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lpm100's reviews
711 reviews
Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney
funny
fast-paced
3.0
Book Review
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (The Third Wheel)
3/5 stars
A parent's review
*******
The last of these books that I read was "Diper Överlöde," and I'd have to say it was better than this one.
There was nothing bad, or not kosher in this book.
But, it is what a lot of these Jeff Kinney books are which is: a series of mishaps that happened to the unluckiest kid in the world.
Something like this would probably be very funny to kids.
But, for parents who are pre-reading the book to make sure there is nothing "unkosher," it makes the book somewhat of a slog.
Diper Överlöde had an underlying message (about the music business or the difficulty of making a living therein), and that made the book more bearable for parents to read even if younger kids might have missed the message / the allusions.
Verdict: It's okay for the kids to read.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (The Third Wheel)
3/5 stars
A parent's review
*******
The last of these books that I read was "Diper Överlöde," and I'd have to say it was better than this one.
There was nothing bad, or not kosher in this book.
But, it is what a lot of these Jeff Kinney books are which is: a series of mishaps that happened to the unluckiest kid in the world.
Something like this would probably be very funny to kids.
But, for parents who are pre-reading the book to make sure there is nothing "unkosher," it makes the book somewhat of a slog.
Diper Överlöde had an underlying message (about the music business or the difficulty of making a living therein), and that made the book more bearable for parents to read even if younger kids might have missed the message / the allusions.
Verdict: It's okay for the kids to read.
American Marxism by Mark R. Levin
slow-paced
2.0
Book Review
2/5 stars
American Marxism
Mass psychosis is not new and "No, history never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. "
Of the book:
279 pages of prose over 7 chapters.
40 pages per chapter
The reading would be easy, but the content is so distressing/banal (page after page of stupid people involved in frivolity), that I almost don't want to pick it up to resume reading after putting it down.
This book popped up because I needed something short enough to complete after a very long book.
Frankly, I would not have purchased this book again and the reasons are that:
Primo: Even though it's only 280 pages, it reads like it's 560 (and if therefore defeats my purpose of having a short palate cleanser);
Secundo: Even though the events it describes are absolutely appalling, they're really not that unpredictable, nor unknown.
1. All empires have some type of natural lifetime, and even though the Roman Empire was once at the height of its power.....Through the sheer power of entropy: it is with us no longer.
And the Moguls. And The Ottomans. And the Habsburgs.
Eventually, in the process of a government's making some number of decisions..... statistically some of them will be wrong: en toto, those wrong decisions culminate in a fatal collapse.
How many times has China collapsed?
How many times has Israel been conquered/collapsed?
The US is not a unique case in this regard.
So, it will not pass defamation laws. Nor eliminate the tenure system.
And, they will reap the benefits of these stupid decisions / lack of decisions.
2. When human beings get too comfortable, they become fat and sleek (both individually, and as entire generations of people).
Ditto for businesses
Ditto for nations.
So, if a nation that becomes Number 1.... Then that's how you know that its days are numbered. Winners don't stay winners and losers don't stay losers.
The United States is currently Number 1, and that's the perfect position to be in to perish of frivolity (as opposed to if you were Number 2 and striving to be Number 1).
3. When you have a snowflake cause an avalanche, I don't think it is to say that: if you were able to find that one single causative snowflake, you would have been able to avoid the avalanche.
The point is the initial state of the system.
And so, Marx is a red herring.
It is more like: the initial state is a society that's too comfortable and with more income (to finance idiot academics) than they have brains.
Yes, you might be able to point back to Four Stupid Women in Congress...... But, they are the symptom of a problem and not the problem itself.
And if someone did us the favor of assassinating all four of them tomorrow (tee hee hee!), then there would just be another four to replace them--because the current state of the country is such that those type of people can be produced and have audiences.
4. I don't think it much matters if you have one set of people making the decisions (corrupt and venal Democrats) as opposed to another set (hapless, bumbling Republicans).
The Vietnam War was a very damaging rallying point for Kooky White People and left-wing radicals--through BOTH liberal and conservative administrations. There might not have been a continuing public reaction that is led to the State of affairs today had there not been a Vietnam War.
5. The Western World Is Not The World. The Western trend has been moving away from traditional religion and community to a Secular Humanism (which has morphed into Marxism-plated "social justice" movements).
Predictably enough, a lot of other destructive mass movements have arisen to take their place. (I don't know how anybody could see the first two World Wars as anything but that.)
The family unit has been undermined, and people are not reproducing at population sustaining levels ALL across Europe, Asia, and North America.
The Middle East/Africa are just as religious as they have been (and in some cases they have gone even further in that direction--Wahhabism in Saudi/Pakistan) and nobody has said that they are not able to sustain their population levels or that they have moved from their own religious movements into Western-style type Secular Humanism.
But then, in spite of not having Western type of stupidity, the Middle East and Africa are constantly having other issues of their own making. (When are they NOT fighting and killing each other?)
Is Western stupidity enough to explain Western descent? Or would it just be something else?
In this case, if the Marxists/Social Democrats / Social Justice Warriors have the allegiance of Men of Words (and they do!), and they are able to take the country into some mass psychosis (and they will!)...... Then it will just be what it is, and there will be some amount of misery/collapsed governments / chaos over some amount of time, and then things will get back to normal.
And posterity will do it ALL OVER again--as if their ancestors had never been.
Such with the French Revolution.
And the Reign of Terror.
And the Great Leap Forward.
And the Cultural Revolution.
And Hugo Chavez.
And Robert Mugabe.
6. Hoffer already wrote "The True Believer," and that is a lot of the intellectual scaffolding of this book-and that makes the specific events in this book just so much stamp collecting.
7. If people want to lose a country to frivolity, is this the first time?
And what can we do about it?
Do participants in this idiocy get what they deserve? (32 million people starved to death in the Great leap Forward in China because the government thought that they could set rice growing conditions from Beijing. It was a pretty expensive lesson, but eventually they did get disabused of their belief.)
8. Free speech is not free. The experiment is being tried in the United States, and it's not working out too well.
So, you have some state that was an experiment and it failed.
So now what? This is far from the first example of a failed state.
9. Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance" is not new.
Chapter Synopses:
1. Description of the scope of the problem and the author's intentions to raise people's consciousness in order to create a reaction.
2. The destructive tenure system that no one has reined is slowly creating an army of grievance warriors. Brief synopsis of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Hoffer. Cloward-Piven Strategy.
3. Education is in indoctrination tool, and it filters from universities to teachers that are licensed by them, who in turn infect K-12. Repurposed Marxism has eschatological elements.
4. US Academia is the number one culprit in this destructive tide. The New York Times and "The 1619 Project"- which, coincidentally, has NO footnotes (kinda like the Christian Bible!). Equity≠Equality because the first is equality of results and the second is equality of opportunities. Mexican/south American infestation of the United States is really internal migration, and white people are the real occupiers because the former have a greater claim to the land than the latter. (By the way, universitys that teach this are all financed, built, and controlled by white people.)
5. Capitalism=Freedom of Choice;
Freedom of Choice=Bad;
THEREFORE, Capitalism=Bad.
Environmentalism/Degrowth is warmed-over Marxism. Intro to Serge Latouche. "Intersectionality is the combination of disparate causes and alleged victimizations under yet another radical / anti-capitalist umbrella United in their hatred for American society." (p.160)
6. Fake news (like we didn't know this?). "The modern press is actually a highly negative force in our society" (p.196- Again... we didn't know this?)
7. Recapitulation. What can we do to save this sinking ship? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Use the same Alinskyite tactics that the Marxists use. Legal form shopping. BDS. Pick the topic, personalize it, freeze it, polarize it. If you can avoid purchasing from big corrupt corporations (I'm looking at you, Amazon), then you should avoid it.
Second order thoughts:
1. Maybe the best way to save the United States is for China/Iran to drop several nuclear bombs on California/ New York/ Seattle. In addition to killing off a pretty high fraction of useless people, it might give the country some focus.
The second best way would be to just get some estimate of how many Destructive Intellectuals (Kimberly Crenshaw / Noam Chomsky, et. al.) there are in the country, and just sue/detain/execute a good enough fraction to make an example to the rest.
Lawsuits are the way that the fabulously wealthy Singapore manages to keep its destructive intellectuals in check; The First Chinese Emperor just executed all of his intellectuals at once and the Chinese Empire is still here, still trudging along, and bigger than it ever has been.
2. I wonder what does this mean to Black people? All of this talk about some mythical "people of color" aside: it doesn't help you snag any of these other non-white ladies. And decreasing order of difficulty: Arab>>Asian>Spanish. If you are interested in non-black women (and most black guys are, no matter how grudgingly they admit it), white ladies are probably still your best choice. (And if you are good enough, you might even be able to get better than a Remnant Baby Elephant.).
3. When you have a government that is totalitarian, people slowly find ways to work around it. (The Chinese are, again, an excellent example of people who are prodigiously talented at circumventing the government. For several thousand years.)
4. Some things are factually wrong here. No, Chinese workers are not bound to a job and they don't have to worship Xi Jinping. (p.68).
5. Again, some society somewhere does not learn something or they forget what they have learned. So what?
In Iran, theocracy was the Big Thing, and it appears to have run its course.
Communism / Bolshevism were the Big Thing in the Soviet Union, and eventually they ran their course. (Everywhere, really, except US academia.)
6. I wonder how much these (Marxist, academic) fools really want to get their wish? If the state withers away, then there is no mechanism to finance academia.
Do I really need to tell you that without these glorified government jobs, professors of environmental justice would be working at Little Caesar's or mowing lawns for a living.
7. Why don't these miserable degrowth types just move to certain parts of Africa?
They've got ALL the good stuff there: Low growth. Unstable governments (it's pretty helpful when you want the state to wither away, à la Karl Marx). Primitive healthcare. Pit latrines. Subsistence agriculture /plenty of contact with "nature." Non-white/black people everywhere! And if you don't want to live around black people, you could just move to much of Latin America. Say, Venezuela. And if that's too much, then you could just move to Cambodia.
8. Might be infection be self-limiting? Universities are closing down all over the place in the United States because people are slowly becoming aware that they have been sold a fake bill of goods.
Verdict: Very weak recommendation.
New Vocabulary:
Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Recommended instead:
1. Hoffer, "The True Believer"
2. Tainter, "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations"
3. Sowell, "The Quest For Cosmic Justice"
2/5 stars
American Marxism
Mass psychosis is not new and "No, history never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. "
Of the book:
279 pages of prose over 7 chapters.
40 pages per chapter
The reading would be easy, but the content is so distressing/banal (page after page of stupid people involved in frivolity), that I almost don't want to pick it up to resume reading after putting it down.
This book popped up because I needed something short enough to complete after a very long book.
Frankly, I would not have purchased this book again and the reasons are that:
Primo: Even though it's only 280 pages, it reads like it's 560 (and if therefore defeats my purpose of having a short palate cleanser);
Secundo: Even though the events it describes are absolutely appalling, they're really not that unpredictable, nor unknown.
1. All empires have some type of natural lifetime, and even though the Roman Empire was once at the height of its power.....Through the sheer power of entropy: it is with us no longer.
And the Moguls. And The Ottomans. And the Habsburgs.
Eventually, in the process of a government's making some number of decisions..... statistically some of them will be wrong: en toto, those wrong decisions culminate in a fatal collapse.
How many times has China collapsed?
How many times has Israel been conquered/collapsed?
The US is not a unique case in this regard.
So, it will not pass defamation laws. Nor eliminate the tenure system.
And, they will reap the benefits of these stupid decisions / lack of decisions.
2. When human beings get too comfortable, they become fat and sleek (both individually, and as entire generations of people).
