Tips

This week I finished: Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, by Janna Levin: Somehow I started receiving Janna Levin's Substack (that Is, Substack spammed me, though I doubt Levin caused it). I looked her up. She teaches physics at Barnard. I got my PhD at Columbia and worked with a professor at Barnard, who was one of my main reasons for returning there after starting graduate school at Penn. This book describes the path in the physics and to a degree astronomy communities to detect gravitational radiation. Its descriptions of developing and building detectors at the frontiers of science reminded me of my time at Fermilab and helping build XMM, the x-ray observational satellite I worked on. On the experimental side, though,…

This week I finished: The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God's Creation, by Joel Salatin: I spoke with a pastor last month. When I shared about my disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid and leadership work on the environment, he recommended this book. I hadn't heard about Joel Salatin. I found many videos by and about him online. He seemed a mix of passionate, kooky, and craving attention. I didn't put a high priority on the book, but having finished it, I'm more than glad to have finished it. Salatin is gung-ho Christian and mentions Jesus, quotes the Bible, etc nearly every page, which I guess I've gotten used to after listening to every word in the Bible, hosting many…

This week I finished: Propaganda, by Edward Bernays: Bernays wrote this book before WWII and shared views on propaganda with Hitler, whose Mein Kampf, volume 1 I just finished. Both share views on influencing public views with modern practice. Bernays points out that the world works this way. You can deny it and still be swayed by it but be helpless to act on it, or accept it, embrace it, and use it. It's hard to imagine what it would feel like to read it when it came out, not having lived my whole life in its wake. People freak out about it, implying he's one of the most influential people of the 20th century, which he may have been, but also that he's a…

This week I finished: Cool Food: Erasing Your Carbon Footprint One Bite at a Time, by Robert Downey Jr. and Thomas Kostigen: I listened to this book for a book club. I found it painful to listen to. It's nice to eat foods that pollute less so I won't argue with it, but it distracts from the problem: our culture lost values that kept humanity safe, secure, healthy, and living long lives in favor of one that tricks us into believing those things require polluting and depleting. Digging in, it misses that there are two carbon cycles and only looks at the distracting one. Know the 2 carbon cycles and don’t confuse them. And, Only specify fixing climate and carbon if you want to wreck…

This week I finished: Manufactured Landscapes, by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky: I hadn't heard of Burtynsky before reading a review of an exhibit in Manhattan of decades of his photography, which included several images. He creates images that are compositionally beautiful of scenes that are scary and horrific but resulting from our culture and lifestyles. They show mines, factories, dying landscapes and ecosystems, and apocalyptic scenes. I plan to go to the exhibit. I recommend looking at his images online, but since he takes wide format original photographs, I anticipate online images pale in comparison to the originals. This video is the first of three of his work and how he works. I recommend his images and this movie. It's beautiful and horrific. Still,…

This week I finished: Mein Kampf, volume 1, by Adolph Hitler: I'm partly nervous about posting about finishing it or even reading it. The First Amendment may make it legal, but just associating with it can blemish, but I oppose that thinking. I finished other works this week but put them in a separate post since who wants to be on a page with Mein Kampf? When I teach the skill of empathy in my leadership classes, I talk about the importance of empathizing with people you disagree with most. My extreme example is that if you were a general during WWII, it would be supremely important to empathize with Hitler. It could make the difference between winning and losing. To understand doesn't mean to…

This week I finished: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt: I heard about this book a long time ago. I wondered if I'd ever read it. I took it on now while learning how people came to do things so contrary to what seems human we can't believe they happened, in particular after The Lucifer Effect. For a book about one of the greatest atrocities ever, it was remarkably accessible. Arendt seemed almost breezy at times and wrote about hundreds of thousands of people being killed in an intervention as you might talk about a typical workday. I didn't know about how much Nazis worked with Jewish Councils. For Nazis to work with Jews wouldn't make sense from…

This week I finished: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, by Philip Zimbardo: Many of us know something of the Stanford Prison Experiment. It was a psychology experiment in 1971 where a Stanford psychologist led a team that turned the basement of a building into a temporary prison-like space. They recruited two dozen local people whom they randomly assigned to play guards and prisoners for twelve days. All were tested psychologically and found healthy and in normal ranges on all psychological traits they tested. They had to stop the experiment on the sixth day. The participants lost themselves in the roles. The guards became authoritarian and sadistic. The prisoners became learned-helpless and compliant. Some had to leave even earlier for their traumatic…

This week I finished: A Faith Undefeated, about Corrie ten Boom: I learned about Corrie ten Boom from Edith Eger's The Choice. Eger only mentioned ten Boom's name. Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who lived with her family in Haarlem, Holland. The family ran a watchmaking and repair store that had operated over a century. They were devout Christians and when the Nazis took over, they helped Jews by hiding them in their house and helping them escape. They were betrayed. They were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. Her father died soon, though Corrie didn't learn until after the war. She and her sister were imprisoned and enslaved for years. Her sister died in December 1944. Corrie was released twelve days later,…

This week I finished: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham: I'd been seeing lately how much the pattern today of Saying all the right things about freedom, liberty, and values we support Saying others should act by those values, in fact all of society But not living by those values ourselves Even though we could Claiming, against clear, incontrovertible evidence, that we can't repeats how Thomas Jefferson lived. Today, people recognize his flaws. We wish that on slavery he had acted differently. We wish he had, as a politician, acted more to end slavery. We wish he had freed his slaves. We recognize that his personal actions caused internal conflict that inhibited him from acting politically. If I was going to talk…

