Tips

This week I finished: Ulysses S. Grant---A documentary on the 18th President, part 1: Grant plays a big role in my new book as a role model. He was a broke farmer recovering from malaria. His wife's family owned slaves, giving him an easy way to recover if he chose it. Meanwhile, his father refused to help him as long as he stayed with slaveholders. He had acquired a slave from his wife's family. He could have sold the slave or let the slave buy his freedom. Instead he granted the slave freedom. Then helped win the Civil War and became president. Yes, to have owned the slave violated his values, but could he have done everything that followed had he not repented and freed…

This week I finished: The Gulag Archipelago, volume 2, by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn: I think this book has changed my view of the world as much as it will, then it changes me more. The end of this volume becomes more reflective and introspective. It describes how it changes and corrupts society outside the archipelago. As horrific as the archipelago is on the inside, and how far beyond what I would have imagined, the changes to all of society, even those not in the gulag surprised me more. Everyone lies, which is just the start. I keep seeing more why people call this book essential and how it motivates people to protect freedom. I had plenty reason before, but far more now. A big part of…

This week I finished: Gulag---The Story: A three-part documentary on Gulags made in France and posted on a channel called Free Documentary---History, which looks full of documentaries that look interesting, though I haven't watched any others. I'm about halfway through the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago. I'm curious other views of the Gulag system, the USSR, Stalin, and the system that I knew existed but hadn't learned about. Since I'm learning about how tyranny happens and how to stop it, learning about arguably the most totalitarian and deadly such system is relevant to my next book. So a couple documentaries are giving me alternative views from Solzhenitsyn. It's as awful as he describes, though the documentaries lack his personal inside view. They are more…

This week I finished: The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, volume 1, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: If I weren't reading these books I wouldn't believe they could exist. I understand why people consider them among the greatest and most important books of the twentieth century. First, about the book itself: Solzhenitsyn's writing is simple, clear, and often funny from being sardonic and mocking. He survived the gulag's so he knows what he's writing about. I'm listening to the recording online here and the narrator has prepared himself well. The technical quality of the audio isn't great, but I find the reading very listenable. About the content: I knew something of Stalin's gulag prison system. I knew something about slavery in the US and the…

This week I finished: Many Cine-Files podcast episodes, hosted by Steve Morris and John Rocha: I've been appreciating movies more lately. After each movie I like, I follow up with reviews. Following up Remains of the Day, I found this podcast of two guys in the movie industry talking about it with more depth and thoughtfulness than most reviews. It turns out they did a four-part survey of Scarface too, for about 7 or 8 hours. Normally I don't report on podcast episodes here, but I listened to so much and anticipate listening to more. They've been reviewing movies on this podcast about ten years and I found many I liked. Episodes I listened to or downloaded: Remains of the Day Scarface Spirited Away Chasing…

This week I finished: The Abolition of Man: Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools, by CS Lewis: I read the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid but don't remember much of them. Then between Hillsdale College courses and other conservative speakers, I hear about CS Lewis all the time. I thought I'd start with a short book I heard mentioned a few times. Well, it's short, but not quick or easy. It started off easy enough to follow, but it didn't take long before I felt like I would have to write here something like: I must not be that smart because this book's writing was too hard for me to understand. I felt…

This week I finished: 8 Billion Angels, directed by Terry Spahr: I've become friends with Terry since first watching his documentary on overpopulation years ago. He recently released it free on YouTube. I recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_XZtF-I7vo Here's the movie's page: https://8billionangels.org. From Scientific American: Eight Billion People in the World Is a Crisis, Not an Achievement The major driver of plant and animal loss is habitat destruction caused primarily by the encroachment of a swelling human population. By Naomi Oreskes The world reached two important milestones toward the end of last year. First, the human population passed eight billion in November, a whopping increase of one billion people since 2011. Then, in December, representatives of 188 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, promising to conserve and…

This week I finished: In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-Wai: It's hard not to first mention this movie's style in the qipaos, hair, make-up, ties, and music. Each dress and hairdo must have taken hours to get right each time, looked sewn-in. The word I keep coming back to for the style is: perfect. What a beautiful movie. But the movie covers more than style. Who hasn't had their heart broken? Who hasn't been cheated on? Who hasn't had to live with choices we couldn't take back but had to keep living with them? Despite the gravity and emotion of the characters' situation, it felt impersonal to me through most of the movie. That is, until the end, when it became universal.…

This week I finished: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn: I'm sure I read this book before, but long enough ago that this time was almost anew. I've been reading about liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. I've read and written about slavery and the Holocaust. Soviet / Stalinist gulags are on par, but different, and equally important to understand what a nation, or dominance hierarchy, can devolve into. I won't try to put into words the world that Solzhenitsyn can and did. He lived it for eight years. The book conveys a dystopia human beings created for each other. It's personal and human beyond what history books convey. I'm learning more about the history too. I'm not sure if or…

This week I finished: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It, by podcast guest Chris Voss: I read this book before recording the podcast with Chris and liked it, but not enough. This time I loved it. I think last time I compared it with Getting to Yes and thought it didn't add much knowledge. It mostly promoted the value of practice and tactics beyond the more theoretical Harvard book. This time it hit me how much more Chris presents besides the value of rehearsal and practice. Though it teaches specific tactics, they aren't just tips he found that work. They're embedded in strategy, mission, and vision based in more than just one guy trying things out. He developed them…

