lpm100's reviews
711 reviews

Book Review: "When"
2/5 stars
Daniel Pink
"The number of books yet to be written by nailing together weak psychological papers is only bound by the imagination"

*******
I'm just not sold on this book, for a lot of reasons.

PROBLEM 1: 

If these were the best examples that he could find out of hundreds of papers, was the effect really that big?

First example is the graph on page 171, showing a change in divorce filings. This uses an old trick (that is a textbook example in books debunking statistical errors) of "trying to make something both bigger and smaller at the same time." The range from the highest to the lowest is about 0.3 filings, or 10%. But it's presented in such a ways to make it look *much*  bigger.

Second example is on page 120, and it has absolutely *no* units on the ordinate axis. I don't think I've ever taken a statistics class where the instructor would accept a graph with no units. 

Third example is on page 10, and it is the same thing that's the first example, except that the entire range of the graph is 6%.

Fourth example is on page 148, and this time the graph actually *does* have units. And the units are "per 500 runners." So 27 out of 500 (5.4%) runners will run their first marathon at 29, but then 14 out of 500 (2.8%)  will at 28. So, the distance between the highest and lowest scores was an eye-watering 2.6%. In Statistics classes, that is known as "statistically significant, but not practically significant."

And that's even if we are willing to assume that these many papers have external/construct validity; remember that in that pseudoscience known as "Psychology," things vanish without a Trace once people stop believing in them. (The author himself debunked the notion of "midlife crisis," and I'd have to say that that was the single most useful thing that was brought forward in the entire book.)

PROBLEM 2:

The author talks about the benefit to starting schools later in the day, but this is yet another example of academics being completely out of touch with reality. (And that's about as rare as hydrogen.) The bad news is that when you have to get up and go to work everyday and pay a mortgage, the work schedule is not arranged for your convenience.

If somebody paid attention to this book and implemented his suggestions in school, it would just be ONE MORE thing that you had to unlearn as you left school and went into the real world. (You know, that place where bills have to be paid without a lot of discussion?)

PROBLEM 3:

Some of this is empirically false--and that's even worse than weak statistical effects or low external validity.

1. (p.199) "Operating in synch expands our openness to outsiders and makes us more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. In other words, coordinating makes us better people - - and being better people makes us better coordinators" 

I'm sorry, but I happen to live around some people that have an, um, very interesting interpretation of what it means to be a human being. (That would be Haredim.)

To a man, these people are all dressed in the same (penguin) clothes and read from the same books and live basically interchangeable lives. But, to say of them "open to outsiders" and "being good people" is probably about as accurate as describing R Kelly as an example of "moral rectitude" and "conservatism."

2. Lots of black Americans try to sync with Arab Muslims by changing their names to Arabic names and wearing silly desert garments. Given that I have seen exactly zero such interracial couplings, I don't think that it has been successful.

3. (p.120). Hanukkah candles. He seems to think that a significant fraction of Jews are two trifling to even light all 44. It's definitely a comparatively low energy Jewish holiday, into light candles over eight nights is really as easy as breathing.

PROBLEM 4:

A lot of stuff that the author tells us is something that anybody who is of a certain age (let's say over 30) should already know.

1. Of course if you want to take advantage of something, that it is a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

2. Of course if you have a full schedule, then you will organize your time of necessity.

3. Of course if you operate a business and you do it all day, then you will become successful at what you do as a matter of course. And if you don't, then you just won't survive. He wrote a chapter about the Indian delivery service, but that's pretty much what you would expect in a country where wages are low and cheap labor is abundant. (If they're so good at that, why can't they seem to figure out anything else? Like "synching" enough people to attain 99% literacy. 

Is there really information here?

*******
This author has 325 references in a 200 Page book, but the graphs that he showed us actually showed pretty weak effects.

Really, the most use of this book is as by going through and picking out a lot of the most glaring statistical errors. 

At least it makes you think that you learn something from other books that you've read about statistics.


Second order thoughts:

1. I guess if you read enough trivial psychological papers, you can staple together any arbitrary number into a book about almost anything. That has certainly been the case with books such as "Invisible Gorilla"/"Predictably Irrational"/etc.

2. This book sold quite a few copies. "Fifty Shades of Grey" also sold 15.2 million copies, so there's that.

Verdict:

Not recommended. I'd recommend three other books in preference to this one:

1. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman (the great majority of this book is derivative of that, to be frank).

2. "Inumeracy," by John Allen Paulos and it is a discussion of statistical errors such as this one.

3. "How to Make The World Add Up" by Tim Harford, which is similar to the second but more recent and more popular.

Book Review
"The Butchering Art"
5/5 stars
"EXTREMELY gory, but a good story."

*******
Of the book:

-11 chapters
-235 pages of prose (21pps/chapter)
-≈4 hours of reading time; light and interesting
*******
This book talks about the experience of one man over his lifetime and career trying to make people aware that germs cause infection. And it is almost entirely in the context of the United Kingdom during the industrial Revolution.

There are many, many lessons in this book, and I recommend that it be read as a companion book to 

1. "Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations" by Arnold vanDer Laar.  (Surgical history.)

2. "Big Fat Surprise" Nina Teichholz. (Political corruption in the research process.)

3. "And the band played on," Randy Shilts. (Political incompetence in public policy/health.)

4. "Apocalypse Never," Michael Shellenberger. (Damage of research quality by political interference.)

It's an interesting property of human beings that: After problems are solved, it's very easy to forget that they ever existed in the first place. (The bad old days before antibiotics are probably not even a century behind us, and that was >99% of human history. And it seems to have been largely forgotten.)

It's an interesting property of human beings that: once old problems are solved, they will spontaneously generate new problems. 

-Now that we have figured out about anesthesia/hormones / germs, we have to figure out whether or not it is the most ethical thing to give a teenager with other confounding mental problems a "sex change." This is a problem that nobody could have seen before when at least three quarters of patients would die because of gangrenous amputation.

-The conditions in industrial Revolution England were inconceivably bad, and London was an unspeakably FILTHY place. Now that those conditions are over and forgotten, the biggest problem that companies have is whether or not they have hired enough "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" consultants.

It really makes me wonder "What is the point of solving any problem?" because the next problem seems to me somehow inherent in the solution of the last.

*******

As hard as this is to believe: It was only 150 years ago that modern Germ Theory did not exist, and it was actually a matter of fierce dispute (!) whether or not germs were responsible for post-surgical infections.

And it took a LOT of work to get people to understand that; It was only some time after the US Civil War that it took hold in the United States.

Rather than synopsize the book, I think that there are a number of lessons that we learn from reading it that are useful in current times because they have resonances to so many old mistakes that are being repeated in current times.

1. Just because something is medical consensus as of a moment does not mean that it is true. 

-For the events in this book, Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur were in the extreme minority in believing The Germ Theory of disease.

-Psychology is one of those "disciplines" where diseases vanish without a trace between one addition and the next of the DSM.

-As of this year, everybody and his brother is  self diagnosing Gender Identity Disorder based on watching a single YouTube video.

 But that may not remain the case forever.

2. The scientific process is best when there is NO/minimal political interference, because when politicians insert themselves into the scientific process it becomes a very different thing. 

-Lister had a lot of trouble being hired just because of his need to explain the empirical connection between conditions in a surgery and patient mortality.

-This has been the story in current times with Foolish Anthony Fauci. 

-It has been the story during the initial stages of the HIV infection several decades ago, with the same Fool.

-It has been the story with the misunderstanding of macronutrients/ caloric restriction in weight loss as well as the relationship between fat and cholesterol, with Ancel Keys ("Big Fat Surprise" is the book that was written about this corruption.)

-It was something of a feature in this book, but the process has gone into overdrive in current times: when financial rewards come from producing results aligned with certain political goals, then it is an easy thing to get people that will generate the research that gives them funding. (Climate change.)

3. Medicine/Other Real Sciences are things that proceed by relentless trial and error. Popperian falsifiability (i.e. the fact that if you cannot falsify it, then it is not scientific) is something that has been known for probably about a century now.

But let's not forget how much work it took to get there, and let's not forget that only a very small fraction of the general population (and 0% of the political class) understands this very important concept.

But for this one concept, there would be no war against fossil fuels. (Speculation about climate change is really just conjecture.)

4. (p.132). Science proceeds one funeral at a time. A lot of people like to imagine that scientists are disinterested seekers of knowledge. This is emphatically not the case!  
And that explains how the attacks against Joseph Lister turned personal..... He was stepping on the toes of people who already had their own a priori belief.