Ditto for businesses
Ditto for nations.
So, if a nation that becomes Number 1.... Then that's how you know that its days are numbered. Winners don't stay winners and losers don't stay losers.
The United States is currently Number 1, and that's the perfect position to be in to perish of frivolity (as opposed to if you were Number 2 and striving to be Number 1).
3. When you have a snowflake cause an avalanche, I don't think it is to say that: if you were able to find that one single causative snowflake, you would have been able to avoid the avalanche.
The point is the initial state of the system.
And so, Marx is a red herring.
It is more like: the initial state is a society that's too comfortable and with more income (to finance idiot academics) than they have brains.
Yes, you might be able to point back to Four Stupid Women in Congress...... But, they are the symptom of a problem and not the problem itself.
And if someone did us the favor of assassinating all four of them tomorrow (tee hee hee!), then there would just be another four to replace them--because the current state of the country is such that those type of people can be produced and have audiences.
4. I don't think it much matters if you have one set of people making the decisions (corrupt and venal Democrats) as opposed to another set (hapless, bumbling Republicans).
The Vietnam War was a very damaging rallying point for Kooky White People and left-wing radicals--through BOTH liberal and conservative administrations. There might not have been a continuing public reaction that is led to the State of affairs today had there not been a Vietnam War.
5. The Western World Is Not The World. The Western trend has been moving away from traditional religion and community to a Secular Humanism (which has morphed into Marxism-plated "social justice" movements).
Predictably enough, a lot of other destructive mass movements have arisen to take their place. (I don't know how anybody could see the first two World Wars as anything but that.)
The family unit has been undermined, and people are not reproducing at population sustaining levels ALL across Europe, Asia, and North America.
The Middle East/Africa are just as religious as they have been (and in some cases they have gone even further in that direction--Wahhabism in Saudi/Pakistan) and nobody has said that they are not able to sustain their population levels or that they have moved from their own religious movements into Western-style type Secular Humanism.
But then, in spite of not having Western type of stupidity, the Middle East and Africa are constantly having other issues of their own making. (When are they NOT fighting and killing each other?)
Is Western stupidity enough to explain Western descent? Or would it just be something else?
In this case, if the Marxists/Social Democrats / Social Justice Warriors have the allegiance of Men of Words (and they do!), and they are able to take the country into some mass psychosis (and they will!)...... Then it will just be what it is, and there will be some amount of misery/collapsed governments / chaos over some amount of time, and then things will get back to normal.
And posterity will do it ALL OVER again--as if their ancestors had never been.
Such with the French Revolution.
And the Reign of Terror.
And the Great Leap Forward.
And the Cultural Revolution.
And Hugo Chavez.
And Robert Mugabe.
6. Hoffer already wrote "The True Believer," and that is a lot of the intellectual scaffolding of this book-and that makes the specific events in this book just so much stamp collecting.
7. If people want to lose a country to frivolity, is this the first time?
And what can we do about it?
Do participants in this idiocy get what they deserve? (32 million people starved to death in the Great leap Forward in China because the government thought that they could set rice growing conditions from Beijing. It was a pretty expensive lesson, but eventually they did get disabused of their belief.)
8. Free speech is not free. The experiment is being tried in the United States, and it's not working out too well.
So, you have some state that was an experiment and it failed.
So now what? This is far from the first example of a failed state.
9. Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance" is not new.
Chapter Synopses:
1. Description of the scope of the problem and the author's intentions to raise people's consciousness in order to create a reaction.
2. The destructive tenure system that no one has reined is slowly creating an army of grievance warriors. Brief synopsis of Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Hoffer. Cloward-Piven Strategy.
3. Education is in indoctrination tool, and it filters from universities to teachers that are licensed by them, who in turn infect K-12. Repurposed Marxism has eschatological elements.
4. US Academia is the number one culprit in this destructive tide. The New York Times and "The 1619 Project"- which, coincidentally, has NO footnotes (kinda like the Christian Bible!). Equity≠Equality because the first is equality of results and the second is equality of opportunities. Mexican/south American infestation of the United States is really internal migration, and white people are the real occupiers because the former have a greater claim to the land than the latter. (By the way, universitys that teach this are all financed, built, and controlled by white people.)
5. Capitalism=Freedom of Choice;
Freedom of Choice=Bad;
THEREFORE, Capitalism=Bad.
Environmentalism/Degrowth is warmed-over Marxism. Intro to Serge Latouche. "Intersectionality is the combination of disparate causes and alleged victimizations under yet another radical / anti-capitalist umbrella United in their hatred for American society." (p.160)
6. Fake news (like we didn't know this?). "The modern press is actually a highly negative force in our society" (p.196- Again... we didn't know this?)
7. Recapitulation. What can we do to save this sinking ship? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Use the same Alinskyite tactics that the Marxists use. Legal form shopping. BDS. Pick the topic, personalize it, freeze it, polarize it. If you can avoid purchasing from big corrupt corporations (I'm looking at you, Amazon), then you should avoid it.
Second order thoughts:
1. Maybe the best way to save the United States is for China/Iran to drop several nuclear bombs on California/ New York/ Seattle. In addition to killing off a pretty high fraction of useless people, it might give the country some focus.
The second best way would be to just get some estimate of how many Destructive Intellectuals (Kimberly Crenshaw / Noam Chomsky, et. al.) there are in the country, and just sue/detain/execute a good enough fraction to make an example to the rest.
Lawsuits are the way that the fabulously wealthy Singapore manages to keep its destructive intellectuals in check; The First Chinese Emperor just executed all of his intellectuals at once and the Chinese Empire is still here, still trudging along, and bigger than it ever has been.
2. I wonder what does this mean to Black people? All of this talk about some mythical "people of color" aside: it doesn't help you snag any of these other non-white ladies. And decreasing order of difficulty: Arab>>Asian>Spanish. If you are interested in non-black women (and most black guys are, no matter how grudgingly they admit it), white ladies are probably still your best choice. (And if you are good enough, you might even be able to get better than a Remnant Baby Elephant.).
3. When you have a government that is totalitarian, people slowly find ways to work around it. (The Chinese are, again, an excellent example of people who are prodigiously talented at circumventing the government. For several thousand years.)
4. Some things are factually wrong here. No, Chinese workers are not bound to a job and they don't have to worship Xi Jinping. (p.68).
5. Again, some society somewhere does not learn something or they forget what they have learned. So what?
In Iran, theocracy was the Big Thing, and it appears to have run its course.
Communism / Bolshevism were the Big Thing in the Soviet Union, and eventually they ran their course. (Everywhere, really, except US academia.)
6. I wonder how much these (Marxist, academic) fools really want to get their wish? If the state withers away, then there is no mechanism to finance academia.
Do I really need to tell you that without these glorified government jobs, professors of environmental justice would be working at Little Caesar's or mowing lawns for a living.
7. Why don't these miserable degrowth types just move to certain parts of Africa?
They've got ALL the good stuff there: Low growth. Unstable governments (it's pretty helpful when you want the state to wither away, à la Karl Marx). Primitive healthcare. Pit latrines. Subsistence agriculture /plenty of contact with "nature." Non-white/black people everywhere! And if you don't want to live around black people, you could just move to much of Latin America. Say, Venezuela. And if that's too much, then you could just move to Cambodia.
8. Might be infection be self-limiting? Universities are closing down all over the place in the United States because people are slowly becoming aware that they have been sold a fake bill of goods.
Verdict: Very weak recommendation.
New Vocabulary:
Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Recommended instead:
1. Hoffer, "The True Believer"
2. Tainter, "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations"
3. Sowell, "The Quest For Cosmic Justice"
Dune by Frank Herbert
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.0
Book Review
Dune
2/5 stars
"Overrated: The only thing that's worse than a story that's too long is one with a backstory that's also too long."
*******
I'd be interested to know whether or not this book sold so many copies before or after the screenplay.
Apparently, it is 215,000 words long give or take (p.871) and the writing involved studying notes over a four-year period prepared between 1957-61. The book was written and rewritten between 1961- 65 (p.880)
It appears to have sold just as many copies as "50 Shades of Gray" (trash, and that demonstrates that you don't have to write anything particularly profound to sell a lot of books or get a movie made) or even the highest-selling of the Harry Potter books.
The book was a bit too long. I don't think that it took more than 400 pages to say what it took every bit of 884 pages-- including three (!) appendices--and an afterword-- to say.
∆∆∆Maybe the author knew what he was doing (as evidenced by the book sales and two movies being made about this), but my problems are that:
1. There is a glossary with a substantial number of words, and one has to keep flipping back and forth and it interrupts the reading action. What would have been the problem with providing the words as embedded notes AND doing a glossary?
Or even just using fewer of these made up words and sticking with plain English.
2. I guess the point of this plot is to tell us that it is a time when the world has amalgamated into Some Big Thing (for example, p.64, Muslim quotes of the Kalima within an Orange Catholic Bible) where they have words from lots of different languages that are in common use--with a substantial amount of Arabic.
But, only a very educated person would know the origin of many of the words. (Why not put the word origin within the glossary?)
In the afterward, we are meant to understand that there are elements of Sufi mysticism as well as Buddhism.
Who can be expected to know all that and catch all of those allusions?
Another example is the author writes that (p. 478) "A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened."
How many people know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? 1-2/100?
3. This book is just WAY. TOO. BUSY.
a. It has THREE (!) appendices: 1. The Ecology of Dune; 2. The Religion of Dune; 3. Report on Bene Gesserit motives and purposes. (I think I read the first in the afterword and left the other two behind. Ain't nobody got time for that.)
b. An Afterword that explains certain sections of the book and the perspective of the author. It's written by his son, but it really probably would have been a more helpful foreword/ prologue to the book so that the reader wasn't desperately fumbling to put together the plot details.
All of this extra spinach adds another 90 pages on to the book for a total of 884 pages.
4. Another problem with making up a bunch of new words is that sometimes some of them are NOT actually ones that were made up, but ones you need to investigate (Coriolis force/rapier/bodkin) instead of filing it off somewhere and hoping it will explain itself later in the convoluted plot.
5. Chapters are sequential, but with no numbering/titles. Nor index.
6. A picture would be worth a thousand words. Who is related to whom? What is the rank of this Duke with respect to others? Do these ranks directly parallel the five levels of peerage in the English system? (duke/duchess> marquess/marchioness> earl/countess >viscount/viscountess> baron/baroness.)
7. The book requires putting together too much scattered information ("oh, I remember X from 125 pages ago that explains Y). The preamble at the beginning of each chapter is a bit of foreshadowing that may be resolved several hundred pages later.
Also, it is necessary to consult outside sources / internet sites to explain (for example) why did the house of Arrakis have to leave Caldan?
8. A lot of the biology of this book does not go together. They have a sparsely populated planet with no water, but they have scavenging birds? Do the birds wear water recovery suits?
If the planet is so dry, that nothing can live on it...... Then from what did these gigantic worms (mouths with 80 m wide) evolve, and what was the selective process?
9. Whither the obsession with the Middle East?
-The exotic vocabulary in this book is mostly Arabic (jihad/dar al-Hikma, etc)
-Much of the action takes place on a desert planet.
-With warlike and tribal people that are bound by all manner of tribal codes.
-With everyone wearing burnooses
-in the afterward, Frank Herbert's son says that this was meant to parallel Lawrence of Arabia. (A foreigner comes and unites a bunch of warring Arab-like tribes.)
∆∆∆There are lots of strange resonances in this book to current/historical times:
1. Some °°universal°° religion that is associated with a °°particular°° people. Islam is supposed to be universal, but the language of God is Arabic. And Arabs are native speakers and a source of authority. Bene Gesserit is a priestly class of people that seem to be related to each other.
