false4272262true5679866read1true1809852currently-reading9true1809851to-read128false1809866fantasy112false1809893philosophy39false2295941science-fiction32false2296438comedy24false2296451horror21false2295939history13false2294973hard-science5false2296383romance5false2300764plays4false2296414revenge3false2295969graphic-novel3false2296610steampunk2false2296609cyberpunk2false2296368mystery1false2296612clockwork-punk1false2295930western
<![CDATA[Richard added 'Mort']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72191109
Mort (Discworld, #4)
byTerry Pratchett bookshelves: comedy,
currently-reading,
fantasy
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'Guards! Guards!']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71295463
to: Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8)byTerry Pratchett bookshelves: comedy,
fantasy,
mystery
Deja vu! This book seemed very familiar as I read it, but I didn't have it on my bookshelf (I checked before I bought it). And yet, the plot stirred my memory and the characters were undergoing significant changes that I already knew about, somehow.
And then it came to me. About six years ago I was short on money and the library didn't have any Discworld books I hadn't already read. So I went to Barnes & Noble and very carefully read one or two books while sitting in their comfy chairs. It only takes me a few hours to read a Discworld book, so I figured, why not?
Well, now I've got Guards! Guards! on my bookshelf, and I bought it from the very B&N in which I originally read it!
About the book itself, it has moments that are darker and more serious than the other Discworld books, but then this is one of the first. People die, and there's some bitter hatred directed at most of humanity in general and religion in particular that comes through less subtly than in other Discworld books.
It was a fun re-read. Seeing Peter Postlethwaite as Vimes (per Pratchett's own view) is great =)
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70865264
to: A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis (Hardcover)byJ.L. Bell bookshelves: hard-science
This book has the word 'primer' in the title so I thought it would be a good starting place for learning calculus. Turns out this is a primer for some advanced subset of calculus, and not at all for beginners.
Still, I learned a bit. A square-zero is a number so small it isn't zero, but its square and all higher powers are identical to zero. ...
A continuum has no points, and is infinitely divisible.
A point is indivisible, and cannot be part of a continuum.
It sounds to me that this is like wave/particle theory. There is no such thing as a discrete particle, everything is wave, some waves just have particle like properties.
If points can't be part of continua, then points can't exist. At least, that's what it seems like to me.
The author of this book noted that at one point in history the concept of zero was practically unacceptable. More recently the concept of infinity or infinitely large numbers was absurd, but we got over that. Now, the concept of infinitely small numbers is going through the same process, and while infinitesimals are strange and not yet in the mainstream, they will get there just as zero and infinity did.
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'Eric']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70866195
to: Eric (Discworld, #9)byTerry Pratchett bookshelves: comedy,
fantasy
Bite-sized comedy! I need to sit down and in one go read the half-dozen or so Discworld books that feature Rincewind. More entertaining than watching funny youtube videos, more educational to boot. Easy fun!
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70871168
Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories (Paperback)
byF. William Lawvere bookshelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'Heroes, Saints, and Ordinary Morality']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24008799
to: Heroes, Saints, and Ordinary Morality (Moral Traditions)byAndrew Michael Flescher bookshelves: philosophy Heroes, Saints, and Ordinary Morality feels like a collection of notes in preparation for The Altruistic Species, which is a much easier and more engaging read.
In examining moral theories and what makes humans human (hint: it's that we care about others), I'm increasingly revolted by the religious point of view.
The religious view of altruism or other-regard is one founded on the divine and divine grace. It is a view that caring about others is an expression of god and that only through the grace of god can we sinful humans transcend our fallen nature and achieve goodness.
It is a triangular construction, with a god at the top and humans at the bottom.
This is a profoundly anti-human conception. To suggest that human beings cannot be good or care about others without the aid of an all-powerful deity is a rank insult. To even claim that other-regard originates from an outside source is insulting. In truth, what makes humans human is, in fact, our altruistic nature.