Lots of ego makes this process a lot slower than it would ordinarily be, and a lot of times you just have to wait out people's lifetime so that their ideas can die with them. (So that's why nobody believes in Freudian psychology anymore!)

Verdict:

Recommended at the second hand price. It's only a couple of hundred pages, and it's so easy to read and the fruit (of knowledge of this interesting period of time) hangs too low to not pluck it.

Nothing is learned, only remembered.......

New vocabulary:

anatomize
erysipelas
pyemia
animalcule
pythogenesis
"miasma"
tympanic
cerebritis
pultaceous
pernitrate
scirrhous (breasts)
cicatrised
bistoury
Regius Professor
baize
carious
putrescible

Book Review
"The Book"
Keith Houston
5/5 stars
"Narrative arc of history through from the perspective of The Book.This one is a keeper."

Of the book:

-15 chapters; 329 pps prose. (≈27pps/chapter)
-1124 citations (3.4/page; ≈75/chapter)
-Author appears to have read 26 other books to recommend for further reading about books and bookmaking history.

It's an extremely well thought out book: for example (p.288), "You can see this in action right now. If you look at the end of this book, you will see that all gatherings except the one at which you are reading are closed, and they remain closed except when you turn the page into a new gathering."

The cover and initial pages are printed in such a way that one learns the titles of the various parts of the book: head cap/spine/fore-edge/foot/verso / bio/quote/synopsis/endpapers/half title/adcard/dingbat/imprint/dedication/front matter head.

This text is in the vein of another Englishman writer, by the name of Tim Harford: instead of trying to come up with new ideas and fine phrases, these authors do the yeoman's work of explaining that which actually exists and giving us a taste of the history with their interesting thoughts.

*******

A book like this one was waiting to be written. 

And that's because paper is something that intersects SO universally with human life these days. (What else could you think of that would link the Taliban and Idiot Academics in some Gender Studies Department?)

On the one hand, construction of the narrative arc of a book like this seems like it would be easy, but on the other the author has *very* thoroughly researched the material that he did use to create it.  (Even by Page 41, he has studied many of the endless Chinese dynastic intrigues. Also, he has delved into the etymological origins of Chinese characters and presented them in this book.)

The book is in four parts.

Part 1: Invention of paper (76pps; 23%)
Part 2: Invention of writing (76pps; 23%)
Part 3: Improvements in art owing to paper (86pps; 26%)
Part 4: Development of the book (88pps; 27%)

Neat Factoids:

Part I (76 pps)

1. Historical steps in paper

Step 1: papyrus (Egypt); 
Step 2: parchment (Greece/ Rome);
Step 3: bamboo/silk/pulp paper (China, Late Han Dynasty);
Step 4: Linen paper (Arabs / other Middle East)
Step 5: Pulp paper is industrialized and transferred to Europe (Arabs; conquest of Spain).


2. There are two sides to parchment paper: the skin side, and the hair side. Halachically, Torah scrolls are only to be written on the hair side.

3. The average American consumes about 500 lb of paper per year (5.57 40 ft trees).

4. Places like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are places where Arabs and Chinese battled, but also exchanged the art of paper making. (Ziyad ibn Salih slaughtered 50,000 Chinese troops and took another 20,000 prisoner - some of which had the art of papermaking.)

5. Newspapers actually used to be made from linen/old rags. Hence the reason that some newspapers are now pejoratively called "rags." (Think: Washington Post, New York Times, Seattle Times.)

Part II (76 pps)

1. There are more obelisks in Rome than there are the entirety of Egypt.

2. Writing is several thousand years old, but for the vast majority of human existence it did not exist. Writing also goes through several phases. (Pictorial/mixed pictorial phonetic/partially phonetic [consonantal abjads do not specify vocalization vowel sounds]/fully phonetic).

3. Gutenberg was predated by the Egyptians (with respect to printing) and by a Chinese commoner, Bi Sheng (movable type).

4. "Uppercase" and "lowercase" actually refer to the case in which the respective letters were put for their use in making a movable print template. (p.120)

5. It is odd that the Gutenberg Bible was 42 lines per column (and stayed that way such that the name "42 Line Bible" became a common nickname), and a Sefer Torah is 42 lines per column.

6. More books were printed in the first half century after Gutenberg's Bible than in the proceeding thousand years combined.

Part III (86 pps)

1. Currency (and therefore the modern market economy) was something that could only come into being when mass printing (for banknotes) had come into use. 

2. A very complicated detour into copper plate, lithography, photography, and modern book printing. (A picture really would have been worth a thousand words in many of these cases.)

Part IV (88 pps)

1. Quote (p.241): "Once you have something to write about, something to write with, and something to write on, what comes next?"..... This is an attempt to seal up the development of the book.

2. The book has been with us now for 1,600 years (through its predecessor, the codex). Other points in the development: books have been bound by leather from the beginning, and eventually leather covers were decorated by blind tooling. In the 16th century, books began to be shelled vertically, and so the author and title had to appear on the spine.

3. "Burke's skin pocketbook." (Yeesh.) And other "anthropodermic bibliopegy" (this is binding a book with human skin, in case it was not clear enough.)

3. Discussion about the process for choosing standardized papers as well as development of fonts.

4. Paper sizes were standardized in 1921 at the behest of Woodrow Wilson's government. The 8.5x11 was finally adopted by the Reagan administration six decades later. (We know that the government does not solve problems quickly, but this is just ridiculous.)


Second order thoughts:

1. The story that is told here is one of shifting rate determining steps. First, the availability of paper. Then the price of paper. Then the price of scribes. It seems these days that the rate limiting step is the willingness of people to read books. (Not for no reason is it a running joke among black people that "If you want a ni**a to NOT read something, then put it in a book.")

I'm reading that the US books per person has declined from 18.5 (1999) per year down to 12.6 (2021). 

2. This book is unintentionally a tome on Empiricism: ALL of these things had to be invented by relentless trial and error and what survives is a small fraction of what was initially there.

3. When writing and language are the domain of scribes, it seems to be of a much higher quality than when it becomes demotic / colloquial. (It seems like people wrote only when they had something to say: the writings of Rashi and Maimonides survive nearly 1,000 years after they are dead; many books these days go out of print in just a few years.) 

There is, correspondingly, an inevitable deterioration in the signal to noise ratio as things become more popular: Handwritten books with Gothic script and Sifrei Torah scrolls are works of art.

4. (p.174) Something starts out as a plaything of very wealthy people, and eventually it becomes cheap enough so that everybody can afford one. Books. Cars. Cell phones.

5. Religious impulses are not necessarily bad. Had there been no monks, there would have been no scribes, and there would have been no popularization of the written word. (This was true in Europe as well as China and Japan.)

6. When people are in a trade (and the purpose is to make money), they will automatically create standardization. It seems that paper makers had come up with standard sizes almost a century before the government noticed and decided to affirm what everybody already knew.

Verdict: Recommended. Obviously, there is just WAY. TOO. MUCH information in this book to be able to retain it all, but if you even have a vague idea of the evolution of books you will know more than most people.

I recommend this at the hardcover / new price.

Great acquired vocabulary:

Vellum
Kelaf
Duxustus
gewil
"Line in the sand"  (Popillus from the 6th Syrian War.)
colophon
backmatter head 
pergamena charta-->parchment (historical/ technical definition)
grimoire
uterine/abortive vellum
coppice
deckle
litharge
ouroboros
sherd (NOT "shard")
palimpsest 
copperas
rubricators
chase, quoins, forme
tympan
typefounder
1 oxymoron, 2 oxymora
nous (chiefly British. "aptitude ')
Paige Compositor
justify
Linotype
steampunk
gesso
orihan (concertina folded book)
ostraca 
sittybos (Greek)-->sillybus (Latin)-->syllabus
aquatint
Copperplate (in the sense of engraving and not a syllabus)
intaglio
mattock
codicologist
caoutchouc 
quite
deckle edge
versal
manicule
anthropodermic bibliopegy
duodecimo
octavo
quarto 
head cap/
spine/
fore-edge/
foot/
verso / 
bio/quote/
synopsis/
endpapers/
half title/
adcard/
dingbat/
imprint/
dedication
foolscap


Quote (p.138) "Paige and I always meet on  effusively affectionate terms; and yet he knows perfectly well that if I had his nuts in a steel-trap I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap until he died."

Book Review
"Guilty"
Ann Coulter
5/5 stars
"You're preaching to the choir, Ann; we know that the media are not honest brokers."