2. A messiah will come from some place, and they will be from this race of people. Paul will be the Savior for the Fremen/Kwisatz Haderach, and he is the son of a Bene Gesserit. The Messiah will come for the Jewish world, and he must be from the house of David. Muhammad was the first prophet, and he was from a particular Arab tribe.
Also, קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ, is a fairly obscure Jewish term that I found that most people even in an Orthodox synagogue did not know.
3. All these religions freely borrow from each other. In this dystopian novel, it seems like Buddhism / Islam / Christianity have amalgamated into something different. (They may have even taken elements from Buddhism or Hinduism, but I don't know very much about them and could not recognize the allusions.) In current times, Judaism is a source religion (that borrowed some number of their ideas from neighboring tribes that did not survive). Christianity takes selected bits of Judaism and the concept of sacrifice and creates something new. The Muslims do cut and paste from the first two and create something still different.
So that's how we get to Sunni ancestors fleeting from Nilotic-Ourouba (p.568).
4. Some governance system is backed by a series of corrupt feudal lords that have incessantly shifting alliances. (The Japanese emperor was theoretically the head of Japan, but he required the allegiance of fairly independent) daimyos.
5. (p. 182) "The imperial Court is, indeed, a long way off." Chinese proverb: "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." （“山高皇帝遠”）
6. Bene Gesserit= Jews (self interested/ invisible/destructive/purveyors of self-serving but influential ideas that they themselves don't believe). (p. 811), Fourteen Sages ≈ 12 caliphs of the Shia Twelvers. Or the 4 Rightly Guided Caliphs/ "Rashidun" of the Sunni.
7. Some dynasties that are at war with each other, but also related to each other and actually trade people among themselves. (The British royal family is actually German-- Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Alex Feodoranova of Russia started out as Alix Hesse [of later Germany].) The Atreides against The Harkonens.
8. Gladiator killing for sport, like in the corrupt Roman Empire (p.521).
9. Desert dwellers killing each other / not being afraid to die, and wives being immediately remarried to the survivors. Launching "jihad" (p. 562). Just like historical Arabs!
∆∆∆It seems like the events in this book were foundational for several books that were written later:
1. Some future dystopian planet where everyone is drug addicted, and corrupt overlords control the people by control of this drug. (Nancy Farmer. "The House of the Scorpion.) In "Dune," everyone is addicted to spice.
2. Dynasties that live in outer space are fighting each other, and they find out that they are related to each other. Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. Baron Harkonen was the father of Bene Gesserit Jessica.
3. The grouching about planets managed under evil corporations was redone later in the movie "Total Recall." (That phrase actually shows up in this book.) Also, Arrakis could have been turned into a planet fit for easy human habitation, but evil supraplanetary corporations wouldn't allow it. The same way they would not start the reactor to turn Mars into an oxygenated planet in "Total Recall."
4. The theme about Scary Underground Worms was repurposed into the movie "Tremors," starring Kevin Bacon.
5. Burnooses all over the place! It seems like this has been a theme in so many movies that I've lost count. (These types of clothing are Arab; why they hold so much sway over the Western imagination, I have no idea.)
Verdict: NOT recommended. Watch the movie instead. (For the record, I don't plan to even do that much. Because this book has already taken up way too much of my reading time. And I can't get any of it back.)
One good quote (p.651): "you cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the Orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the Orthodox ethic.
Dune
2/5 stars
"Overrated: The only thing that's worse than a story that's too long is one with a backstory that's also too long."
*******
I'd be interested to know whether or not this book sold so many copies before or after the screenplay.
Apparently, it is 215,000 words long give or take (p.871) and the writing involved studying notes over a four-year period prepared between 1957-61. The book was written and rewritten between 1961- 65 (p.880)
It appears to have sold just as many copies as "50 Shades of Gray" (trash, and that demonstrates that you don't have to write anything particularly profound to sell a lot of books or get a movie made) or even the highest-selling of the Harry Potter books.
The book was a bit too long. I don't think that it took more than 400 pages to say what it took every bit of 884 pages-- including three (!) appendices--and an afterword-- to say.
∆∆∆Maybe the author knew what he was doing (as evidenced by the book sales and two movies being made about this), but my problems are that:
1. There is a glossary with a substantial number of words, and one has to keep flipping back and forth and it interrupts the reading action. What would have been the problem with providing the words as embedded notes AND doing a glossary?
Or even just using fewer of these made up words and sticking with plain English.
2. I guess the point of this plot is to tell us that it is a time when the world has amalgamated into Some Big Thing (for example, p.64, Muslim quotes of the Kalima within an Orange Catholic Bible) where they have words from lots of different languages that are in common use--with a substantial amount of Arabic.
But, only a very educated person would know the origin of many of the words. (Why not put the word origin within the glossary?)
In the afterward, we are meant to understand that there are elements of Sufi mysticism as well as Buddhism.
Who can be expected to know all that and catch all of those allusions?
Another example is the author writes that (p. 478) "A kind of Heisenberg indeterminacy intervened."
How many people know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? 1-2/100?
3. This book is just WAY. TOO. BUSY.
a. It has THREE (!) appendices: 1. The Ecology of Dune; 2. The Religion of Dune; 3. Report on Bene Gesserit motives and purposes. (I think I read the first in the afterword and left the other two behind. Ain't nobody got time for that.)
b. An Afterword that explains certain sections of the book and the perspective of the author. It's written by his son, but it really probably would have been a more helpful foreword/ prologue to the book so that the reader wasn't desperately fumbling to put together the plot details.
All of this extra spinach adds another 90 pages on to the book for a total of 884 pages.
4. Another problem with making up a bunch of new words is that sometimes some of them are NOT actually ones that were made up, but ones you need to investigate (Coriolis force/rapier/bodkin) instead of filing it off somewhere and hoping it will explain itself later in the convoluted plot.
5. Chapters are sequential, but with no numbering/titles. Nor index.
6. A picture would be worth a thousand words. Who is related to whom? What is the rank of this Duke with respect to others? Do these ranks directly parallel the five levels of peerage in the English system? (duke/duchess> marquess/marchioness> earl/countess >viscount/viscountess> baron/baroness.)
7. The book requires putting together too much scattered information ("oh, I remember X from 125 pages ago that explains Y). The preamble at the beginning of each chapter is a bit of foreshadowing that may be resolved several hundred pages later.
Also, it is necessary to consult outside sources / internet sites to explain (for example) why did the house of Arrakis have to leave Caldan?
8. A lot of the biology of this book does not go together. They have a sparsely populated planet with no water, but they have scavenging birds? Do the birds wear water recovery suits?
If the planet is so dry, that nothing can live on it...... Then from what did these gigantic worms (mouths with 80 m wide) evolve, and what was the selective process?
9. Whither the obsession with the Middle East?
-The exotic vocabulary in this book is mostly Arabic (jihad/dar al-Hikma, etc)
-Much of the action takes place on a desert planet.
-With warlike and tribal people that are bound by all manner of tribal codes.
-With everyone wearing burnooses
-in the afterward, Frank Herbert's son says that this was meant to parallel Lawrence of Arabia. (A foreigner comes and unites a bunch of warring Arab-like tribes.)
∆∆∆There are lots of strange resonances in this book to current/historical times:
1. Some °°universal°° religion that is associated with a °°particular°° people. Islam is supposed to be universal, but the language of God is Arabic. And Arabs are native speakers and a source of authority. Bene Gesserit is a priestly class of people that seem to be related to each other.
2. A messiah will come from some place, and they will be from this race of people. Paul will be the Savior for the Fremen/Kwisatz Haderach, and he is the son of a Bene Gesserit. The Messiah will come for the Jewish world, and he must be from the house of David. Muhammad was the first prophet, and he was from a particular Arab tribe.
Also, קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ, is a fairly obscure Jewish term that I found that most people even in an Orthodox synagogue did not know.
3. All these religions freely borrow from each other. In this dystopian novel, it seems like Buddhism / Islam / Christianity have amalgamated into something different. (They may have even taken elements from Buddhism or Hinduism, but I don't know very much about them and could not recognize the allusions.) In current times, Judaism is a source religion (that borrowed some number of their ideas from neighboring tribes that did not survive). Christianity takes selected bits of Judaism and the concept of sacrifice and creates something new. The Muslims do cut and paste from the first two and create something still different.
So that's how we get to Sunni ancestors fleeting from Nilotic-Ourouba (p.568).
4. Some governance system is backed by a series of corrupt feudal lords that have incessantly shifting alliances. (The Japanese emperor was theoretically the head of Japan, but he required the allegiance of fairly independent) daimyos.
5. (p. 182) "The imperial Court is, indeed, a long way off." Chinese proverb: "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away." （“山高皇帝遠”）
6. Bene Gesserit= Jews (self interested/ invisible/destructive/purveyors of self-serving but influential ideas that they themselves don't believe). (p. 811), Fourteen Sages ≈ 12 caliphs of the Shia Twelvers. Or the 4 Rightly Guided Caliphs/ "Rashidun" of the Sunni.
7. Some dynasties that are at war with each other, but also related to each other and actually trade people among themselves. (The British royal family is actually German-- Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Alex Feodoranova of Russia started out as Alix Hesse [of later Germany].) The Atreides against The Harkonens.
8. Gladiator killing for sport, like in the corrupt Roman Empire (p.521).
9. Desert dwellers killing each other / not being afraid to die, and wives being immediately remarried to the survivors. Launching "jihad" (p. 562). Just like historical Arabs!
∆∆∆It seems like the events in this book were foundational for several books that were written later:
1. Some future dystopian planet where everyone is drug addicted, and corrupt overlords control the people by control of this drug. (Nancy Farmer. "The House of the Scorpion.) In "Dune," everyone is addicted to spice.
2. Dynasties that live in outer space are fighting each other, and they find out that they are related to each other. Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. Baron Harkonen was the father of Bene Gesserit Jessica.
3. The grouching about planets managed under evil corporations was redone later in the movie "Total Recall." (That phrase actually shows up in this book.) Also, Arrakis could have been turned into a planet fit for easy human habitation, but evil supraplanetary corporations wouldn't allow it. The same way they would not start the reactor to turn Mars into an oxygenated planet in "Total Recall."
4. The theme about Scary Underground Worms was repurposed into the movie "Tremors," starring Kevin Bacon.
5. Burnooses all over the place! It seems like this has been a theme in so many movies that I've lost count. (These types of clothing are Arab; why they hold so much sway over the Western imagination, I have no idea.)
Verdict: NOT recommended. Watch the movie instead. (For the record, I don't plan to even do that much. Because this book has already taken up way too much of my reading time. And I can't get any of it back.)
One good quote (p.651): "you cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the Orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the Orthodox ethic.
Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby
funny
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
5.0
Book Review: "Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth."
Noa Tishby
5/5 stars
"An articulate defender of Israel steps up to the plate; there are far fewer Jewish people like her than there should be."
******
This is a most interesting book, because it has all of the elements of the Israeli conflict with the Arabs in one place. (I refrain from using the word "Palestinian.")
Honestly, this book only takes several hours to read through and could probably be finished in a week's worth of lunch breaks.
I've read a number of other books about the formation/current local politics of Israel, and I have to say that: this does not disagree with any of them.
1. "My Life," by Golda Meir
2. "The History of the Jews," by Paul Johnson
3. "Real Jews," Noah Ephron
4. "Start Up Nation," by Dan Senor, Saul Singer
New information/interesting thoughts:
1. Offers for a state have been made to the Arabs in 1922, 1947, 1948, 1967, 1973, 1994, 2000, 2008, and 2019.
About 9 times over the past century; on average, once every 11 years.