The pain we feel at seeing strange men in South Africa set on fire and beaten into the concrete for being foreigners is a first-order response. The despair we feel at seeing a building full of people collapse in ash and smoke is not the result of divine grace.
The compassion that stirs us to care for one another is not caused by a belief in a god. It is simply what being human is.
Our capacity for kindness is inherent in our very selves. At our core of cores we are not evil, selfish, sinful creatures, as religion would have us believe. We do not need saving. We are the altruistic species -- not the altruistic cult or the altruistic sect.
The religious view of morality is distinctly immoral. By pre-supposing man's fallen and sinful nature, the religious view excuses any evil we might do, for it has already been rationalized as being predestined by man's inescapable nature. The conduct of the Catholic church in defending its pedophile priests is an example of the real-world consequences of this thinking.
But most importantly for me, the religious view of morality explicitly dehumanizes other people. Specifically, atheists. In asserting that morality flows from a god to man, religion at the same time asserts that all non-believers are without morality.
This is the cancerous upshot of religious morality, and it is why any claim religion lays to morality is utter bullshit.
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'The Fountainhead']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/60773589
to: The Fountainhead (Mass Market Paperback)byAyn Rand bookshelves: philosophy
Elsworth Monkton Toohey is a delightful character, and I enjoyed reading his anti-hero speech towards the end. Ayn Rand likes to have her heroes give monumental speeches, so it was great to see one of the villains get some air time. It reminded me ever so much of O'brien's speech in 1984, when he has Winston in his grasp and it is explained how two and two make five when convenient to the Party.
The insight that altruism vs. egoism is NOT a dichotomy of serving others vs. making others serve you, as is popularly conceived, resonants well with me. The attempt to paint egoism or selfishness as using others is similar to the attempt to paint atheism as lacking any goodness or ethical restraint.
The reality is that selflessness and slavery are two sides of a rigged coin. Selflessness presupposes a master, to whom one sacrifices the self. The false dichotomy tells us that 'selfishness' is bad therefore you should be selfless, but they're the same thing. Turning away from one to embrace the other is the worst sort of dishonesty.
Just as lacking a belief in God does not make you an amoral monster, being primarily concerned with your self does not make you a user or enslaver of others. An egoist lives through his own life, neither through the lives of slaves, nor masters. It is independence writ large, and a slaver is many things but most certainly not independent.
I'll never look at a building the same way again! There's just enough architectural detail in The Fountainhead to make me want to learn more. Are those outcroppings and doodads and columns on modern buildings necessary, or are they mere fakery, attempts to ape centuries-old forms, back when those types of columns and supports were required as a limitation of the building material?
I have now read all of Ayn Rand's novels, and I rather enjoyed reading them backwards. It's like reading the final copy of a story (Atlas Shrugged) and then going back to read the earlier drafts. Good times.
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'Bhagavad-Gita As It Is']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59734517
to: Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (Hardcover)byA.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada bookshelves: philosophy
I'm surprised at the extreme hostility to atheism in this text. Hinduism is certainly on the same level as Christianity in regards to its vicious hatred of the wholly other.
In text 4.7-4.8, Krisna reveals that whenever there's a rise in atheism, God himself descends to annihilate the demonic non-believers and to reestablish religious belief:
Text 4.7-8,
Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, and a predominant rise of irreligion--at that time I descend myself.
To deliver the pious and annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.
And compare Psalm 14:1 from the Bible with the text 7.15 in the Bhagavad-gita:
Psalm 14:1
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Text 7.15,
Those miscreants who are grossly foolish, who are lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by illusion, and who partake of the atheistic nature of demons do not surrender unto me.
I don't know why I was so surprised that Hinduism has the same deplorable problems with non-believers; all religions seem to have a terrible record when it comes to dehumanizing the wholly other. The similarities between text 7.15 and Psalm 14:1 are pretty striking, to me at least.