This week I finished: This America: The Case for the Nation, by Jill Lepore: I've seen Jill Lepore's books at the top of bestseller lists and read pieces she's written in the New Yorker and probably other places. Her work seems to overlap with authors I've found valuable: Akhil Reed Amar and Gordon Wood. Her two big books These Truths and We the People are huge and daunting, though reviews say they're wonderful to read. This book is shorter, so more accessible. It describes the difference between patriotism, which describes liking your country or people, and nationalism, which implies putting down others. I read her as motivated by seeing Trump and other populists gaining support, put off by liberals who fear patriotism, especially after World…

This week I finished: As of today, Sunday, my usual day to post on what I finished this week, my solar battery is very low (as I posted yesterday: And just like that, I’m almost out of power for a couple days. Batteries have a lot of problems), so I'm limiting my time using the computer. For now, I'll just post the works. When there's more sun, I'll write more. As of Sunday evening, that time looks like Tuesday at the earliest. On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder: . . . . . . . The White House Effect, directed by Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen: . . . . . A Vindication of Bjorn Lomborg, by Marian Tupy inQuillette and Climate Change Might…

This week I finished: I Am Not Your Negro: directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin's manuscript Remember This House: You can probably tell that Baldwin's views resonate with me. How he describes the perspective from the bottom of a dominance hierarchy. He attributes it to color, which I see as a proxy for access to a resource with no alternative, but the view is the same. Partly it speaks to my time growing up as a minority in school and my neighborhood. He also survived a lot. This movie, and I suppose his manuscript on which it is based, deals with the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. It also features Bobby Kennedy, whom Baldwin also knew,…

This week I finished: Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin: After last week's Fire Next Time, and August's debate between Baldwin and Buckley, I want to learn more about Baldwin. I like his analysis. It's hard to gauge how much of his analysis was new. I read that Henry Louis Gates Jr. said that Baldwin "articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time." Reading his work seventy years later, I've heard that articulation before, but suspect a lot of it originated in Baldwin. I'll be candid. I don't understand a lot of his language. I kept saying to myself, "I'm glad I have a PhD in physics so I…

This week I finished: The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin: I've known about James Baldwin for years but never read his work. I've seen him speak on videos, but a book is another story. A book takes time to compose. Almost always when I finish a book I reread at least the first few paragraphs, sometimes the first few pages. A teacher in college told me that authors can't help make the opening what the book is about. I went through this whole book twice. Partly because it's short, but more because it grew on me while listening. I confess that at the beginning I wasn't engaged. He doesn't write like most authors. I became more engaged as the composition revealed itself and the…

This week I finished: Led Zeppelin: The Biography, by Bob Spitz: I saw a different biography of Led Zeppelin by chance at the library. After reading memoirs of Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen, plus for a diversion from all the studying of constitutional and corruption stuff, I felt like reading it. I looked up reviews and opted for this one. I loved it. I couldn't stop. I grew up loving classic rock. I knew their music but not much of their history. Most of all, I loved the vision and resolve of Jimmy Page to start a band based on music he wanted to play, knew the world would love, and that no one was doing. Then I loved hearing of them playing together, hitting…

This week I finished: Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave, directed by Philip Neel and David Jeffery: If you've followed my pursuit to learn about the pattern of how people are induced to act against their values by culture around them---also known as corruption---you'll recognize the subject of this movie. It's about high school history teacher Ron Jones, who in 1967, when his students asked how Germans could become Nazis, threw some experiential teaching their way. He started teaching them strength through discipline, unity, and community. They inadvertently fell into Nazi youth-like behavior. I recently watched the made-for-TV special The Wave I had seen as a kid and the German movie Die Welle, plus tons of interviews and documentaries. This movie, Lesson Plan,…

This week there wasn't much sun, so I read and listened more than usual since they take little to no power. I finished: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, by Bill McKibben: I've met Bill and support his environmental work. Bill writes in this book that he doesn't believe people will change their levels of consumption so concludes that only by producing more clean, green, renewable energy can we avoid catastrophe. For the rest of the book he relays his optimism that solar and wind can replace fossil fuels and save us. We only need big government support for renewables, he conveys, and to stop supporting fossil fuels. I've written many times in this blog…

This week I finished: "Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound," by Larissa MacFarquhar in the New Yorker: A few years ago I learned that most people, when they imagine something visual, actually visual something, as if they were seeing it. By contrast, when I imagine seeing something, I don't see anything. I just imagine it. Apparently nobody knew of this distinction until recent decades and only recently has it become well known, studied, or verified through methods like brain scans. It also acquired a name: aphantasia. For my part, it's relieving to know I'm not alone. It explains a few things that didn't make sense, like how counting sheep wasn't a complicated exercise. When people told me to visualize things like…

This week I finished: Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, directed by Marc Rothemund, starring Julia Jentsch: This movie was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language movie in 2005. I confess I only learned of the White Rose movement, and two of its key members, Hans and Sophie Scholl, this year. I recommend learning more about them, especially if you're interested in learning what leads people to oppose a culture acting against your values. You are almost certainly acting against your values, induced by our culture. Hans and Sophie Scholl were siblings raised in Germany in the wake of World War I. The movement was mainly students who organized against the Nazis in and around Munich. This movie focused on Sophie, in the events…

This week I finished: The SCUM Manifesto, by Valerie Solanas: I'd heard about this book, or manifesto, by the woman who shot Andy Warhol. I listened to a podcast or two about it first. They couldn't tell if the author was serious and crazy or sarcasm or what. Seeing as how she shot an innocent person, I'm inclined to think she's crazy. The diatribe is bizarre. I kept wondering what would happen if a man wrote it with the sexes reversed, would he be locked up. Mostly I thought of the pattern I can't prove but seems to apply every time I check: when someone insults someone, they're describing themselves more than the other person. Next mostly I thought of the society that could lead…