Every single offer has been met with rejection.
None of them would accept the "end of negotiations" clause that comes with such peace deals.
2. UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency), for bureaucratic reasons, has expanded the refugee problem from an initial 3/4 of a million people up to 5.6 million. Never before has there been a refugee population that went on for so long.
3. Arab Israelis and Arabs in the disputed territories are two very different things. The former is fairly well integrated into Israeli society, and 77.4% of them are not interested in living in any future Palestinian state.
4. The creation of a "Palestinian" identity is only something that has happened in the past several decades (p.169); Palestine was, for the last 20 centuries up until that point a geographic descriptor. So, it is similar to the way that people conflate US citizenship with being American. Canadians are Americans (because they live on the North American continent), but not US citizens. Jews and Arabs are both Palestinians, because they lived in that geographic region. But, Palestine was never a state. The same way "America" is not a state.
5. BDS is a well-funded, obscurantist movement that has links with the Muslim brotherhood / various Islamist groups, and it is moderately skillfully concealed in its US incarnation.
6. Israel had Black Panthers (p.233), except that the "blacks" are Moroccans?
7. New mathematical concept: Josephus permutation. Yosef Ben Matisyahu haKohen= Josephus.
8. Recapitulation of the formidable Israeli tech sector.
Second order thoughts:
1. A lot of people don't understand the Arab conceptual space: things are true only because of perspective. (This concept was dealt with in Leslie Hazelton's "After the Prophet").
And if you know that, then it explains why they have all collectively decided to talk a "Palestinian" people into existence--because of course they have to be if that's what the general perspective is.
This type of thing happens more than you think, and it will join the pantheon of other such things. ("Black Egypt,"/ "the 1619 Project").
2. This determination to talk "Palestinians" into existence also seems to be a particular fixation of (In addition to the ego-wounded Arabs) Kooky White People.
I don't know where they get their ideas from, or why they become prisoner of them--but, they do.
1,001 territorial conflicts in the world, and this seems to take up more energy / ink /bandwidth than all others combined.
3. This situation really makes me think about my penchant to study history.
To wit: if a whole history can be invented in the space of less than 50 years, how much of what we think to be true about long-past events might be a figment of some number of active imaginations?
-The Great Famine happened because of bad weather.
-5,000 years of history for a place that was consolidated around the 2nd century BCE. (aka, China)
-Did Confucius really exist? Or is he a compilation of people?
-The Virgin Mary is something that was just invented in the last 50 years--At least, if you believe Richard Dawkins.
4. Jewish people have such formidable verbal skills. Why do they not choose to use them in service of the Israel cause?
The State of Israel is of central importance to Jewish people, and people who are the best communicators on the planet largely will not use that gift in order to send a positive message and counteract all of the negative falsehoods spread by the Red-Black-Green axis.
This is a good book and it is well selling, but honestly: a version of this book should come out four times per year so that people start to hear it just by coincidence.
How can there be Jewish Anti-Zionists, like the knuckle-dragging Neturei Karta/ Satmar? (And honestly, most of the Haredi places are not much better; I have never been to a single such shul that would insert prayers for the state of Israel / the Israeli Defense Forces as part of the service.)
5. If somebody is looking for a political stooge, it seems like their first stop is always and everywhere...... Black people.
The BLM movement has links with, and has been pursued by the BDS movement.
I live right next door to the densest Arab-Muslim infestation in the United states (Dearborn, Michigan).
I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black-Arab couples together, and not even on a single episode of the reality TV show based in Dearborn ("American Muslim," on the TLC channel).
In the days before I kept kosher, I would commonly eat at the Arab restaurants, and I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black people working there in any capacity-- ever.
To say that the Arabs don't care for black people would be to observe something as profound as the sky being blue.
Interesting, because the majority of Muslims in the United States are actually..... black.
These (BLM) guys are just dumb enough to be duped into supporting a political movement of people who *don't even like them* and are pressing a conflict that has *nothing to do with them.*
6. The role of the rabbinate vis-a-vis the state is something that has not been sorted out for at least the last 20 centuries. And if you believe in Lindy's law, it can keep on going for another 20 centuries.
7. The story of the destruction of the Second Temple is told as one of sinat chinam (baseless hatred).
It is retold here slightly differently, which is: Jewish people were easy to be knocked over by the Romans because they had weakened themselves by so much internal fighting.
History does not necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme: If the beginning of the end of the Jewish state comes with Haredim (as I suspect that it will), then will just be a repetition of Zealots fighting each other.
It may be a little bit better, because we have people (Haredim) that are educated in ways that are probably more appropriate for the 11th century--and that is at least a thousand years ahead of the people who were fighting during the Roman Jewish War.
8. The author is ever so slightly self-aggrandizing, but she has made a living as an entertainer and so that can be overlooked.
Verdict: Strongly recommended.
Noa Tishby
5/5 stars
"An articulate defender of Israel steps up to the plate; there are far fewer Jewish people like her than there should be."
******
This is a most interesting book, because it has all of the elements of the Israeli conflict with the Arabs in one place. (I refrain from using the word "Palestinian.")
Honestly, this book only takes several hours to read through and could probably be finished in a week's worth of lunch breaks.
I've read a number of other books about the formation/current local politics of Israel, and I have to say that: this does not disagree with any of them.
1. "My Life," by Golda Meir
2. "The History of the Jews," by Paul Johnson
3. "Real Jews," Noah Ephron
4. "Start Up Nation," by Dan Senor, Saul Singer
New information/interesting thoughts:
1. Offers for a state have been made to the Arabs in 1922, 1947, 1948, 1967, 1973, 1994, 2000, 2008, and 2019.
About 9 times over the past century; on average, once every 11 years.
Every single offer has been met with rejection.
None of them would accept the "end of negotiations" clause that comes with such peace deals.
2. UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency), for bureaucratic reasons, has expanded the refugee problem from an initial 3/4 of a million people up to 5.6 million. Never before has there been a refugee population that went on for so long.
3. Arab Israelis and Arabs in the disputed territories are two very different things. The former is fairly well integrated into Israeli society, and 77.4% of them are not interested in living in any future Palestinian state.
4. The creation of a "Palestinian" identity is only something that has happened in the past several decades (p.169); Palestine was, for the last 20 centuries up until that point a geographic descriptor. So, it is similar to the way that people conflate US citizenship with being American. Canadians are Americans (because they live on the North American continent), but not US citizens. Jews and Arabs are both Palestinians, because they lived in that geographic region. But, Palestine was never a state. The same way "America" is not a state.
5. BDS is a well-funded, obscurantist movement that has links with the Muslim brotherhood / various Islamist groups, and it is moderately skillfully concealed in its US incarnation.
6. Israel had Black Panthers (p.233), except that the "blacks" are Moroccans?
7. New mathematical concept: Josephus permutation. Yosef Ben Matisyahu haKohen= Josephus.
8. Recapitulation of the formidable Israeli tech sector.
Second order thoughts:
1. A lot of people don't understand the Arab conceptual space: things are true only because of perspective. (This concept was dealt with in Leslie Hazelton's "After the Prophet").
And if you know that, then it explains why they have all collectively decided to talk a "Palestinian" people into existence--because of course they have to be if that's what the general perspective is.
This type of thing happens more than you think, and it will join the pantheon of other such things. ("Black Egypt,"/ "the 1619 Project").
2. This determination to talk "Palestinians" into existence also seems to be a particular fixation of (In addition to the ego-wounded Arabs) Kooky White People.
I don't know where they get their ideas from, or why they become prisoner of them--but, they do.
1,001 territorial conflicts in the world, and this seems to take up more energy / ink /bandwidth than all others combined.
3. This situation really makes me think about my penchant to study history.
To wit: if a whole history can be invented in the space of less than 50 years, how much of what we think to be true about long-past events might be a figment of some number of active imaginations?
-The Great Famine happened because of bad weather.
-5,000 years of history for a place that was consolidated around the 2nd century BCE. (aka, China)
-Did Confucius really exist? Or is he a compilation of people?
-The Virgin Mary is something that was just invented in the last 50 years--At least, if you believe Richard Dawkins.
4. Jewish people have such formidable verbal skills. Why do they not choose to use them in service of the Israel cause?
The State of Israel is of central importance to Jewish people, and people who are the best communicators on the planet largely will not use that gift in order to send a positive message and counteract all of the negative falsehoods spread by the Red-Black-Green axis.
This is a good book and it is well selling, but honestly: a version of this book should come out four times per year so that people start to hear it just by coincidence.
How can there be Jewish Anti-Zionists, like the knuckle-dragging Neturei Karta/ Satmar? (And honestly, most of the Haredi places are not much better; I have never been to a single such shul that would insert prayers for the state of Israel / the Israeli Defense Forces as part of the service.)
5. If somebody is looking for a political stooge, it seems like their first stop is always and everywhere...... Black people.
The BLM movement has links with, and has been pursued by the BDS movement.
I live right next door to the densest Arab-Muslim infestation in the United states (Dearborn, Michigan).
I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black-Arab couples together, and not even on a single episode of the reality TV show based in Dearborn ("American Muslim," on the TLC channel).
In the days before I kept kosher, I would commonly eat at the Arab restaurants, and I have seen EXACTLY ZERO black people working there in any capacity-- ever.
To say that the Arabs don't care for black people would be to observe something as profound as the sky being blue.
Interesting, because the majority of Muslims in the United States are actually..... black.
These (BLM) guys are just dumb enough to be duped into supporting a political movement of people who *don't even like them* and are pressing a conflict that has *nothing to do with them.*
6. The role of the rabbinate vis-a-vis the state is something that has not been sorted out for at least the last 20 centuries. And if you believe in Lindy's law, it can keep on going for another 20 centuries.
7. The story of the destruction of the Second Temple is told as one of sinat chinam (baseless hatred).
It is retold here slightly differently, which is: Jewish people were easy to be knocked over by the Romans because they had weakened themselves by so much internal fighting.
History does not necessarily repeat itself, but it does rhyme: If the beginning of the end of the Jewish state comes with Haredim (as I suspect that it will), then will just be a repetition of Zealots fighting each other.
It may be a little bit better, because we have people (Haredim) that are educated in ways that are probably more appropriate for the 11th century--and that is at least a thousand years ahead of the people who were fighting during the Roman Jewish War.
8. The author is ever so slightly self-aggrandizing, but she has made a living as an entertainer and so that can be overlooked.
Verdict: Strongly recommended.
Hush by Eishes Chayil
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Book Review
Hush, by "Eishes Chayil"
5/5 stars
"An inside of view of Haredi sexual abuse."
******
I read this book because I wanted a plausible explanation of why such events happen SO FREQUENTLY. (I was reading an article in an Israeli newspaper, and they pointed out that sexual abuse happens amongst the "Guardians of Halacha" Haredim about three times more frequently than the general population, and something like 50% more often than in Modern Orthodoxy.)
As is always the case with fictionalized depictions of a real life event, the reader will have to forever alternate between attributing didactic mass to situations that don't exist and overlooking useful information on the presumption that it is fiction.
This fiction book is based on a mishmash of true stories--In the author was a former resident and insider of Boro Park. (In the life of the author, it was actually an 11 year old boy who hanged himself. And because the stories of sexual abuse were too many for her to pick one single instance; she created a fictitious community because in her mind all of them are guilty of abuse, and to single out any one over another would be unfair.)
For all the things that are true, I can say that: they're strange beyond measure.
I live in a small corner of the Jewish world (Jewish Detroit), and I HAD thought that I could extrapolate my experience to what New York would be like.
And, that's just false.
A lot of these people in Jewish Detroit have tried to recreate what they imagine the shtetl to be.