Of the book:
-7 chapters, 265 pages of prose
-Average of about 38 pages per chapter
-≈5 hours of reading time
-681 citations (x̄=97/chapter; x̄=2.56/page)

I thought I would read this quick 265-pager because I've been trying to get rid of my older books.

Almost all of Coulter's books are about political issues of moment; since this was written in 2008, it's about issues that are 15 years old. 

--Some of the people have (physically) died since the time of the publication of this book. (Rush Limbaugh [R]. John McCain [R?]. George H.W. Bush [R]. Osama Bin Laden [D]. Janet Reno[D]. Linda Tripp [D]. David Kuo [R]. Warren Mitofsky [D]).  

--Others have (politically) died since (Hilary/Bill Clinton [D])

This book was written around the time of Obama's candidacy, and he went on to serve two terms. And then get replaced by Donald Trump. Who was, in turn, replaced by Joe Biden.

I guess the takeaway lesson is to: either hurry up and read political books before they become irrelevant OR to just not read them at all. 

In reality, the specific examples contained in this book are just data points in the (abstract) game of Fabulous/Kooky White People making every issue about them are something so common, it's no more obvious/exciting than atmospheric nitrogen. 

*******
Big thoughts:

1. We've been here before, many times:  [A quote from a different book "Murder in the Synagogue," p 128] "Civilizations move in cycles of growth and decline; there appears to be no sociospiritual progress from civilization to civilization. The human condition must always remain the human condition..... When a civilization reaches a crisis it is because a theological point has been openly disputed; there's always a religious crisis first, followed by an institutional crisis and eventually the internal destruction of the civilization by its OWN MEMBERS."

2. Freedom of press is something that's really worth reconsidering. 

a. The Chinese press is highly censored, and the US press is supposedly free, but for all of our separate experience, our mutual conclusions are the same: massive amounts of misinformation and a generally uninformed/deliberately misinformed populace.

b. No-nonsense Chinese governments (on both the Mainland and Singapore) realize that newspapers (such as the New York Times) deliberately misinforming large numbers of people or in a hurry to give away national security secrets just might have some bearing on national security.

3. Having multiple parties is probably also worth reconsidering. Coalition governments in Israel these days last about as long as a bowel movement. Fabulously Wealthy Singapore's People's action Party has been in power for 63 years.

4. I think just in the United States, 1/4 of the country does not read a single book in the course of a year. Also, everybody seems to be taken their cues from celebrities. (QUOTE: "Foreign policy / home video porno star expert Pamela Anderson told Palin to 'suck it"/' while domestic advisor / aspiring lesbian Lindsay Lohan called Palin 'a narrow-minded, media obsessed homophobe.'") Is there any way that this could turn out well?
*******


Second order thoughts:

1. If you only looked at the news once every year or two, the number of "big" events would seem many fewer. 

2. It's hard to believe, but it is entirely possible to get through an entire life with NO television. (Orthodox Jews do not typically have TVs in the home, and it works out beautifully; I myself read 49 books last year with the saved time and am trying to do 61 this year.)

3. It's not news that empires have a natural lifetime. (Arbesman [2011], average is 220. J.B. Glubb [1978], 220 years.) 

Analogous to how human beings can (eventually) suffer as a result of a life that's too comfortable sitting on the couch and eating cakes, a nation that gets affluent in such a way that old problems disappear, will self-generate new problems. (People only have time to worry about exhaust engines contributing to global warming once they have forgotten about all of the problems that having transportation solves.)

4. The US is not a special case. 

a. Sometimes nations just fall into something stupid and never come out of it. Japan lived under a shogunate for 7 centuries. Confucianism hampered progress in China for 20 centuries. The caste system has been with us in India for just as long.

b. Sometimes nations make democratic decisions that, in hindsight, turned out to be a *really* bad idea. (The Weimar Republic leading into the Nazi Party and the Holocaust was 100% democratic. The European Union has democratically invited in its own Muslim infestation, is spite of fighting with them for 1300 years.)

5. Eric Hoffer has noted the desire of academics/intellectuals to turn the entire world into a gigantic classroom that is waiting for them to teach. So cultivating a sense of helplessness is quite expected. (Everybody "catches a case," but nobody can admit to being in court based on something that they actually did.)

Short Attention Span Summary: F.A. Hayek ("Why The Worst Get On Top.")

6. It may not be quite as bad as what Coulter is letting on: the circulation of the conservative Wall Street journal is a multiple of the circulation of the fraudulent New York Times--and ALL of WSJ is behind a paywall. Fox News is also the most popular news show, by far. Also, the media has dramatically lost credibility with the events surrounding the George Floyd riots ("mostly peaceful protests") and the covid hysteria. There may be no person over the age of 12 who does not know that the fastest way to get inaccurate information is to turn on CNN.


*******
Chapter synopses

1.  We all know that 150% of the news is fake. (That's why we don't have a TV in this house, and why I don't watch any news; if something is important enough it will make its way to my ears.)

2. The relationship between out of wedlock births is obvious to everyone except the American left. And Coulter has taken up this theme many times. Brief history of several of the legal / supreme Court decisions that have incentivized single motherhood.

3. Asking questions about a candidate's policy positions is thought to be rude if the candidate is a Democrat. Somehow, this gets reinterpreted as a "smeared by the Republican attack machine." It's not exactly news that reality gets stood on its head by the media.

4. More recapitulation of the fact that the press is not an honest broker, with specific examples and the focus on the fictitious person of JFK. Vicious (but comedic gold) takedown of Scott McClellan/Justice David Souter/ Ariana Huffington / Anita Hill / Keith Olbermann / Joe Wilson / David Kuo  in a single skit that only lasted three pages. Almost worth repeating in its entirety. Beatdowns of 13 books by Republican turncoats.

5. Recapitulation of: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate. More examples of Clintonian corruption (the Arsenic Levels Hoax). A reader would come away from this book thinking that Clinton= Mobutu.

6. Polls are often not accurate (Mitofsky!), as well as being, um, "man-made/ man-caused"; Politicians are the easiest and most frequently duped by them.

7. More verbal contortion in newspapers describing conservative candidates versus liberal ones. "Bubbly/colorful / a soccer mom / a party animal / (legacy) a book of First Lady photographs" when applied to a Conservative candidate becomes "bookish/doughty / a librarian / a hostess in the traditional mold / (legacy)a cookie named after her."

(p.232) If you were not aware that Michelle Obama looked *just like* Jackie Kennedy, you would find it out from reading certain publications.

Interesting factoids: 

a. Mr. and Mrs. B. Hussein Obama gave 5.8 and 6.1% of their income to charity in 2006-2007; Joe and Jill Biden gave 0.15% and 0.31%. John McCain gave 27.3% and 28.6%.

b. (p.238) George Soros is a nasty piece of work. He has been defiant multiple times about collaboration with Nazis and stealing Jewish property. ("...... Just like in markets - - if I weren't there, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow.")

c. All of our political assassins have actually been left wingers. John Wilkes Booth. Charles J. Guitar. Leon Czolgosz. John Schrank. Giuseppe Zangara. Lee Harvey Oswald. Sirhan Sirhan. Arthur Bremer. Lynette Fromme. (100% white.)
A lot of very good quotes here:

1. "Every time the Clinton administration made a joke it was a law and every time they made a law, it was a joke."

2. "For years, we've been told how unbelievably sexy Bill Clinton is. If a beer belly, bloated cheeks, tiny, close-set eyes, and a big head equals handsome, where the hell is Newt Gingrich's modeling contract?"

Verdict: I might recommend this at the price of $1. Maybe $2 The information is too dated, but the jokes are great. (I might have to remember a few of these and use them myself.)

Book Review
 "Swirling"
 Christelyn Karazin/Janice Littlejohn
 3/5 stars
 "Not bad; mostly inapplicable (to my case) and full of significant amounts of chaff"
 *******
 Not really that much to be learned from this book. 

When I picked it up, I didn't realize that this was specifically meant for black women. (I only found that out about 10 pages into the book.) 

For black guys (or, really, any guys) there's not much here for at least two reasons: 

1. No man has all of this anguish about whom to date: either you are "into" this type (or not), and life is a series of seeing how many times you can be told "no" at a certain level of women of this type before you decide that it's time to move down one tier. Also, there are certain types of women who just are not into black guys (let's say Arab women), and it just is what it is and it's not worth the a bunch of times spent emotionally anguishing. 

2. In the case of black men, I've read at least one journal article that says that they don't show a preference one way or another for any type of lady. ("You turn them upside down, and they all look the same.") 