That said, this was an amusing text for me to finally read. The basic setting is famous and I had certainly heard of it before. The great warrior Arjuna is leading his army on the field in a royal civil war. He rides out in his chariot to survey the opposition and he sees his uncles, cousins, friends, etc. arrayed against him. War is hell, but civil war is even worse. Arjuna sits down, overcome with despair at the situation, and Krisna comes to talk to him. Their conversation is the Bhagavad-gita.
I had always thought that their conversation would have a pacifist hue to it. The setting certainly lends itself to a powerful condemnation of warfare in general and civil war in particular. So it was with some surprise that I came to realize Krisna spends this whole conversation exhorting Arjuna to go forth and slaughter the opposition.
It's not a pacifist text; it's jingoistic mysticism!
The Bhagavad-gita sheds some light on one of the darkest, most revolting cockroaches of religious ideology -- the justification, no, glorification, of murdering your fellow humans. This degradation and cheapening of life is a cancer that may not be unique to religion, but it is central in all the major ones, as seen in this text:
Text 2.37,
either you will be killed on the battlefield and attain the heavenly planets, or you will conquer and enjoy the earthly kingdom. Therefore, get up with determination and fight.
That exact line of reasoning has persuaded and impelled men and women to commit shameful acts beyond description throughout our history. Voltaire may have been thinking of verses like this when he wrote, "He who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Religion encourages one to believe -- with no evidence -- in an afterlife, an eternal afterlife of glory, and once one accepts that absurdity, it becomes trivial to convince one to murder and to die for any (religious) reason. After all, if this life is suffering, if this life is but a fleeting shadow of the real life that is to come after, then what real harm is there in killing others, or in dying yourself? Especially if you perceive that your God has commanded it?
This extension of the argument is no exaggeration on my part. This line of reasoning is given full play, front and center, in the Bhagavad-gita, with Krisna eventually opining that it would be immoral for Arjuna to not go out and kill on the battlefield in this civil war. Why? Because Krisna has already killed everyone in the world (if you take a long enough temporal view of things), so what does it matter if some of them die now by Arjuna's hand, or die later by some other cause?
All are dead to God; how they get there is just a detail.
There's some beautiful poetry and thought-provoking phrases of speech in here, though. It's just a shame so many people have a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy, and turn the interesting nightmares of fiction into a scourge of human life.
_______________
As a note about this particular translation, the translator gives you the verse (1-3 lines), and then he gives a 1-4 page essay on how that verse clearly demonstrates his cult (that he founded) is the only way to attain enlightenment.
I read only the translated verses of the Bhagavad-gita. I did not read any of the translator's "explanations" of the what the texts mean. That took the book from being about ~700 pages to being ~200. The translator is sectarian and wordy.
I was entertained by the Amazon.com reviews of this translation. All the 5-star ratings are by Krisna Cultists who are True Believers(tm). All the 1-star ratings are by Hindi cultists who belong to a different sect, and therefore view the exaltation of Krisna as a delusion.
Most of the 3-star ratings were from academics and scholars who pretty uniformly found the translation of the actual text to be quite good, erring on the side of poetry rather than literal translation, making it an enjoyable and easy read. Simultaneously, the 3-star ratings found the explanation of each verse to be tedious, irritating, and abusively slanted to one particularly extreme interpretation.
This copy also includes a collection of full-color glossy prints of paintings, which are a bit nightmarish and terribly disturbing, but awesome nonetheless!
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/60366959
The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern (Hardcover)
byKeith J. Devlin bookshelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Richard added 'Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/56510995
to: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (Paperback)byMichael Shermer bookshelves: philosophy
It seems that the basic idea behind the book can be summed up in one quote, "smart people believe weird things because they're good at defending ideas they came to believe for non-smart reasons." The book spends the bulk of its material on creationism and holocaust denialism, which I've heard quite a bit about from other quarters.
Interesting book, but it's hard for me to see why it's so controversial (as it seems to be judging from the quotes and responses Shermer claims to have received over it).
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