifts (New York Review Books Classics)
by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris
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Nat
added:
Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong (P.S.)
by Marc Hauser
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read in May, 2008
Nat said:
"This book approaches the study of morality with the methodology of generative grammar. Moral knowledge appears to display the same systematic variation and continuity across individuals and cultures that is found in language, and develops, as languag...more
This book approaches the study of morality with the methodology of generative grammar. Moral knowledge appears to display the same systematic variation and continuity across individuals and cultures that is found in language, and develops, as language does, without explicit instruction. That suggests that moral knowledge is largely innate, with some general principles known by all human beings, and variation explained in terms of values of parameters set by differences in experience.
That's a fascinating idea, but I got bogged down in early chapters of the book where Hauser tries to distinguish different traditional models of moral thought: a Kantian model, a Humean model, and a Rawlsian model. ...less
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April 29
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Nat
is currently reading:
Real Natures and Familiar Objects (Bradford Books)
by Crawford L. Elder
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April 23
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Nat
gave
to:
The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (Hardcover)
by Parag Khanna
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read in April, 2008
Nat said:
"My good friend Parag wrote this whirlwind study of geopolitics. No armchair theorist, he pontificates from the ground up, after traveling all over the place and talking to everyone he could find.
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April 01
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Nat
is currently reading:
Reference and Reflexivity (Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes)
by John R. Perry
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March 31
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Nat
gave
to:
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Jünger
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read in March, 2008
Nat said:
"Jünger's account of the brutal fighting on the western front in WWI makes an enlightening contrast with Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That. Graves's account is comic and ironic, while Jünger's writing is almost completely dispassionate, eve...more
Jünger's account of the brutal fighting on the western front in WWI makes an enlightening contrast with Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That. Graves's account is comic and ironic, while Jünger's writing is almost completely dispassionate, even while describing his friends being torn to shreds by British artillery and sniper fire--an example of the so-called Neue Sachlichkeit applied to trench warfare. It's hard not to see the difference as an expression of a difference in national character between the English and Germans.
Jünger's absurdly good luck and fighting skill gets the same kind of cool, detached description as the variety of different kinds of soil he encounters in trenches across France and Belgium: trenches are dug out of chalk, gravel, mud, fossilized shellfish, clay and marl, depending on the region; Jünger is wounded fourteen times, "these being five bullets, two shell splinters, one shrapnel ball, four hand-grenade splinters and two bullet splinters" (p. 288). He repeatedly volunteers to crawl over to British and French trenches to engage in all kinds of mayhem--cutting wire, tossing grenades, trying to take prisoners. He leads one assault after another through curtains of artillery shells (both from the British and from his own batteries), machinegun and sniper fire, and all variety of trench mortars, rifle-grenades, and aerial bombardment. Over the course of the book, he is awarded increasingly impressive medals for bravery: the Iron Cross, 1st class; the Knight's Cross; and on the final page of the book, the Orden Pour Le Merite.
Jünger doesn't refrain from describing the full variety of injuries that soldiers suffer on the modern battlefield. The neck, eyes, forhead, hands, fingers and thighs seem to receive a disproportionate amount of attention from bullets and shrapnel.
There are a few moments of intentional levity, including a complex prank involving 17 hunchbacked residents of the Belgian town of Langemarck and a dispute over some inheritance, and the author being ejected, unharmed, from a runaway, stolen "glass coach" when it runs into a tree. There are also moments that are unintentionally amusing, as when Jünger describes nearly being shot by a careless friend playing around with his own revolver as "irritating".
The book isn't overwhelmingly gruesome. Nearly half of the book consists of Jünger describing everyday life in the trenches---what he is reading, the delights of an unexpectedly good meal, enjoying his pipe, watching the sun set over enemy lines, devising new ways of killing rats, and so on.
The one quasi-philosophical moment in the book is on page p.241: "The state, which relieves us of our responsibility, cannot take away our remorse". I wonder: is remorse without responsibility possible? ...less
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March 18
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Nat
gave
to:
The Logic of Life (Hardcover)
by Tim Harford
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read in March, 2008
Nat said:
"The explanatory ambition of this book is stunning--Harford offers rational actor explanations of changes in sexual activity, racial segregation in cities, professional poker, the number of people in parks at different times of day, the productivity o...more
The explanatory ambition of this book is stunning--Harford offers rational actor explanations of changes in sexual activity, racial segregation in cities, professional poker, the number of people in parks at different times of day, the productivity of cities, the industrial revolution, colonization, and even why human beings eventually triumphed over neanderthals!
Along the way you get informative sketches of major 20th century economists and game theorists and their theories.
I was most impressed by the explanation of why small scale rational decisions made by individuals can lead to large-scale problems like extreme racial and class segregation in cities. For discussion of this point, see chapter 5, which begins with Harford trying to decide where to live in Washington, DC, and being told by his minder at the World Bank not to live east of 16th street!
One statistic that stood out: each year a married woman delays having kids, her lifetime earnings go up 10% (chapter 3).
This book is further proof (as if more was needed) that having things explained is incredibly enjoyable, and incomparably better than the refusal to offer explanations in the face of what seems like overwhelming complexity. ...less
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March 04
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Nat
gave
to:
Going After Cacciato (Paperback)
by Tim O'Brien
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read in March, 2008
Nat said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
The flashbacks are solid descriptions of fighting in Vietnam, describing helicopter operations, clearing tunnels, calling in artillery on a village, and so on. The chase is half-heartedly fanciful, never really rising to Pynchonian weirdness. The platoon finds a trail of M&Ms in the jungle; they drive an Impala from Tehran to Izmir and get shot at by Iranian tanks, etc.
Berlin's worries aren't unusual: whether fighting the war is pointless, whether he can recognize evil when he sees it, and so on.
Michael Lynch recommends this in True to Life as a meditation on self-knowledge. ...less
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March 03
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Nat
is currently reading:
Semantics and Cognition (Current Studies in Linguistics)
by Ray S. Jackendoff
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February 07
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New comment on Nat's review of
Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean
(see all 4 comments)
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