Both of the authors are black women, and they also happen to have white-friendly good looks. 

They went through a lot of things that we already know, which is that: 

1. For educated black ladies there just are not enough black guys to go around. (All the usual suspects: Too many in the penitentiary/ too many upper income earners choose white ladies, etc.) 

2. Reasonably enough, the authors come up with the obvious solution to just go and seek other markets--and being aware that one has to work on making herself available and approachable for these "alternate markets." 

That is the gist of the book in those two sentences.... Repeated OVER and OVER and OVER again. 

There are a few neat little factoids that are worth extracting: 

1. The inter(faith)marriage rate for Muslims in the United States is 39% (p.32). 

2. (p.18) A black man who earns > $100,000 per year is less likely to have ever married than a black man who earns $75,000 a year. The highest earning black men are more than twice is likely as their white counterparts never to have married. (And I have seen this: people who have too much to choose from have the "paradox of choice," and unable to make a decision because of excessive options.) 

3. Left wing people do not preach what they practice (big surprise there!): of 157 white guys that were matched with black women, 40% of the voters were moderate / 28% leaned conservative / and only 17% were extreme liberals; 17% of them were NRA members. 

4. Ready to fight body language signals (p.195): 

a. Invasion of your personal space quickly;
 b. Aggressors may fake you out and pretend to attack to gauge your response; 

c. Don't link eyes with the potential assaulter. Focus on the shoulders and chest, because any attack will most likely initiate from that part of their body. Look for a shoulder to cock or a fist to double up. 

5. Some things that are helpful for both guys and girls when meeting the family: 

a. Gain some perspective;
 b. Be the antistereotype;
 c. Relax;
 d. Don't go in with your boxing gloves on;
 e. Come armed with lots of conversation;
 f. Remember your table manners.
 ******* 

The authors appear to be upper middle class, and a lot of their plans of action seem to be for people who have money. 

Suggestion #5. (p.114) Do volunteer work. (For people who have to get paid for every hour that they work, this is kind of a luxury.) 

Suggestion #14. (p.115). Whisk yourself off to Ellis house wine camp on the East end of Long Island for three night stay (Umm......) 

Suggestion #41. (p.124). Live abroad for a year. (Umm......) 

*******
 A few things were not quite right: 

1. (p.201) Interracial marriages are not a tough sell to Korean families *as long as the other partner is White*. Something like 70% of them marry interracially. 

2. (p.200) Hmong people are neither Chinese nor from the mountains of China. They live in a lot of different places in Asia, including Vietnam. They seem to be the Eastern Asian analog of Gypsies. In the same way it does not make sense to say that Gypsies are from India (even though that is what they, in fact, are), it doesn't make sense to think of Hmong people as "from the mountains of China." 

*******
 The book was anticlimactic in that one of the authors conceded at the end of the book that she had been alone for the last 12 years and it seems like she had an occasional booty call from some attorney that she knew. 

Anyway, it's like the equivalent of going to a dentist whose teeth has all rotted out of his mouth. (Or, in this case, to a dentist who had half of his teeth left.) 

*******
 Verdict: Not recommended for black guys. Recommended for black ladies probably at the price of about $4. 

New vocabulary: 

rainbeau
 Cognitive valence (theory)

Book Review
"A Meditation on The Measure of Black Men In America"
Scott Poulson-Bryant
1/5 stars
"How many silly tropes can be stapled together into a book?"
*******

I'm glad I didn't pay more for this book than I did, and really upset that I paid more than $0.25.

The whole thing can be read through in several hours, and in that way it is worth it because it helps maintain a book count (it would be ideal if I could do 61 books this year).

I thought that this book was going to be some historical discussion about black men getting lynched because they were thought to be sexual threats/predators. (It was published on the Doubleday label, which was heretofore credible--but not after this book.) 

The book started out talking about--and was book ended by-- Emmett Till (the classic example of such an event).

It was all downhill from those couple of pages.

The whole book instead reads like a lllooonnnggg, stream-of-consciousness Dan Savage column, and it also has ZERO references/bibliographic citations. (For instance, when the author mentions [p. 70] that the average black guy's endowment is somewhere between 6.25"-8" (?!?!), There's no way for us to know where it came from; I do remember reading the exact same statistic in JP Rushton's "Race, Evolution, and Behavior," but Rushton has been so thoroughly discredited / ignored that the only way I could know that that statistic was false would be because Rushton was the primary author thereof.)

Who, but an academic, could make a connection between sexual endowment and lynching in the South because the same word is used to describe two things? (He went even further, creating the new word "hangature.")

1. The completely unrealistic tone of the book starts from the beginning where the author starts out with his story about being "objectified" by Some White Girl.

∆∆∆ IF there was a black guy who was interested in White Ladies (like a huge fraction are--with varying degrees of success because demand outstrips supply), and

∆∆∆ IF the mechanism of action of getting access to this Hypothetical White Lady's Tender Bits was being "sexually objectified"

∆∆∆ THEN it's almost certain that he would play whatever role he needed to play to get to where he wanted to be. ("You can call me 'Mandingo' and I can call you 'Blanche' if it makes it more realistic for you.")

2. Why is there so much anguish about this? Is there any straight man anywhere who would give enough thought to this topic to write even a single sentence, let alone an entire book? (The author refers to himself as "sexually expansive" in the last 1/5 of the book, while rejecting the labels "gay" or "bisexual." So, I guess not.)

3. Is there an issue at all here? 

The author characterizes a black guy by the name of "Simon," who grew up in some lilly white environment and somewhere/ somehow inadvertently became famous for having extra large equipment.

This character also has the same feminine, emotional anguish about being "objectified."

Do we really believe that such a person exists? There are SO many Reddit, Twitter, and Chaturbate accounts with guys who are apparently abundantly eager to broadcast their own nude pictures all over the internet as far and wide as possible--complete with live measurements/comparison stills/ruler stills.

4. This guy does not appear to be too well educated, in spite of going to the Ivy league.

Let's count the clichés, shall we?

Cliché 1: The Alex Haley book "Roots." (You know, the one that was found to be substantially plagiarized and also completely ahistorical? That one?)

Cliché 2(p.113): "Karen" wants "Mandingo" because of the virility and the BBC. (And the author even references The 1975 film which is a hammy/overdone 2-hour riff on just that.)

It's like the author doesn't even notice that in the REAL WORLD it's nearly NEVER top shelf "Karens" that want "Mandingos." It's more like Bottom Line Baby Elephants being able to date one tier up if they can convince some black guy that "if you move the gut aside, there is some good 'product' down there." (Even somebody like Kim Kardashian is not all that great; even though more of her fat has been injected into the right places, there's nobody in the world that has not seen her, um, "product.")

Cliché 3 "United States is built politically, economically, culturally upon A continual reinvention of uses and misuses of the black body."  If this is the case, I really don't understand why places like Detroit and Baltimore and Inkster (or, really almost all self-governed black cities) turn into cesspools--in spite of an abundance of black bodies!

Cliché 4: He references insane Eldridge Cleaver's "Omnipotent Administrator and Supermasculine Menial"--you know, the one who joined the Mormon church and became a Republican after a lifetime of black panther activism? That guy? 

 (p.49).  Translated into plain English means that "you white guys are just Green With Envy because of our famed BBC" (p.59)

Cliché 5: Women base their self-image on what *other women* think to be attractive. (And that would have to be the case because I don't think any man anywhere has reported being turned on by waxed eyebrows or shoulder pads.) Men also base their self-image on what *other men* seem to notice. (A baseball bat sized todger is impressive in the locker room, but otherwise: I don't think any lady is excited at the prospect of being torn/ ruptured during a sexual encounter.)

Cliché 6: Black ladies like to imagine that all races of men are after them (p.57), and that in the antebellum South they were the hottest commodity (to explain the significant infusion of white blood into black Americans); meanwhile, the price for female black female sex workers is lower than for everyone else, and there are exactly ZERO black regions/countries that function in the way of Thailand or the Philippines-- 'cause ain't nobody going out of their way in pursuit of black trim.

Cliché 7: Freudian psychology. (All kinds of envies here--how to obvious to need a liberation.) Also, the psychiatric hack Frances Cress Welsing (p.153).

Cliché 8 (p.72): Norman Mailer's "White Negro." White guys who act like black guys (in spite of not knowing or dating any black people) in order to get White women.