This week I finished: The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Dr. Edith Eger: At one point listening to this book, I started feeling choked up. Tears started welling up in my eyes. I asked myself, "When has a book made me cry?" "Has a book ever led me to cry?" I continued to ask myself. As the book continued, I started full-on bawling at the experience of the author, how she made her greatest struggles useful for herself, and how she is sharing them to help all of us use our struggles to reach the greatest pinnacles, to reach our potentials. Note: this is not a self-help book, though you can use it that way. When I talk about her struggles, they include being imprisoned…

This week I finished: Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others, by Adam Galinsky: Adam teaches leadership at Columbia Business School, where I learned there were classes in leadership and took them. In them, I learned that I could learn social and emotional skills. I eventually wrote a book on leadership, Leadership Step by Step, with a chapter called Inspire. I also recently met Adam in person at an event with a bunch of people from his department. How could I not read this book? Adam is a social psychologist. This book is engaging and compelling because it has a lot of stories, including many from his personal life, despite being mostly about research and how to act on it. He did a…

This week I finished: The Way Home: Tales From a Life Without Technology, by Mark Boyle: I learned of Mark Boyle probably years ago and I think watched his TEDx talk. Recently a guest suggested I connect with an Australian woman, Jo Nemeth, who is living with no money. I connected with Jo, which led to engaging conversations. Jo describes Mark as a hero, which prompted me to read this book. I also want to read his first book The Moneyless Man, but the library had this one first. I found this book engaging, enlightening, fun, and sometimes playful. It's been too long since I read Walden and Civil Disobedience, which rank among the most influential books I've read. This one is in their league.…

This week I finished: The Male Brain, by Louann Brizendine: I heard of Brizendine's first book The Female Brain, but the library had The Male Brain, so I got it instead. Reading it was satisfying, learning about differences between the male brain and what I hear more about, which is our commonalities. There seems to be a mainstream outrage that claims that the male brain and body are considered normal and women's are considered unusual, so not studied. I grew up with my parents having female-centered works like Ms. magazine and Our Bodies Ourselves, but no equivalent for males. Men's magazines in the 1970s meant pornography. Most of my life, focusing on gender meant "smashing the patriarchy," so it was refreshing to learn about specifically…

This week I finished: Racism: A Very Short Introduction, by Ali Rattansi: This book follows up last month's The Myth of Race. I've read a lot about slavery, abolitionism, Nazism, what people call race, and related topics but haven't read scholarly books about the history of racism. Racism seems just a part of human society, like marriage and school. In principle I knew it had to have started at some time, since our ancestors before leaving Africa likely didn't practice it. These two books trace it to Europe around the Inquisition. The two books overlapped enough that I believe I started to get a feel for the historical patterns they described. It's disheartening to see how involved some significant historical figures were. I knew about…

This week I finished: Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-ups Change the Future, by Mike Maples Jr and Peter Ziebelman: I borrowed this book after hearing Mike speak about it. In parts, I felt he spoke to me about my work: starting a company can revolutionize a field, but doesn't have to, even in Silicon Valley. Many ventures simply provide a service in a system it doesn't change. By contrast, some projects overturn industries. They're different. This book doesn't claim to say anything new in this regard. It's helping people who do such things feel comfortable in the face of everyone disbelieving and causing friction at every turn. They focus in for-profit ventures and mine is non-profit, so there was a cultural difference, but I've started…

This week I finished: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, by Robert Wald Sussman: Wow! What a fascinating book on the history of the concepts of race (by more than one definition of the term) and the practice of racism. Sussman was an anthropologist and academic, which are the lenses he mostly looks through. He defines what he means by race and racism, describes some of today's understandings, misunderstandings, and practices around these concepts and practices, then tells their appearance and development in history. He traces the start of the practice to the Inquisition in Spain: the first time people in power defined a group of people as lesser through intrinsic properties they could never change. In that case, the…

This week I finished: Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, by Ryan Holiday: Like Courage is Calling, Holiday recalls virtues largely abandoned these days with diverse historical examples. It makes sense to practice them, yet we don't. I don't think I'm flattering myself to say I believe I practice discipline, approaching a quarter-million burpees without missing a day in over a decade among other sidchas. I think I also practice courage as he describes it, going against global culture by practicing values like those expressed by do unto others as you would have them do unto you, live and let live, leave it better than you found it, and love your neighbor as yourself. It's hard and takes courage and discipline to practice those…

This week I finished: Matewan: In college, a teammate on the ultimate Frisbee team was a graduate student in the film school and cited this movie as one of his favorites. I watched it a long time ago and re-watched it this week. I found it compelling as a movie. Having taken acting classes, I thought about how much fun an actor could have playing the bad guys since they were so over-the-top. I don't know much of the history the movie plays out in. Now I'm learning about the coal wars and the growth of unions then. I was probably motivated to watch it again in part from finishing Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein: I…

This week I finished: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, by Rob Henderson: I saw Rob Henderson speak about this book in person and met him briefly. I confess I didn't know much about the book before learning about the event, but other attendees shared how much the book meant to them. It also sounded like it resonated with some experiences of my childhood. His sounds more troubled and chaotic than mine. I'm not glad he experienced what he did, but since it happened, I'm glad someone shared as openly as he did. It feels reassuring to know I'm not alone, or even that I had it that bad. After a rough childhood, he ended up at the top of the…

This week I finished: Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series), by Ryan Holiday: This book spoke to me about what I'm doing with living by a different culture than nearly everyone around me. I hadn't considered myself courageous. I'm just living by my values. For that matter, I'm living by the values everyone who values Do unto others as you would have them do unto you Leave it better than you found it Live and let live Love your neighbor as yourself I also hadn't considered those compromising on those values to get along with mainstream culture cowardly, but the book makes it clear that's what's happening. This book recalls another time, when people took more responsibility, spoke more clearly,…