But, these ones in Boro Park have absolutely succeeded--complete with all of the paranoia, and secrecy and distrust.
Haredim, in their own words:
1. All gentiles are Catholic and take orders from the Pope. ("Tomorrow the pope will tell them not to be nice, and they will turn into Nazis in one week.")
2. The next pogrom is only a few hours away. ("The Holocaust taught us the greatest lesson we'll ever need to know. Never, ever trust the goyim. Stay as far as away as possible. In the end, they will only hurt you.")
3. Sexual abuse victims are responsible for the abuse that befell them. ("Devory was a very sick and sad girl and that's what made her do what she did [2 sentences later].........Gittel, we don't really know why Devory did it [=committing suicide].")
4. If you side with a victim, it will damage your shidduch chances.... And that is the ONLY relevant consideration. ("My daughter will not be involved in this, you hear? Enough! Everyone will know! No one will come near us in shidduchim. Our lives will be ruined!")
This was after the abused girl had committed suicide, but before she was even buried--and before she was even cold, for that matter.
5. Completely sexually clueless. And I have heard of people unable to consummate the marriage because they don't know what to do. ("The Rebbe says that if you are in the same room with any girl, a baby will come.")
In this book, they had a 19 year old guy who was interested in his young wife's body. He thought that he needed counseling from his Rav because when his wife was sleeping, he wanted to lift up the sheets to look at "Miss P."
6. "You have no right to suggest a girl from my son whose grandmother was once divorced!"
7. "I want a boy who will learn Torah his entire life. Whatever happens, my husband will never work! I'll teach and we'll make do with what there is."
8. It has been true for many decades that Israel is a place that shelters pedophiles--and their families. ("Agudath Israel got involved and Chaim Cohen had connections with the police. Shmuli is in Israel already. They put him on a plane 2 hours after the police tried questioning him. The men.....did a good job keeping the police out.") Malka Leifer is not new.
9. People who tell the police are wrong. ("Do you know how badly they beat up Reb Spitser because he agreed to talk to the police? Do you remember that other girl, how they kicked her out of school after she called the police for help from her father?")
10. Things are only going to get worse. ("Today's fanatics are tomorrow's moderates.")
11. "A husband shouldn't take out the garbage. He's a Torah scholar; you must treat him with the appropriate respect."
12. "Yankel stare at me blankly. 'What does "rape" mean?'"
13. "I mean, gevald, most boys wear their socks for at least a week, he was by far the cleanest. Did he realize how much laundry I would have if he changed his socks every day?'
14. "My friend. Devory Goldblatt. She hanged herself upstairs in our bathroom"......[Ma] "What? What are you talking about?"
15. "He told me of three boys who had been abused years ago by a Rebbie in the cheder. One parent complained, but who believed her? When the mother said that she'd call the police, they threatened her with a call to Social Services [with a false report that would make the parent lose her children]"
16. "The rabbonim will close down this paper in 1 week if we put in something on abuse. They will put a ban on it and nobody will dare buy it."
17. "I went to Reb Shlomo, the biggest Rav of Lakewood. He just kept saying, some subjects must be dealt with in silence. Some subjects are better left in silence."
*******
Second order thoughts:
¶ I do see some interesting use of irony:
1. The only person that seemed to be sane was the woman who had a nervous breakdown--and who was also a Gentile.
2. The sparkling and studious 15-year-old Talmud scholar was the incestuous rapist.
¶ I also wonder for whom this book was written.
There are lots of very basic words that the author takes the trouble to define, as if her audience would not know what they meant.
And this could be true only if her audience was gentile.
¶ I do believe that events like this do happen, I just can't believe that they do happen.
¶ Even as is impressive is the Sparkling Ashkenazi Intellectial Ability, how could there be so many stupid people in one place in this book?
-Neither parent noticed that one of their children was mounting a 9-year-old?
-Nobody found any bloody underwear?
-All those eyes in the house (with people sleeping in the same rooms), and nobody saw it?
-Nobody thought to ask why a 9-year-old was terrified to sleep in her own home?
-The coroner didn't find any signs of sexual trauma / scarring when they did the autopsy? (Was there even an autopsy?)
Verdict:
1. None of these things are new or surprising to me.
2. It seems like I have made the full circle back to something that Milan Kundera observed:
"(It turned out this way) but it could well have been otherwise." "Es konnte auch anders sein"
You go to the city of Detroit (or, really any large black City) and the people there and go to nightclubs and dance and drink and shoot each other.
Haiti has been an independent country for a couple of centuries, and as many times they may try otherwise, they start out with a government and end up with a state racketeering operation.
So.....Haredim live in their quirky way, and they like so much self torture, mutual abuse and paranoia.
And there's no way to prove that it had to happen that way.
And so what? It is what it is. And they are what they are.
3. For somebody who tries to graft on to the Jewish people and they specifically choose that route.......CAVEAT EMPTOR!!
Hush, by "Eishes Chayil"
5/5 stars
"An inside of view of Haredi sexual abuse."
******
I read this book because I wanted a plausible explanation of why such events happen SO FREQUENTLY. (I was reading an article in an Israeli newspaper, and they pointed out that sexual abuse happens amongst the "Guardians of Halacha" Haredim about three times more frequently than the general population, and something like 50% more often than in Modern Orthodoxy.)
As is always the case with fictionalized depictions of a real life event, the reader will have to forever alternate between attributing didactic mass to situations that don't exist and overlooking useful information on the presumption that it is fiction.
This fiction book is based on a mishmash of true stories--In the author was a former resident and insider of Boro Park. (In the life of the author, it was actually an 11 year old boy who hanged himself. And because the stories of sexual abuse were too many for her to pick one single instance; she created a fictitious community because in her mind all of them are guilty of abuse, and to single out any one over another would be unfair.)
For all the things that are true, I can say that: they're strange beyond measure.
I live in a small corner of the Jewish world (Jewish Detroit), and I HAD thought that I could extrapolate my experience to what New York would be like.
And, that's just false.
A lot of these people in Jewish Detroit have tried to recreate what they imagine the shtetl to be.
But, these ones in Boro Park have absolutely succeeded--complete with all of the paranoia, and secrecy and distrust.
Haredim, in their own words:
1. All gentiles are Catholic and take orders from the Pope. ("Tomorrow the pope will tell them not to be nice, and they will turn into Nazis in one week.")
2. The next pogrom is only a few hours away. ("The Holocaust taught us the greatest lesson we'll ever need to know. Never, ever trust the goyim. Stay as far as away as possible. In the end, they will only hurt you.")
3. Sexual abuse victims are responsible for the abuse that befell them. ("Devory was a very sick and sad girl and that's what made her do what she did [2 sentences later].........Gittel, we don't really know why Devory did it [=committing suicide].")
4. If you side with a victim, it will damage your shidduch chances.... And that is the ONLY relevant consideration. ("My daughter will not be involved in this, you hear? Enough! Everyone will know! No one will come near us in shidduchim. Our lives will be ruined!")
This was after the abused girl had committed suicide, but before she was even buried--and before she was even cold, for that matter.
5. Completely sexually clueless. And I have heard of people unable to consummate the marriage because they don't know what to do. ("The Rebbe says that if you are in the same room with any girl, a baby will come.")
In this book, they had a 19 year old guy who was interested in his young wife's body. He thought that he needed counseling from his Rav because when his wife was sleeping, he wanted to lift up the sheets to look at "Miss P."
6. "You have no right to suggest a girl from my son whose grandmother was once divorced!"
7. "I want a boy who will learn Torah his entire life. Whatever happens, my husband will never work! I'll teach and we'll make do with what there is."
8. It has been true for many decades that Israel is a place that shelters pedophiles--and their families. ("Agudath Israel got involved and Chaim Cohen had connections with the police. Shmuli is in Israel already. They put him on a plane 2 hours after the police tried questioning him. The men.....did a good job keeping the police out.") Malka Leifer is not new.
9. People who tell the police are wrong. ("Do you know how badly they beat up Reb Spitser because he agreed to talk to the police? Do you remember that other girl, how they kicked her out of school after she called the police for help from her father?")
10. Things are only going to get worse. ("Today's fanatics are tomorrow's moderates.")
11. "A husband shouldn't take out the garbage. He's a Torah scholar; you must treat him with the appropriate respect."
12. "Yankel stare at me blankly. 'What does "rape" mean?'"
13. "I mean, gevald, most boys wear their socks for at least a week, he was by far the cleanest. Did he realize how much laundry I would have if he changed his socks every day?'
14. "My friend. Devory Goldblatt. She hanged herself upstairs in our bathroom"......[Ma] "What? What are you talking about?"
15. "He told me of three boys who had been abused years ago by a Rebbie in the cheder. One parent complained, but who believed her? When the mother said that she'd call the police, they threatened her with a call to Social Services [with a false report that would make the parent lose her children]"
16. "The rabbonim will close down this paper in 1 week if we put in something on abuse. They will put a ban on it and nobody will dare buy it."
17. "I went to Reb Shlomo, the biggest Rav of Lakewood. He just kept saying, some subjects must be dealt with in silence. Some subjects are better left in silence."
*******
Second order thoughts:
¶ I do see some interesting use of irony:
1. The only person that seemed to be sane was the woman who had a nervous breakdown--and who was also a Gentile.
2. The sparkling and studious 15-year-old Talmud scholar was the incestuous rapist.
¶ I also wonder for whom this book was written.
There are lots of very basic words that the author takes the trouble to define, as if her audience would not know what they meant.
And this could be true only if her audience was gentile.
¶ I do believe that events like this do happen, I just can't believe that they do happen.
¶ Even as is impressive is the Sparkling Ashkenazi Intellectial Ability, how could there be so many stupid people in one place in this book?
-Neither parent noticed that one of their children was mounting a 9-year-old?
-Nobody found any bloody underwear?
-All those eyes in the house (with people sleeping in the same rooms), and nobody saw it?
-Nobody thought to ask why a 9-year-old was terrified to sleep in her own home?
-The coroner didn't find any signs of sexual trauma / scarring when they did the autopsy? (Was there even an autopsy?)
Verdict:
1. None of these things are new or surprising to me.
2. It seems like I have made the full circle back to something that Milan Kundera observed:
"(It turned out this way) but it could well have been otherwise." "Es konnte auch anders sein"
You go to the city of Detroit (or, really any large black City) and the people there and go to nightclubs and dance and drink and shoot each other.
Haiti has been an independent country for a couple of centuries, and as many times they may try otherwise, they start out with a government and end up with a state racketeering operation.
So.....Haredim live in their quirky way, and they like so much self torture, mutual abuse and paranoia.
And there's no way to prove that it had to happen that way.
And so what? It is what it is. And they are what they are.
3. For somebody who tries to graft on to the Jewish people and they specifically choose that route.......CAVEAT EMPTOR!!
King Rat by James Clavell
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
"King Rat"
5/5 stars
Markedly uncomfortable
*******
What to think of this troubling book?
1. There are far too many events here to remember the narrative arc from start to finish, and that is fine because the book is allegorical more than anything.
2. "1984" and "Animal Farm" created unlikely/impossible situations in order to be didactic. And the message was clearer, in that way.
In this book, it is a fictionalized telling of a situation that actually existed but....... it, too, presented some extremely uncomfortable truths about human nature.
I have read books history books about certain parts of World War II, but the treatment of Japanese prisoners of War was handled in a surgical and superficial way.
Those parts that did address the Japanese treatment of POWs TOLD us.
James Clavell comes at this from the opposite direction, which is to reverse engineer characters that SHOW us the suffering of the POWs from many angles.
What lessons can a reader draw?