Cliché 9: The "dialectic of the 'house ni**er' vs. 'field ni**er'," seemingly unaware that: 

1. The largest number of interracial relationships/ progeny came after slavery; 

2. Almost all of them were voluntary. (And these are facts that I've read that were written by a former slave, BT Washington. I'm going to believe him more readily than the made-for-TV movie that has been showed so many times that it has taken on a life of its own.)

Cliché 10: Everything "intersects" with something else. Too much to get into.
*******
Other WTF quotes: (p.137) "And rather than appreciate them as art, I felt culturally violated." OR (p.137) "... Around the time I was studying art and its relationship to cultural politics..."

(I wonder if he changed his personal profile status from "sexually expansive" to "100% queen, total bottom.")

*******

√√Correction #1

Since this book is also about lynching (p.18), I thought I might add that: Depending on the source, between 1882 and 1964, somewhere between 2017~3446 black people were lynched. (For those of you that were counting: that is a period of 82 years. 24.6~42.0 lynchings per year--one every 8.7~14.8 days.)

I might also add that it was over an area of about 750k sq. miles.

For the record, there were 2,570 homicides of black people killing each other just in the last YEAR, and that's just in the cases where the race of the assailant was known. 

World War II lasted 2,191 days. At the rate of 6 million Jewish souls lost, that is 2,738 people PER DAY.

√√Correction #2

(p.143) No, it is not that female talent in the adult industry are kept away from black guys by their husbands or managers.  It is that these women just don't particularly like black men (most white ladies don't!).  I've read some autobiographies of adult actresses, and many of them say that they save interracial for somewhat later in the career because they can command an interracial fee premium. (For the record, I have also listened to interviews with black actresses and they say that 90% of the guys that they work with are white but they do not get an interracial premium.)

Some of the current big actresses are conflicted: Mia Khalifa is either 1st or 2nd ranked, and she does work with black guys, but does not allow them to go raw. (No such problem with the white coworkers.)

Abella Danger is also either 1st or 2nd ranked--and has been for a long time. She goes with guys and girls of all types, bare.

Ditto for Riley Reid. 

Those three are so popular that they could turn down any amount of work that they wanted and still be working every single day.

I'm not sure why this author is worried about Some White Girl who tricked her way from Utah to California (p.151) so that she can be mounted by strangers and recorded in order to make a living when all of the best and most popular talent in the industry does work with black guys.

√√Correction #3

Since this book is about BBC, I might mention that for every Jack Napier (retired)/Mandingo/ Rico Strong that's out there working, there is another John Holmes (retired)/ Danny D/  Bruce "Two-Tone-Malone" Venture. 

I'm not sure what difference it makes in any case: the sample set of female talent available to black guys is ALWAYS a subset of that available to white guys because a significant fraction of white/non-black female talent does not work with black people--but it is never true the other way around.

So, the fabled BBC is not even as well-exercised as (presumably) fewer-in-number (by the lights of this author) BWCs.  

√√ Correction 4

This guy's numbers are WAY off, and by several sources:

-LPSG has sponsored a $10,000 challenge for somebody who can prove 10" with properly measured photographic evidence, and to date the challenge has not been collected.

-There are forums both on Reddit ("measured porn stars")  and LPSG that deal with using image meter to measure approximate objects and then back calculate the endowment of these stars. 

These things are very heavily crowdsourced, and hundreds and hundreds of people have come up with measurements that are nowhere near close to what this guy is claiming. (For the record: That is saying that Lexington Steele is 11"x7")

The author also creates a "Beyond 10" list for people who are nowhere near that: and michaels, Jack Napier, Jake Steed, Byron Long, and Justin Slayer.

√√ Correction 5

I know at least one evolutionary biologist who has "demonstrated" the connection between endowment and IQ. (JP Rushton.) 

If the author really wants us to believe what was written in the journal (that the average black guy is between 6.25 and 8"), then there's somebody who will come up right behind him and say that that is fine because it corresponds to lower general cognitive ability.

Do we really want to open up that hornet's nest?

*******

Verdict: save your money.

Book Review
"Murder in the Synagogue"
T.V. LoCicero
5/5 stars
"The Coming Out Story that wasn't; James Holmes of 1966"
*******

Of the book:

-381 pages of prose

Structure:

(I)Early Life {71 pps}; 
(II)Undergraduate / philosophical formation {82 pps}; 
(III) Beginning of Mental Breakdown {102 pps}; 
(IV) Involuntary mental hospitalization, final descent, shooting and aftermath {110 pps}.
(V) Epilogue {16 pps}
-Each part is broken into chapters that are, on average, about 9 pages each
-Medium paced read, fairly easy.
*******
QUOTE (Eric Hoffer): "The Orthodox Jew is less frustrated than the emancipated Jew. The segregated Negro in the South is less frustrated than the nonsegregated Negro in the North..... within a minority bent on assimilation, the least and most successful (economically and culturally) are likely to be more frustrated than those in between. "

QUOTE (Arthur Golden): "Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us"

In that way, in addition to being one of the most thorough books that I've ever read (as a portrait of somebody who has non-Hollywood type mental illness), it's a stellar example of investigative journalism--although it has no references.

This book is ostensibly about the murder of A Rabbi by one of his parishioners, but by now is serves best as a snapshot of a time that is long past. (The 1950ish-1966 Jewish Detroit.)

What a quaint little world it was!

Secondarily, it can serve as the characterization of a frustrated individual (in the Hofferian sense) and someone dealing with psychiatric issues-- and that is time-independent. Essentially, this shooter was the James Holmes (2012 Aurora, Colorado shooter) of 1966: James Holmes attempted graduate school and found that he was a legend only in his own mind; Richard Wishnetsky submitted a pretentious honors thesis and was promptly "put in his place" (p. 143) and (p.194) "after continuing success throughout his academic career, he suddenly found himself in a situation where he was no longer the best, no longer clearly superior to the others in the group at the University of Detroit." 

And that seems to be what precipitated both of their downward spirals. (It's just that James Holmes didn't do the taxpayers the favor of eating a bullet.)

Wishnetsky also appears to have been sexually frustrated: (p.98)- "....he had asked the girl to go to bed with him. The girl had replied very firmly that she would rather he kill her first."

Similarly: After all the smoke and dust cleared, it turned out that James Holmes was a prolific whoremonger--going through all the trouble of posting reviews about his "encounters." And that would not have been the case if he was skilled enough to convince women to share their Tender Bits with him.

What do we learn?

1. Most of the Detroit Jewish people were secular / Eastern European. And this has been the case for a very long time.

2. There has been grade inflation at universities, but the caliber of scholarship in those times was inconceivable compared to today. 50 and 60 hours of study time allotted weekly. Senior theses all over the place. Oral exams of senior theses, etc ...

3. Shaarey Tzedek (Conservative) of Detroit once upon a Time had 1,300 children just between the age of 6 to 13. And, it was once upon a time a member of the Detroit Council of Orthodox Rabbis.

It's long forgotten, but at one time Masorti Judaism was thought to be the wave of the future.

4. There were a lot more mental hospitals then than now: after 1991, John Engler shut all the  mental hospitals.

Second order thoughts:

1.What I see in the very long characterization of this young man who ultimately did what he did: he didn't realize that he was frustrated until he went off to University to be with academic idiots and then they pointed out to him that he was.

This story has been told a million times before...... How many black people have I met before that grew up in mixed neighborhoods and lived with/dated white people that didn't discover that they were "angry" and "depressed" until some idiot academic pointed out to him that he was?

So, we have the combustible mixture that turned out to be the subject of this book, and but for academia it could well have been otherwise. 

2. In some ways, this is a book about medical/psychiatric technology. 

As I read in the past, it is amazing how many psychiatric disorders have just ceased to exist. There is lots of Freudian psychology quoted in here (p.274) where diagnoses rely on defense mechanisms. 

And just "latent homosexuality" all over the place.

Schizophrenia used to be the catch all diagnosis for everything that was not otherwise specified (p.272). Then, there is the term "borderline schizophrenia," and a quick search shows the most recently published paper on this topic to be in 1979.

3. The cautious assertion is that: Wishnetsky  may have been dealing with sexual orientation issues. 

The first reason is that there was all of this emotional anguish and hesitation about his going out and getting laid. Meanwhile, the men who really want women will go out and find what they can get in a matter of fact way.

The second reason is that: the tropes about the behavior of people who are "latently homosexual" are too obvious to need elaboration. Wishnetsky had some complaints about Berkeley-SanFrancisco. (p.102) "Mental disturbance, rampant homosexuality, and the carelessness of people living only for the moment." 

But, why would that bother someone anymore than some guy who preferred brunettes over blondes?

The less cautious assertion is that: Little Rich was GGGAAAYYY. 

And this topic came up OVER AND OVER in the course of the book.

His  mentoring professor (p.168): "Mr Wishnetsky, you wouldn't know the first thing about masculinity."

Friend Marty Sharpe (p.209) "Though they never talked directly about the possibilities of homosexuality, Marty thought that Richard was "coming close to the classical Greek conception of bisexuality.'"

But for an environment for him to explore his sexuality (let's say some bath houses in California or DC or some number of cruisy parks/ gay bars away from his family), all of this could have been otherwise.

Steven Lewis (p.310): ".... yet the conversations suggested to Bill that Richard was frightened of homosexual tendencies in himself. He had been down to a gay bar on Woodward a number of times he said, 'just to observe of course."" (Um, ok...)

Harv Steiner (p.313): "He boasted on occasion that he had 'screwed' this or that girl, but was entirely unconvincing. "In fact, I thought he might be a virgin," says Harv. "I also thought he had homosexual tendencies: Richard always wanted to get real close to you and even speak softly in your ear and had his arm around you at times. And he could show a venomous hatred of women."

(p.341): "He mentioned that he had no likelihood of going into the draft since he qualified for exemptions on a number of counts - - including having been in a mental institution and something about homosexuality."

(p.344): "Tina finally handled the matter with Richard herself, calling him a 'fa**ot' and a 'queer' and accusing him of trying to destroy her marriage with his homosexual designs on Steven."

3. "Mr. Wishnetsky" was obviously also dealing with mental issues, and that is because: 

-To a (wo)man I have NEVER seen a Jewish person who considered converting to ANY type of Christianity absent severe mental problems. (And, the subject of this biography was considering that- p.114.)

-The "love of his life" (p.114) was a girl who was frankly psychotic, and she had to be institutionalized and dropped out of school after they broke up. (She was in therapy before she met him and in therapy after he was done with her.) Like attracts like.

-Later (p.147, 293) he decided that he was a prophet 

-(p.167) "When a male in the class referred to him casually as 'Rich,' he interrupted to explain sternly, 'It's "Mr. Wishnetsky" to you.'"

-(p.173) Constantly writing notes and letters to HIMSELF, talking about the generation and breakdown of modern society and the necessity for a complete revamping.

And these are just some of the earlier highlights, given that the last half of the book was his slow motion complete breakdown.

4. Could anyone have expected that the situation would have ended well? 

a. His experience at University would have been bad enough, but: We have a young man with no direction moving back and forth between Conservative Judaism (and Haredism, which /attracts/ creates an even higher fraction of nutballs).

5. I think this is also a story of parents not knowing when to let a child go. They could have put him in a psychiatric hospital and left him there (remember that this was way back in the '60s when people could live full-time in mental health facilities); They had two other daughters and they could have mentally buried him and focused on the other children. But, they did not, and the situation was what it was.

6. Mordecai Richer has written (in his book "Barney's Version") that "life is absurd and nobody truly ever understands anybody."

And I would have to second the motion after reading through all of the accounts of these many many people that saw Wishnetsky in a different way from one another. (Forgive me for not including page numbers, but the characterization changed so much throughout the book that I would not have known that I was looking for Jekyll and Hyde from the beginning.)

-Elementary school teachers said that he was not particularly bright. 
-College instructors said that he was brilliant. 
-Interviews from when he was a camp counselor said that he was well received by his charges and conscientious.
-Roommates said that he was well exercised and muscular. (In spite of this, he couldn't get laid at a women's prison with a stack of pardons.)
-All of the academics in his later life said that he was pretentious. Most of the other people in his life saw him as unstable.

*******
Minor quibbles:

1. There's not one single picture of any person in this book, North such things as would have been interesting. Such as an autopsy report, or police reports/notes.

2. The book could have been finished in 250 pages. As it was, this went on for 381, and it was really overwrought with detail.

Brilliant quotes:

(p.128): ".. civilizations move in cycles of growth and decline; there appears to be no sociospiritual progress from civilization to civilization. The human condition must always remain the human condition..... When a civilization reaches a crisis it is because a theological point has been openly disputed; there's always a religious crisis first, followed by an institutional crisis and eventually the internal destruction of the civilization by its own members."

(p.206): "....neurotic states often arise from existential frustration, a conflict of values, or the lack of a sense of meaning, purpose, and freedom in one's life........ One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment."

Other tidbits:

1. The penname of Joyce Smith is Joyce Carol Oates.

2. "The Pawnbroker," 1965 film

Verdict: Recommended 


Vocabulary:

praecox (=early onset)
Letter of transmittal
lambretta (car)

Book Review
"Infidel," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
5/5 stars
"Black people who are inclined to romanticize Africa might rethink that after reading a book like this."


Of the book:

-351 pages over 17 chapters plus an epilogue.
-Just under 20 pages per chapter, enough to read during a lunch break.
-No index
-Does include photos.

*******

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is intelligent and multilingual. (She speaks Dutch, English, Arabic, Somali, and Swahili-- artifacts of living in so many different countries as a refugee.)

She also seems to be very long suffering. (Female circumcision. Constant moving because of refugee status. Constantly tied hands-to-ankles and beaten by her mother.)

The message of this book (p.348) in the author's own words is about islam, and it is that:  "We in the west would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life."

My secondary takeaway message isthat: if you want to dislike a certain type of people, living around them is enough to do just that. In the case of our author, she lived around some very nasty, corrupt and abusive (Arab) people that were Muslim.  

And that was enough to make her get her fill of it/them, and move forward to choose her own path.

As I read this book, I'm reminded of an Arthur Golden quote "Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe."

Our Muslim author is the perceptive and articulate rabbit.

In the first half of the book, what we see here is: a very tribal society that is trying to turn into a nation (like much of sub-Saharan and Horn of Africa at that time which is still a work in progress).

In the second half of the book we see the hapless Europeans turning themselves into Eurabia through a certain type of willful ignorance.

Several interesting things that Ayaan observes in each chapter.

1. (6 pps). We have a very nomadic, tribal and primitive society in the process of trying to become a nation state, albeit imperfectly.

2.(18 pps). The first iteration of Somalia was set up as a Soviet client state. The author has her clitoridectomy and female circumcision (Almost 100% of Somali girls had it, and it predated Islam--people thought that if they didn't have it they would become morally depraved.) The long war between Ethiopia and Somalia was one between ancient enemies, Christians and Muslims, mountain people and nomads.

3. (18 pps). Somali and Saudi Islam are two different things (p.42): The first more relaxed and mixed with ancient beliefs, and the second straight Wahhabi. Arabs don't like blacks anywhere in the world, and Saudi Arabia is no exception. Rabid anti-semitism, as well.

4. (6 pps). The Author lived under three different political systems by the age of 10:  Police state in Mogadishu; Sharia in Saudi Arabia; The clan system of Somalia. 

5. (28 pps) . No Pan-African unity here: Horn of Africa Africans (Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans) think that they are better than the other Africans because of some admixture of Arab blood. Ethiopia has its own calendar that is 7 years and 8 months behind everyone else's. And, also a different time telling system. Tribe (Kenya, etc)≠ tribe (Somalia). Women's shaving of pubic hair (yuck!) is based on some obscene Islamic concept of purity.

6. Somali conversations start with listing one's ancestry (p.99). The female circumcision scar is torn on the wedding night. (It's not pleasant, but there is plenty of blood for proof of virginity!)

7. I know that the Somalians/ Eritreans/ Ethiopians do not like the "blacker" Africans (as we get reminded probably every 10th page in this book). But in reality, they're just as sorry/ inept at statecraft/ cognitively deficient as the rest. Tried and true progression: Independence-->Communism--> governmental breakdown-->Islamism.

8. Author goes and bribes her family out of a refugee camp. Standard fare African corruption:  She moves back and forth between Kenya and Somalia by just paying the border guards bribes.

9. Second marriage; emigration abroad. It seems that Ayaan's first husband went to Russia and found himself a white lady and dropped her. (That thing that they say about black guys and white ladies just may not be a stereotype.)

10. Decision to strike out on her own and asylum in Holland; the author seems genuinely appalled that there is a government somewhere that is not the typical African racketeering-operation-as-government. Buses go where they should (and they don't take the passengers on detours to rob and rape them). Entire neighborhoods are constructed and garbage is collected in an orderly fashion (and not just thrown on top of a rubbish heap). Policemen are actually there to help you (and not extort bribes from you). "We Muslims were always boasting about something or the other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated." (p.195).