1. Humanity has to be learned, and if you put people in a stressful enough situation they will start to lose their humanity. And the process of regaining it is not instantaneous, but only slow and laborious. ("Under the Same Sky," Joseph Kim.)
2. Among people in a stressful communal situation, there a certain type of equality. (POWs of that time probably had a relationship similar to plantation slaves.)
3. Not every society shares the Western penchant for hamstringing itself with a bunch of moral codes, and not everything is to be treated as a moral issue. Rules of engagement and treatment of POWs meant absolutely nothing to the Japanese. For the Chinese traders, money was money. No matter the source.
4. Opportunistic homosexuality is not at all new. Gay guys becoming the Queen of A Prison is also not new. (Jean Genet!)
Also, similarly to a book by Nathan McCall ("Makes Me Wanna Holler"), in prison situations a lot of time men will collectively convince vulnerable men that they ARE a woman. (pps 368-9).
5. One man's suffering is another man's bargain. The merchandise fencer ("The King") made a lot of money selling to desperate men. Men who were left behind in the war effort had a lot of moist evenings screwing the wives of POWs.
6. White ladies are popular always and everywhere. (Even the Japanese got in on the game and used food diplomacy when they saw a white looking lady that looked nice to them.)
7. Asian people are keen on eugenics, and they are unapologetic about it. It doesn't only depend on one culture. Japanese [this book, p.181], Chinese ["Sarong Party Girls"], Filipino, Native Hawaiians [James Michener's "Hawaii"]. So, if you are a white guy and want to spread your seed.... You have an easy road to walk.
8. The dog of the king thinks that he is king of the dogs. And no matter how squalid / pointless the situation, there is someone who is looking for at least one person to be beneath him.
9. The Malaysian relationship with Islam is nothing like the Middle Eastern / North African variety. The presence of pork dining/djinns on one page (p. 270), and the mention of Allah on the next was a bit.... jarring.
10. Seems like Chinese are middle men par excellence, and if there is something to be traded or some shady deal to be made... They are right in the thick of it.
11. More than one source has described the freewheeling sexual behavior of people in Island nations. Hawaii. Papua New Guinea. Malaysia.
12. These arguments about Communist Democrats and Robber Baron Republicans has been going on in the United States at least since the time of the Second World War (p.302).
13. In some way, all wars are the same: Old Men send Young Men off to die (for a war that said Old Men don't really even believe in), and after enough of them have died then the Opposing Old Men sit down and make a deal (p.488).
14. Survival of The Fittest / Social Darwinism/ law of the jungle are bad words to use in "refined" company (these days), but they are true just the same. No matter how much we pretend that they are not.
The strong survive, and the weak are their prey.
15. If you put a man in a bad situation, at some point it becomes an acquired taste.
In present times, there are so many black people in the United States who go in and out of jail because....... That's what they have come to like.
Chinese people go through one tyrannical government after another, and they keep creating the same thing because....... That's what they have come to like.
Immigrants from third world countries like Haiti / much of Latin America come to the United States and recreate their own way of life (that they were ostensibly fleeing from) because......... That is what they have come to like.
North Korea still exists, and they will be celebrating a centennial anniversary before you know it.
16. Fortunes can change overnight, and who we are is not an absolute thing.
It only depends on context.
The Nameless King in this book was somebody big and important, but only in the context of a prison. (Nameless at the beginning because his name was too important to be used.)
When the game was over, he was just somebody like everybody else. (Nameless at the end because he was just one more among thousands of other prisoners.)
17. Morality seems to be context to dependent.
Quotes
(p.220): ".... Boiled to that perfection of tastelessness that only the English call cooking."
(p.276): ".... The states. There's nothing like it in the world. Every man for himself, and every man's as good as the next guy."
(p.267): "Neither of each, neither of both."
Vocab:
skirting road
"godown"
ruddy ("bloody")
frangipani
salvarsan
combination (petticoat)
cobber
blachang/belacan
billy can
Millionaire's cabbage
rijsttafel
[kajang
satay/saté
taka
huan]=spices
pranging
"Take a powder"
baju jacket
parry and throughst
kawa (tea)
somnambulant
"King Rat"
5/5 stars
Markedly uncomfortable
*******
What to think of this troubling book?
1. There are far too many events here to remember the narrative arc from start to finish, and that is fine because the book is allegorical more than anything.
2. "1984" and "Animal Farm" created unlikely/impossible situations in order to be didactic. And the message was clearer, in that way.
In this book, it is a fictionalized telling of a situation that actually existed but....... it, too, presented some extremely uncomfortable truths about human nature.
I have read books history books about certain parts of World War II, but the treatment of Japanese prisoners of War was handled in a surgical and superficial way.
Those parts that did address the Japanese treatment of POWs TOLD us.
James Clavell comes at this from the opposite direction, which is to reverse engineer characters that SHOW us the suffering of the POWs from many angles.
What lessons can a reader draw?
1. Humanity has to be learned, and if you put people in a stressful enough situation they will start to lose their humanity. And the process of regaining it is not instantaneous, but only slow and laborious. ("Under the Same Sky," Joseph Kim.)
2. Among people in a stressful communal situation, there a certain type of equality. (POWs of that time probably had a relationship similar to plantation slaves.)
3. Not every society shares the Western penchant for hamstringing itself with a bunch of moral codes, and not everything is to be treated as a moral issue. Rules of engagement and treatment of POWs meant absolutely nothing to the Japanese. For the Chinese traders, money was money. No matter the source.
4. Opportunistic homosexuality is not at all new. Gay guys becoming the Queen of A Prison is also not new. (Jean Genet!)
Also, similarly to a book by Nathan McCall ("Makes Me Wanna Holler"), in prison situations a lot of time men will collectively convince vulnerable men that they ARE a woman. (pps 368-9).
5. One man's suffering is another man's bargain. The merchandise fencer ("The King") made a lot of money selling to desperate men. Men who were left behind in the war effort had a lot of moist evenings screwing the wives of POWs.
6. White ladies are popular always and everywhere. (Even the Japanese got in on the game and used food diplomacy when they saw a white looking lady that looked nice to them.)
7. Asian people are keen on eugenics, and they are unapologetic about it. It doesn't only depend on one culture. Japanese [this book, p.181], Chinese ["Sarong Party Girls"], Filipino, Native Hawaiians [James Michener's "Hawaii"]. So, if you are a white guy and want to spread your seed.... You have an easy road to walk.
8. The dog of the king thinks that he is king of the dogs. And no matter how squalid / pointless the situation, there is someone who is looking for at least one person to be beneath him.
9. The Malaysian relationship with Islam is nothing like the Middle Eastern / North African variety. The presence of pork dining/djinns on one page (p. 270), and the mention of Allah on the next was a bit.... jarring.
10. Seems like Chinese are middle men par excellence, and if there is something to be traded or some shady deal to be made... They are right in the thick of it.
11. More than one source has described the freewheeling sexual behavior of people in Island nations. Hawaii. Papua New Guinea. Malaysia.
12. These arguments about Communist Democrats and Robber Baron Republicans has been going on in the United States at least since the time of the Second World War (p.302).
13. In some way, all wars are the same: Old Men send Young Men off to die (for a war that said Old Men don't really even believe in), and after enough of them have died then the Opposing Old Men sit down and make a deal (p.488).
14. Survival of The Fittest / Social Darwinism/ law of the jungle are bad words to use in "refined" company (these days), but they are true just the same. No matter how much we pretend that they are not.
The strong survive, and the weak are their prey.
15. If you put a man in a bad situation, at some point it becomes an acquired taste.
In present times, there are so many black people in the United States who go in and out of jail because....... That's what they have come to like.
Chinese people go through one tyrannical government after another, and they keep creating the same thing because....... That's what they have come to like.
Immigrants from third world countries like Haiti / much of Latin America come to the United States and recreate their own way of life (that they were ostensibly fleeing from) because......... That is what they have come to like.
North Korea still exists, and they will be celebrating a centennial anniversary before you know it.
16. Fortunes can change overnight, and who we are is not an absolute thing.
It only depends on context.
The Nameless King in this book was somebody big and important, but only in the context of a prison. (Nameless at the beginning because his name was too important to be used.)
When the game was over, he was just somebody like everybody else. (Nameless at the end because he was just one more among thousands of other prisoners.)
17. Morality seems to be context to dependent.
Quotes
(p.220): ".... Boiled to that perfection of tastelessness that only the English call cooking."
(p.276): ".... The states. There's nothing like it in the world. Every man for himself, and every man's as good as the next guy."
(p.267): "Neither of each, neither of both."
Vocab:
skirting road
"godown"
ruddy ("bloody")
frangipani
salvarsan
combination (petticoat)
cobber
blachang/belacan
billy can
Millionaire's cabbage
rijsttafel
[kajang
satay/saté
taka
huan]=spices
pranging
"Take a powder"
baju jacket
parry and throughst
kawa (tea)
somnambulant
King Rat: The Epic Novel of War and Survival by James Clavell
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
"King Rat"
5/5 stars
Markedly uncomfortable
*******
What to think of this troubling book?
1. There are far too many events here to remember the narrative arc from start to finish, and that is fine because the book is allegorical more than anything.
2. "1984" and "Animal Farm" created unlikely/impossible situations in order to be didactic. And the message was clearer, in that way.
In this book, it is a fictionalized telling of a situation that actually existed but....... it, too, presented some extremely uncomfortable truths about human nature.
I have read books history books about certain parts of World War II, but the treatment of Japanese prisoners of War was handled in a surgical and superficial way.
Those parts that did address the Japanese treatment of POWs TOLD us.
James Clavell comes at this from the opposite direction, which is to reverse engineer characters that SHOW us the suffering of the POWs from many angles.
What lessons can a reader draw?
1. Humanity has to be learned, and if you put people in a stressful enough situation they will start to lose their humanity. And the process of regaining it is not instantaneous, but only slow and laborious. ("Under the Same Sky," Joseph Kim.)
2. Among people in a stressful communal situation, there a certain type of equality. (POWs of that time probably had a relationship similar to plantation slaves.)
3. Not every society shares the Western penchant for hamstringing itself with a bunch of moral codes, and not everything is to be treated as a moral issue. Rules of engagement and treatment of POWs meant absolutely nothing to the Japanese. For the Chinese traders, money was money. No matter the source.
4. Opportunistic homosexuality is not at all new. Gay guys becoming the Queen of A Prison is also not new. (Jean Genet!)
Also, similarly to a book by Nathan McCall ("Makes Me Wanna Holler"), in prison situations a lot of time men will collectively convince vulnerable men that they ARE a woman. (pps 368-9).
5. One man's suffering is another man's bargain. The merchandise fencer ("The King") made a lot of money selling to desperate men. Men who were left behind in the war effort had a lot of moist evenings screwing the wives of POWs.
6. White ladies are popular always and everywhere. (Even the Japanese got in on the game and used food diplomacy when they saw a white looking lady that looked nice to them.)
7. Asian people are keen on eugenics, and they are unapologetic about it. It doesn't only depend on one culture. Japanese [this book, p.181], Chinese ["Sarong Party Girls"], Filipino, Native Hawaiians [James Michener's "Hawaii"]. So, if you are a white guy and want to spread your seed.... You have an easy road to walk.
8. The dog of the king thinks that he is king of the dogs. And no matter how squalid / pointless the situation, there is someone who is looking for at least one person to be beneath him.
9. The Malaysian relationship with Islam is nothing like the Middle Eastern / North African variety. The presence of pork dining/djinns on one page (p. 270), and the mention of Allah on the next was a bit.... jarring.
10. Seems like Chinese are middle men par excellence, and if there is something to be traded or some shady deal to be made... They are right in the thick of it.