11. She had to have a trial by her clansmen, and apparently there was a very well developed algorithm to do just that that was put into practice in Holland. Also: (p.209) "We were Osman Mahamud, not Arabs, and the Osman Mahamud very rarely hit women."

12. Some female circumcisions are a lot worse than others. At least the author got the least bad of them. "Farooni" is practiced on Isaq girls from the north of Somalia. The author describes them (p.223) as... "Not integrating into that society... Not working...... with nothing to do but hang about the Asylum Center and cadge meals... Their reaction was to create a fantasy that they as Somalis knew better about everything than these inferior white people.... The others just chewed qat all night and sat around talking about how horrible Holland was."

13. "For generations, Dutch Catholics and Protestants went to separate schools, hospitals, clubs, shops; they even had separate channels on TV and separate radio stations." ....."The Somali cases were almost always the same, again and again. The husband took all the welfare money, spent it on qat, and when the wife hid the money he would beat her until finally the police intervened."

14. A lot of Dopey White People talk away Islamism by saying that "Muslims preserved Aristotle and invented the number zero." The only one who could see the inanity of this position was our Muslim author. I'm also surprised to find that the Quran was actually written down 150 years AFTER the time of Muhammad. (p.278): "A tiny community of so-called experts on immigration and Europe have been quoting each other for decades, it appeared. All present seemed to think that it would be easy to set up the institutions for a European Islam in peace and harmony."

15. Dutch politics is a story of coalition governments. A lot of times, candidates are vetted internally and sent out when it is known that they can win. Our author was chosen as a result of her work on a think tank. (It is at this point that she ends up under heavy armed security.)

16. The film that got Theo Van Gogh killed was only 10 minutes long. And that only happened after some discussion, because it might have been as short as 5 minutes long.

17. Theo van Gogh may have been suicidal: he was offered protection many times and refused it.

Epilogue: The scandal around Ali's Dutch citizenship actually brought the whole government down. Eventually, she moved to the United States, but she still thinks of herself as a Dutchwoman. (p.348): 6,000 female excisions per day.


Other thoughts:

1. I know a lot of black people in America like to try to romanticize Africa, but after reading a book like this you might give it a second thought.

2. These Somalis were actually *sorrier* than the black people I see every day Stateside. Something like 31% workforce participation for the men, and 18% for the women. (Current statistics.) 

3. When you bring people into your country and put them on welfare, they will turn against you. That is what happened with the Arab riots in France. And it is also what happened there in Holland. (p.225) "I felt embarrassed and even let down by the way so many Somalis accepted welfare money and then turned on the society that gave it to them."

4. I don't know who is stupider. Average IQ in Holland, 100. Average IQ in Somalia, 68. 2.1+ standard deviations lower. But then, Dutchmen bring those guys there and try to teach them how to use indoor toilets/ wear gym shoes/ use bus schedules among other things that would be generally useful for living in the 21st century.

An exercise in futility: the Somalis (and, really, all the rest of the Muslims there) chose to remain fixated in the 7th century.

5. If brains are hardware and ideas are software, then: the country full of people with good hardware and bad software is not much better than one full of people with bad hardware. There was no Islamic fundamentalism in the Netherlands until the Dutch brought it themselves, and ditto for Germany. Pim Fortuyn was actually killed by another Dutchman who thought he was defending the rights of Muslims.

6. It is interesting that in spite of what may be a better society in europe, they don't seem to be able to sustainably reproduce themselves. In which case, there's no point. The Muslims may be fixated in the 7th century, but one thing that they do do is have a lot of babies.

*******

Brilliant quotes

(p.346): "People are always asking me what it's like to live with death threats. It's like being diagnosed with a chronic disease. It may flare up and kill you, but it may not. It could happen in a week, or not for decades. Where I grew up, death is a constant visitor. A virus, a bacteria, a parasite; drought and famine; soldiers coming and torturers; could bring it to anyone, anytime. Death comes riding on raindrops that turns to floods. It catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who ordered their subordinates to hunt, torture, and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. Death comes to young women giving birth to new life, leaving the newborn orphaned in the hands of strangers. For those who live in anarchy and Civil War, as in the country of my birth, Somalia, death is everywhere."

(p.350): "Even today you can take a truck across the border into Somalia and find you have gone back thousands of years in time."

Book Review
Jews Don't Count
David Baddiel
2/5 stars
"Some good thinking/ turns of phrase, but this just doesn't come through for me."
*******

This book only takes a couple of hours to read through, and at 135 pages it is the length of a typical broadside.

There's not a single reference in the whole book.

David Baddiel is apparently someone of some amount of media heft in the United Kingdom (887K Twitter followers). 

For US readers, he might as well be on the moon since we know almost none of the British actors or comedians.

Somehow, this rewrite doesn't come across as appropriate for US readers - - even though I know the author really tried; the references in these Twitter flame wars / popular incidents are a lot of people that I've never heard of. And what are we to say about the political struggles of British MPs? How many Americans even know what an MP is?

******
I happen to be (Orthodox) Jewish in the religious sense, but not the genetic sense.

And black in the "I-don't-have-a-choice" sense.

That said, I'll express my knock-on thoughts about a lot of these questions brought up in the book with..... Other Questions. (So much for *that* stereotype.)

******
QUESTION: In the American context (where there are arguably more Jews even than in Israel), why does nobody say anything about anti-semitism?

Many reasons.

1. Jewish people themselves will not bring  up progressive anti-semitism as an issue because they refuse to see it as such; Here in the U.S., they consistently vote for Democrats in numbers greater than 80%.

The red-green-black axis (Communists/Muslims/ blacks) in the Democratic Party is well attested; The vicious anti-semites Rashida Talib and Ilan Omar are Democrats.

The worst anti-semites in the United States are heavily disproportionately black (Alice Walker and Hebrew Israelites are totally different things except for their Jew hatred), 

If you would vote for people that despise you, how can you expect other people to make a case on your behalf?

Jewish people are wordsmiths, par excellence, but there are very few of them who are willing to use it in service of their own defense.

2. Several phrases that I do read on a regular basis in Jewish publications are: "right wing extremism"/ "Christian nationalism" or any number of other phases that create imaginary enemies on the right. (This, in spite of the fact that Republicans and evangelicals are the most consistent supporters of Israel.) 

Even the largest racial realist / White nationalist publication (Jared Taylor of "American Renaissance"), is married to a Jewish woman.

But, the great majority of Jewish people refuse to find common cause with people that actually DO like them.

So, voting for your enemies and ignoring your friends...... That's probably not the best/most logical strategy.

3. Follow this syllogism:

MAJOR PREMISE--White people are known to like to throw stones at each other. {Examples: Polish and Irish people were the dis-favorite White group maybe 3/4 of a century ago. White people today frequently use the word "White trash" / "trailer trash"/"hicks" against each other--and are just as likely as anyone else to be flapping on about "white male power structure"/"white privilege" blah blah blah as any non-white person.}

MINOR PREMISE--Jewish people are White people. {Examples:For purposes of conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Whites are preferred candidates. "Gendered racial exclusion among White internet daters": For dating sites, Jewish ethnicity is a 100% predictor of excluding black/non white partners as dates; Rabbi Avigdor Miller, Tape #844: "After all, the Jews are a white people, you have to know. The Ethiopians are a black people. And, therefore, they're nothing but a group of Gentiles who adopted some our ways. They have no connection to us at all; not the slightest." }

CONCLUSION-- If white people are throwing stones at Jewish people, then they are doing it in the same way that they would to any other subset of white people.

*******
QUESTION: Could it be that there is no issue here?

1. Ari Nagel, the famous Jewish mathematician in the United States has fathered at least 120 children (and there are probably 20 women pregnant with his child at any given moment). The reason that he can do this is because of the premium value of Jewish DNA. (I've never heard of any black man doing this.)

2. The price for Jewish egg donors is almost 10 times higher then it is for blacks and twice as high as it is for any other white people.

3. Everybody and his brother thinks that he is a Lost Tribe. (Meanwhile, black people trying to pass as white is an entire literary / cinematic genre. "Devil in a Blue Dress." Nella Larsen's "Passing." James Weldon Johnson's "Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man.")

4. 70% of Jews in the United States marry people who are not Jewish, and I've never one time heard someone say that they could not accept a Jewish partner for religious reasons. (The Jewish ladies are attractive and disproportionate numbers; no man who could land one would be kicking her out of bed for any reason.)
*******
QUESTION: Could the author be conflating two things?