11. More than one source has described the freewheeling sexual behavior of people in Island nations. Hawaii. Papua New Guinea. Malaysia.
12. These arguments about Communist Democrats and Robber Baron Republicans has been going on in the United States at least since the time of the Second World War (p.302).
13. In some way, all wars are the same: Old Men send Young Men off to die (for a war that said Old Men don't really even believe in), and after enough of them have died then the Opposing Old Men sit down and make a deal (p.488).
14. Survival of The Fittest / Social Darwinism/ law of the jungle are bad words to use in "refined" company (these days), but they are true just the same. No matter how much we pretend that they are not.
The strong survive, and the weak are their prey.
15. If you put a man in a bad situation, at some point it becomes an acquired taste.
In present times, there are so many black people in the United States who go in and out of jail because....... That's what they have come to like.
Chinese people go through one tyrannical government after another, and they keep creating the same thing because....... That's what they have come to like.
Immigrants from third world countries like Haiti / much of Latin America come to the United States and recreate their own way of life (that they were ostensibly fleeing from) because......... That is what they have come to like.
North Korea still exists, and they will be celebrating a centennial anniversary before you know it.
16. Fortunes can change overnight, and who we are is not an absolute thing.
It only depends on context.
The Nameless King in this book was somebody big and important, but only in the context of a prison. (Nameless at the beginning because his name was too important to be used.)
When the game was over, he was just somebody like everybody else. (Nameless at the end because he was just one more among thousands of other prisoners.)
17. Morality seems to be context to dependent.
Quotes
(p.220): ".... Boiled to that perfection of tastelessness that only the English call cooking."
(p.276): ".... The states. There's nothing like it in the world. Every man for himself, and every man's as good as the next guy."
(p.267): "Neither of each, neither of both."
Vocab:
skirting road
"godown"
ruddy ("bloody")
frangipani
salvarsan
combination (petticoat)
cobber
blachang/belacan
billy can
Millionaire's cabbage
rijsttafel
[kajang
satay/saté
taka
huan]=spices
pranging
"Take a powder"
baju jacket
parry and throughst
kawa (tea)
somnambulant
"King Rat"
5/5 stars
Markedly uncomfortable
*******
What to think of this troubling book?
1. There are far too many events here to remember the narrative arc from start to finish, and that is fine because the book is allegorical more than anything.
2. "1984" and "Animal Farm" created unlikely/impossible situations in order to be didactic. And the message was clearer, in that way.
In this book, it is a fictionalized telling of a situation that actually existed but....... it, too, presented some extremely uncomfortable truths about human nature.
I have read books history books about certain parts of World War II, but the treatment of Japanese prisoners of War was handled in a surgical and superficial way.
Those parts that did address the Japanese treatment of POWs TOLD us.
James Clavell comes at this from the opposite direction, which is to reverse engineer characters that SHOW us the suffering of the POWs from many angles.
What lessons can a reader draw?
1. Humanity has to be learned, and if you put people in a stressful enough situation they will start to lose their humanity. And the process of regaining it is not instantaneous, but only slow and laborious. ("Under the Same Sky," Joseph Kim.)
2. Among people in a stressful communal situation, there a certain type of equality. (POWs of that time probably had a relationship similar to plantation slaves.)
3. Not every society shares the Western penchant for hamstringing itself with a bunch of moral codes, and not everything is to be treated as a moral issue. Rules of engagement and treatment of POWs meant absolutely nothing to the Japanese. For the Chinese traders, money was money. No matter the source.
4. Opportunistic homosexuality is not at all new. Gay guys becoming the Queen of A Prison is also not new. (Jean Genet!)
Also, similarly to a book by Nathan McCall ("Makes Me Wanna Holler"), in prison situations a lot of time men will collectively convince vulnerable men that they ARE a woman. (pps 368-9).
5. One man's suffering is another man's bargain. The merchandise fencer ("The King") made a lot of money selling to desperate men. Men who were left behind in the war effort had a lot of moist evenings screwing the wives of POWs.
6. White ladies are popular always and everywhere. (Even the Japanese got in on the game and used food diplomacy when they saw a white looking lady that looked nice to them.)
7. Asian people are keen on eugenics, and they are unapologetic about it. It doesn't only depend on one culture. Japanese [this book, p.181], Chinese ["Sarong Party Girls"], Filipino, Native Hawaiians [James Michener's "Hawaii"]. So, if you are a white guy and want to spread your seed.... You have an easy road to walk.
8. The dog of the king thinks that he is king of the dogs. And no matter how squalid / pointless the situation, there is someone who is looking for at least one person to be beneath him.
9. The Malaysian relationship with Islam is nothing like the Middle Eastern / North African variety. The presence of pork dining/djinns on one page (p. 270), and the mention of Allah on the next was a bit.... jarring.
10. Seems like Chinese are middle men par excellence, and if there is something to be traded or some shady deal to be made... They are right in the thick of it.
11. More than one source has described the freewheeling sexual behavior of people in Island nations. Hawaii. Papua New Guinea. Malaysia.
12. These arguments about Communist Democrats and Robber Baron Republicans has been going on in the United States at least since the time of the Second World War (p.302).
13. In some way, all wars are the same: Old Men send Young Men off to die (for a war that said Old Men don't really even believe in), and after enough of them have died then the Opposing Old Men sit down and make a deal (p.488).
14. Survival of The Fittest / Social Darwinism/ law of the jungle are bad words to use in "refined" company (these days), but they are true just the same. No matter how much we pretend that they are not.
The strong survive, and the weak are their prey.
15. If you put a man in a bad situation, at some point it becomes an acquired taste.
In present times, there are so many black people in the United States who go in and out of jail because....... That's what they have come to like.
Chinese people go through one tyrannical government after another, and they keep creating the same thing because....... That's what they have come to like.
Immigrants from third world countries like Haiti / much of Latin America come to the United States and recreate their own way of life (that they were ostensibly fleeing from) because......... That is what they have come to like.
North Korea still exists, and they will be celebrating a centennial anniversary before you know it.
16. Fortunes can change overnight, and who we are is not an absolute thing.
It only depends on context.
The Nameless King in this book was somebody big and important, but only in the context of a prison. (Nameless at the beginning because his name was too important to be used.)
When the game was over, he was just somebody like everybody else. (Nameless at the end because he was just one more among thousands of other prisoners.)
17. Morality seems to be context to dependent.
Quotes
(p.220): ".... Boiled to that perfection of tastelessness that only the English call cooking."
(p.276): ".... The states. There's nothing like it in the world. Every man for himself, and every man's as good as the next guy."
(p.267): "Neither of each, neither of both."
Vocab:
skirting road
"godown"
ruddy ("bloody")
frangipani
salvarsan
combination (petticoat)
cobber
blachang/belacan
billy can
Millionaire's cabbage
rijsttafel
[kajang
satay/saté
taka
huan]=spices
pranging
"Take a powder"
baju jacket
parry and throughst
kawa (tea)
somnambulant
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--But Some Don't by Nate Silver
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
The Signal And The Noise
Nate Silver
5/5 enthusiastic stars
*******
This book is kick-ass good: It feels like a more readable/ less self-aggrandizing write of "Fooled by Randomness"/ "The Black Swan" but with the writing skill of Levitt/Dubner (of "Freakonomics" fame).
Nate Silver is a rare professional/ applied statistician (he used to make a living playing poker, and repurposed those skills to making political / economic predictions) who can communicate in words.
Of the book:
-455 pages of prose over 14 chapters+ introduction.
-≈30pps/chapter
-Needn't be read in order
The book is essentially about discerning signal from noise, and especially in noisy systems. (Economics. Politics. Climate.) A running theme throughout is also: testing the data generated by a model (as a way to see how well the model ACTUALLY WORKS).
***A few salient points from each chapter:
Intro. Information now is much greater than it has been, but the signal to noise ratio is lower than it ever has been. The internet makes this worse.
1. Risk≠uncertainty. Simplified explanation of collateralized debt obligations. (CDOs). Resynopsis of the 2008 mortgage based financial crisis. "Out of sample." Precision ≠accuracy.
2. Poor predictive powers of experts, à la Philip Tetlock. "Foxes" and "hedgehogs" (applied both to models and pundits). Presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections are easy to predict. The House is much harder.
3. A fairly short chapter about predictive methods of baseball statistics. (Much more appropriate as a cure for insomnia.)
4. Chaos theory. Laplace's demon. Nonlinear error compounding. Discussion of weather forecasting / meteorology. Explanation of why weather forecasts take billions and billions of calculations. (Forecasts get worse the further you go out, and past 8 days are nowhere near accurate.)
5. Gutenberg-Richter law. (Power law distributions.) Overfitting. Time dependent forecasting (where the probability of something is not assumed to be constant across time). Prediction ≠Forecast. Some things are inherently unpredictable, but forecastable. Such as earthquakes. If you know that an earthquake is a once every 3 century event, what incentive does a developing country have to prepare for something so far away? History of a lot of very stupid false earthquake predictions. Chaos theory≠complexity theory.
6. Extended thoughts on the weakness of economic predictions of "experts" as well as reasons for the inherent unpredictability of economic systems.
7. If you have seen one pandemic, you have seen one pandemic. Extrapolation on exponential increase is a fool's errand. Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-canceling prophecies. Increased media mention of some disease may cause increased self diagnosis. (Transgender hysteria today is the autism of yesterday. )
8. Introduction to Bayesian reasoning (especially as contrasted to frequentism). Larger numbers of observations also create larger amounts of noise. (Ionnidis: "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.") Bayer Laboratories was not able to replicate 2/3 of positive findings claimed in medical journals.
9. Calculation (domain of computers)≠strategy (current domain of humans), demonstrated by trying to computerized chess. The best computers could be the best chess players, but for calculation limits.(10^10^50 possible games.)
10. Practical application of Bayes Theorem to professional Texas hold'em / poker. All poker tables rely on an incompetent poker player to subsidize the winnings of the rest. The best poker players can win a lot less money per hand than the worst poker players can lose.
11. Efficient market hypothesis as well as testing. No, efficient market hypothesis doesn't work perfectly in the Real World (WOW! What is the world coming to? Academics generating ideas that have no basis in reality) because if everybody realized that they could not beat the market, then no one has a reason to trade. But in reality, the great majority will make only average returns on the stock market.
12. Climate change. Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Initial condition uncertainty; structural uncertainty; scenario uncertainty. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 20 different climate models, but they settle on one by consensus (and NOT by predictive validity of the models). No one disagrees on climate change, but the question is whether or not it is even predictable (economics has much better mathematicians, and a longer track record, and an unbroken record of failure). What your trend is depends on what year you use as baseline, which may be quite arbitrary.
13. Unfamiliar≠improbable. Mind-blindness. It's much easier to pick out signal from noise after something has already happened, and it's easier to see the signal that you want in a mess of data. (Governments tend to not be very good at distinguishing signal from noise. The September 11th attacks were shocking but not surprising.) Application of power law distributions to explain the September 11th attack as well as predict an even bigger attack somewhere down the road. (These big attacks are estimated to happen once every 80 years. [p.432]). All roads lead to Pakistan. (Islamic, nuclear capable, with most of the population illiterate/educated in a way that's more appropriate for the 11th century.)
Good information about how to live with attacks by destructive Arabs/Muslims is no further away than Israel--because they do just that. (I doubt that the United States will take advantage of this rich source of information. They're probably too busy litigating cases about men using women's bathrooms.)
*******
Take away messages:
1. Garbage in, garbage out. ("Data-driven"ness notwithstanding.)
2. Very few forecasters take the trouble to actually test their predictions. (And nothing wrong with updating your model if your predictions turn out to be empirically false!)