1. European anti-Semitism is something that has been there for probably 20 centuries. Don't expect it to disappear all in one generation. (And it is true that part of Europe's proud sense of history/culture is bearing national grudges for centuries on end.) It's not the same thing as anti-Semitism in America - - such as it is - - because we just don't carry on like Old World Europe.

2. Racism against Jewish people has never been the same as, say, against black people.  In the former case, it is fear of because of some presumed omniscient power. In the latter case it is because of contempt / pity because of powerlessness in general ineptitude. (People run away from neighborhoods very quickly when black people move there, and the presence of blacks in institutions is a tried-and-true way to turn them into a laughingstock. Not so for the presence of Jewish people: I don't expect that there will be a black chairman of the Federal reserve in my lifetime, but the last three or four have all been Jews. As well as the Secretary of the Treasury. It doesn't even need discussing the gravity of managing the money supply.)

*******
QUESTION: Could it be that anti-Semitism is a lot of guilt by association?

1. Merchants are distinctly unpopular people. (Chinese have been unpopular in Indonesia and Malaysia for a long time; Indians have been unpopular in East Africa for a long time.)  And a lot of Jews are merchants.

2. Providers of financial services have been unpopular for a long time. (Interest is flatly forbidden to be charged in the Islamic world. After the GFC of 2008, there was lots of popular rage against bankers and "fat cats.") And a lot of Jews are in the financial industry.

3. In the European context, the stupid, smug self-important Old World Europeans are in the process of destroying themselves by inviting the instruments of their own destruction (i.e., Muslims) into the (EU) region by immigration policy so stupid that it can only make sense to some type of academic.  

In that case, Jewish people happen to be there, but it's just coincidence. And it could be different, because the state of Israel is open to all Jews. Jews are 8 million strong in the United States, and there are ways to get there--especially if you are from an EU country.

No reason you could not move either of those places and let the Arabs and Europeans (who so richly deserve each other) have at each other.

4. Slumlords are also very unpopular. And a lot of Jews are slumlords.


*******
I wonder what does this author really want?

Does he want Jewish people to have a seat at the identity politics table in the United states? Why go out actively seeking banality? Isn't life short enough?

If you go through a lot of trouble over some number of decades to prove that you are Mighty White like everybody else, why are you surprised when this happens? (See earlier syllogism.)
*****

Verdict: I would pay no more than $5 for this book if I had to buy it again

Vocabulary:

Law of Schrodinger's Whites (p.52)
Godwin's Law

Book Review
"Latino Muslims: Our Journey to Islam"
2/5 stars
Book fails to live up to its potential; changing religions to be free of an unwanted self is the norm.
*****
This is not the book that it could have been, and was emphatically NOT worth the $25.91 that I paid -- not sure why all copies of this book are so expensive.

On the one hand, one can write a book about a single person's journey and give way too much detail; on the other, one can write a book like this that has 51 different stories (of ≈3 pages each) that are each desultory and not really that informative.

The best way to write this book probably would have been to strike a balance: choose  6-12 representative/instructive stories and devote 15-20 pages to each one.

Maybe the book could have been bookended with some statistics on Latino Muslims. (What percent male? What percent female? Average age? One country of origin more frequent than others? What percentage of prison converts? What was the most common reason for converting? What percentage of them are married to Arabs or Persians? Are there any Shias in the house?)

Also: Why not a single picture of any of the subjects?
******

Really, there's less here than meets the eye: there are lots of Hispanics in the United States, and they are remarkably keen on assimilation. Of course, just using statistical arguments - - some number then would be Muslim.

Also, many (most?) people that convert to Islam find it in prison--hence the portmanteau "Prislam."

Given the large number of Latinos in prison, is it any surprise that some of them would come out Muslim?

I see a number of general themes here:

1. It seems like every last person here had to re-envision what they thought Jesus was in Islam. (That comes up in almost every story).

2. Most of these guys are not Islamically well educated. (Believe it or not: for all of the sound and fury, neither are most Arabs nor Persians.) 

a. The Shadahah is something that it doesn't require a great deal to take. Just a witness or to (or not) and NO type of coursework or reading before this declaration of faith. (Even the Catholics have a little bit of catechism before they baptize people.)

For example: One subject in here made the declaration right after he had got finished smoking weed and drinking after a night out and walked into a mosque and decided to convert.

b. Subjects here keep talking about trying to make the materials available in Spanish instead of learning to read the Quran in Arabic.

3. This version of Islam is not like the Black version: some of these guys found out about Islam in prison, but the great majority did not. (It's a running joke that these black guys have to go to jail to find out that drugs and fathering children by everybody on the block is not the best idea. Nobody ever thought of that when they were free men on the outside.)

A lot of these people did have legal/social problems.

It's also not like the strict Middle Eastern version: it's enough for these reverts to still eat at their parents' house as long as they don't serve them any pork-- Never mind that the non-pork meat was haram, and was cooked on the same equipment that was used to cook pork.

4. Everyone wants to point out that Spanish has a significant influx of Arabic words from the Iberian conquest. (Not sure why; I don't want to reclaim lost French heritage because of old Norman French's influence on English)

OR Everyone wants to claim some distant Arab blood from the Muslim conquest of Spain (almost 40 generations ago),

5. Some people are involved in Chicano/Other Social Justice l movements in these stories, and most of them trade one religion for another.  More stories than I wanted to count about people passing through four or five religions before settling on Islam.

6. It seems like a disproportionate number of these people are Dominican (these are black Hispanic people who don't particularly like being seen as black), and becoming Muslim seems suspiciously like a way to be rid of an unwanted (black!) self.

7. Lots of lapsed/orthopractic Catholics here. Also lots of lapsed Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses. Lots of people from huge families where they got lost in the shuffle--as you can do when you have 10 brothers and sisters.

8. One thing that is VERY Latin American about all these stories is the filthy excess of emotion..... It seems like tears are just streaming down faces every third page at reading a *single* line of Quran.

9. Lots of mixed marriages in here, where the Muslim partner eventually turned out the non-Muslim partner. (There's no problem to contract a marriage with either Jews or Christians in the Islamic conceptual space.)

10. Everybody here has drunk the "reversion" Kool-Aid: apparently all people are Muslims and when they change from one religion to another, they are just "reverting" back to what they have always been. Moses the prophet was a Muslim something like 2,100 years before Muhammad was even born.

******

I have some questions about the accuracy of this book. 

1. 8% of the words in Spanish are of Arabic origin, not 25% like they repeat in this book. 

2. Page 111,  Story # 24, they interviewed a man named Julio Pino.

I happen to have met this guy personally (because Kent State University is my alma mater), and it wasn't quite the way portrayed in this book:  

First is that not only was Pino NOT an agnostic, he was the faculty advisor for the Campus Atheists Student Group. I remember very clearly that he said at a debate that the "number one reason [he] was an atheist to that day was because you cannot rely on the accuracy of historical witnesses." (Of course, he went through two or three other religions I guess before he decided on Islam.)

Second is that he went to prison for lying to the FBI and even the Washington Post couldn't find a way to talk it away. (I guess if you go on record a few times too many shouting "Death to Israel" or making Elders-of-Zion type statements, it will get you on somebody's radar.)

Third is that: the number of the things that Pino said /taught were just false. (p.114): "Islam is the most democratic and egalitarian of all the world's religions because it recognized no distinction based on race, social class, nationality or gender." Sorry, but Arabs don't like black people and the mosques of blacks and Arabs (and for that matter Indo-Pakistanis) in the Detroit area are very separate things, and you will NEVER see a black guy with an Arab woman on his arm. Nor will you ever see black people employed in any of these Arab restaurants.

Egalitarian? Has he paid any attention to the economic conditions of many of the Gulf States?

3. If you did not know that Muslims are dozens of times over represented in US terrorist attacks, you would not find it from this book.
*******

What moved me to buy this book is that: I happen to live near Dearborn Michigan, and that place is crawling with Arab-Muslims.

I think it's the highest fraction of that pestilence of any city in the United States.

I've read a number of books on Islam, and every time I chat with one of these Arabs and ask them even things that are so basic that everybody should know (that I have read from these books), it seems like nobody knows.

I thought that maybe I would get a portrait of some more knowledgeable, thoughtful and introspective people in this book.

I only got a very little bit of what I came for.

Verdict: recommended only at the price of $5.

New concepts:

Five Percenters
Nuwaubian Nation
Zulu Nation