3. Unfamiliar≠improbable.
Good quote:
"Moody's 50% adjustment was like applying sunscreen and claiming it protected you from a nuclear meltdown."
"The statistician drowned crossing a river that was only 3 ft deep on average." (p.179).
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." (p.360)
Verdict: Strong recommendation.
The Signal And The Noise
Nate Silver
5/5 enthusiastic stars
*******
This book is kick-ass good: It feels like a more readable/ less self-aggrandizing write of "Fooled by Randomness"/ "The Black Swan" but with the writing skill of Levitt/Dubner (of "Freakonomics" fame).
Nate Silver is a rare professional/ applied statistician (he used to make a living playing poker, and repurposed those skills to making political / economic predictions) who can communicate in words.
Of the book:
-455 pages of prose over 14 chapters+ introduction.
-≈30pps/chapter
-Needn't be read in order
The book is essentially about discerning signal from noise, and especially in noisy systems. (Economics. Politics. Climate.) A running theme throughout is also: testing the data generated by a model (as a way to see how well the model ACTUALLY WORKS).
***A few salient points from each chapter:
Intro. Information now is much greater than it has been, but the signal to noise ratio is lower than it ever has been. The internet makes this worse.
1. Risk≠uncertainty. Simplified explanation of collateralized debt obligations. (CDOs). Resynopsis of the 2008 mortgage based financial crisis. "Out of sample." Precision ≠accuracy.
2. Poor predictive powers of experts, à la Philip Tetlock. "Foxes" and "hedgehogs" (applied both to models and pundits). Presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections are easy to predict. The House is much harder.
3. A fairly short chapter about predictive methods of baseball statistics. (Much more appropriate as a cure for insomnia.)
4. Chaos theory. Laplace's demon. Nonlinear error compounding. Discussion of weather forecasting / meteorology. Explanation of why weather forecasts take billions and billions of calculations. (Forecasts get worse the further you go out, and past 8 days are nowhere near accurate.)
5. Gutenberg-Richter law. (Power law distributions.) Overfitting. Time dependent forecasting (where the probability of something is not assumed to be constant across time). Prediction ≠Forecast. Some things are inherently unpredictable, but forecastable. Such as earthquakes. If you know that an earthquake is a once every 3 century event, what incentive does a developing country have to prepare for something so far away? History of a lot of very stupid false earthquake predictions. Chaos theory≠complexity theory.
6. Extended thoughts on the weakness of economic predictions of "experts" as well as reasons for the inherent unpredictability of economic systems.
7. If you have seen one pandemic, you have seen one pandemic. Extrapolation on exponential increase is a fool's errand. Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-canceling prophecies. Increased media mention of some disease may cause increased self diagnosis. (Transgender hysteria today is the autism of yesterday. )
8. Introduction to Bayesian reasoning (especially as contrasted to frequentism). Larger numbers of observations also create larger amounts of noise. (Ionnidis: "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.") Bayer Laboratories was not able to replicate 2/3 of positive findings claimed in medical journals.
9. Calculation (domain of computers)≠strategy (current domain of humans), demonstrated by trying to computerized chess. The best computers could be the best chess players, but for calculation limits.(10^10^50 possible games.)
10. Practical application of Bayes Theorem to professional Texas hold'em / poker. All poker tables rely on an incompetent poker player to subsidize the winnings of the rest. The best poker players can win a lot less money per hand than the worst poker players can lose.
11. Efficient market hypothesis as well as testing. No, efficient market hypothesis doesn't work perfectly in the Real World (WOW! What is the world coming to? Academics generating ideas that have no basis in reality) because if everybody realized that they could not beat the market, then no one has a reason to trade. But in reality, the great majority will make only average returns on the stock market.
12. Climate change. Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Initial condition uncertainty; structural uncertainty; scenario uncertainty. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 20 different climate models, but they settle on one by consensus (and NOT by predictive validity of the models). No one disagrees on climate change, but the question is whether or not it is even predictable (economics has much better mathematicians, and a longer track record, and an unbroken record of failure). What your trend is depends on what year you use as baseline, which may be quite arbitrary.
13. Unfamiliar≠improbable. Mind-blindness. It's much easier to pick out signal from noise after something has already happened, and it's easier to see the signal that you want in a mess of data. (Governments tend to not be very good at distinguishing signal from noise. The September 11th attacks were shocking but not surprising.) Application of power law distributions to explain the September 11th attack as well as predict an even bigger attack somewhere down the road. (These big attacks are estimated to happen once every 80 years. [p.432]). All roads lead to Pakistan. (Islamic, nuclear capable, with most of the population illiterate/educated in a way that's more appropriate for the 11th century.)
Good information about how to live with attacks by destructive Arabs/Muslims is no further away than Israel--because they do just that. (I doubt that the United States will take advantage of this rich source of information. They're probably too busy litigating cases about men using women's bathrooms.)
*******
Take away messages:
1. Garbage in, garbage out. ("Data-driven"ness notwithstanding.)
2. Very few forecasters take the trouble to actually test their predictions. (And nothing wrong with updating your model if your predictions turn out to be empirically false!)
3. Unfamiliar≠improbable.
Good quote:
"Moody's 50% adjustment was like applying sunscreen and claiming it protected you from a nuclear meltdown."
"The statistician drowned crossing a river that was only 3 ft deep on average." (p.179).
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." (p.360)
Verdict: Strong recommendation.
The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century by Alan M. Dershowitz
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
Book Review: The Vanishing American Jew
Alan Dershowitz
2/5 stars
"Interesting thought process, but history has proven him wrong"
*******
I picked up this book because I knew that it was written a couple of decades ago, and I wanted to see how well it stood the test of time.
Dershowitz says (in probably more words than necessary) that the pull of assimilation is something that was only *slowed down* by the events surrounding the Second World War and now that Jewish people feel safe again...... They're slipping off in large numbers as they always have been. (Sociologist Samuel Heilman has observed that unaffiliated Jews are the fastest growing number. Even faster than Black Hats.)
He suggests that the strength of Judaism in the past was because they were focused on survival and had very easy enemies to keep them together (and hatred is a unifying emotion).
But now that that time of pogroms and imminent danger is past, can Jewish people find a way to keep interest in Judaism that is defined positively instead of being defined negatively?
Here Dershowitz offers 6 solutions:
Suggestion 1. Become less tribal and ethnocentric, and welcome converts.
Suggestion 2. Adopt a different approach to the increasing reality of intermarriage.
Suggestion 3. Recognize the validity of secular Judaism.
Suggestion 4. Jewish educators should find ways to make Judaism more interesting and attractive to Jewish people. (And this is a way to leverage the Jewish comparative advantage as Men of Words.)
Suggestion 5. There should be Jewish schools that are open to everyone. (In much the same way that Harvard started out as a religious school and became something else.)
Suggestion 6. A new type of curriculum needs to be developed, somewhere midway between Orthodox and Reform. I think he uses the word "low fat Judaism." (p.334).
How has this worked out for him?
I will cut to the chase and tell you that: ALL bets are off for ALL of his suggestions.
In present times (and these are just the answers to his concluding six suggestions):
1. Not only have Jews become less welcoming to converts, but the conversion practices have become more abusive than they have ever been in history (I'm willing to bet you that the number of people caught copulating/ trying to copulate with their conversion candidates just in the last 20 years is greater than in the last 2000).
Categorical invalidation of conversions has become a regular thing, and all conversions can be assumed to only exist in some indeterminate state at the pleasure of Some Big Enough Rabbi who wants to use them as a bargaining chip / tool to make a point.
2. Reform is the same as it always has been in that they accept intermarriage. In the time since this book has been written, Conservative has gone almost all the way to extinction. (And unaffiliated/secular Jews have had a population explosion. Reform has been gaining a few people.)
3. Secular Judaism is having problems even in the State of Israel because Neanderthal Haredim have voting power in such a way as to cause a lot of problems for Everyone
Else. (Governments in Israel are lasting for a year at a time these days, and it's only going to get worse.)
4. Not even close to being close. There are more people sitting around in Kollel for longer periods of time than there ever have been in history
All of these young men sitting around polishing seats would never deign to do outreach work. (Or, really, anything that could even be vaguely construed as work. Such as washing dishes or opening a window.)
And who knows what difference it would make, since: The kiruv/ outreach movement is dead. (2,000 people come in per year through all efforts, which is a small fraction of the number of people who leave.)
And these Kollel Penguins are some PROFOUNDLY ignorant people about anything outside of Gemara. (I would charitably say that the average level of literacy in "English" for them is probably about 7th or 8th grade. Recently, the state of New York gave a test to 1,000 students from Orthodox schools that were suspected to be failing to meet standards, and Every. Single. Student. failed the exam.)
5. Nope. Not only that, but schools are going further in the direction of being exclusive. (People are getting really stupid with the reference requirements, etc.)
6. Nope. Just, no.
Other thoughts:
1. Not only have Jewish people not found a positive way to keep things going, but some have actually doubled down on a negative references--even to the point of manufacturing internal enemies of all sorts: The religion of Haredism has run off the rails in the United States (and Israel).
Incessant bickering about conversion, and kosher certification, prayer at the Wailing Wall And really anything else you can think about.
2. Modern/Open Orthodoxy (and that is approximately the choice that Dershowitz describes) is a diminished minor fraction of the Orthodox world (and the Orthodox World itself is still a minor fraction of all Judaism, birth rates notwithstanding) has a substantial attrition rate.
3. I wonder what does it mean to "keep Judaism alive."
It's not like we're only talking about one thing here.
∆∆If Maimonides rolled out of his grave this very day and walked into a Chabad house and met a couple of Meshichists, he would probably die a second time. And if that wasn't enough to kill him, then he could just walk into any Hasidic place and hear a couple of guys holding forth about dybbuks.
∆∆If the Vilna Gaon rolled out and found out that Hasidim and Mitnagdim were just about equal numbers and went to each other's shuls and referred to each other's rabbis...... he would roll right back in.
4.
Q:What has Dershowitz failed to understand?
A: Things that only a lawyer could misunderstand but of which no decent historian/social psychologist would be unaware.
Hoffer Quote: "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil."
And the positive attitude that Modern Orthodoxy has toward the world has NOT helped them to gain market share, nor has it even allowed them to hang on to their own people.
Haredim do lose a lot of their people (no, not everybody can extend Two Minutes of Hate into an entire life's mission; some people get tired of the sexual abuse scandal of the week/ chumra of the month), but their rabid hatred of EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY is an effective tool to keep them going as an active/non-shrinking movement.
And the fact that hatred is a stronger adhesive to a mass movement than love has been known for a long time. At least a half century before this book was written.
Other observations.....
Dershowitz observes that if you want to get attached to some secular movement, there is already one in existence that has Jewish overtones:
1. Jewish feminism (p.318);
2. Jewish environmentalism (p.317);
3. Jewish ethics (p.315);
4. Jewish spirituality (p.311--"You Don't Have to Become Buddhist.").
*****
Verdict: This book is fairly well written, and I'm agnostic on whether or not to recommend it to other people.
1. Books in the future that discuss the state of Judaism will recapitulate the observations that Dershowitz has made--and that other authors have *been* making.
And probably with many fewer words (I would estimate that this book can be condensed into 3 pages in a future book).
And you can see this happen all the time when people discuss the history of Reform/Conservative Judaism.
2.. "Israel: The Ever-dying People" was written by the twentieth century Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz. Essentially, every generation of Jewish people thinks that they're going to be the last. And in this respect, Dershowitz is putting very old wine in new bottles.
3. There are a lot of good references in the book to not-quite-classical Jewish literature. (The work of people like Theodore Herzl and the Yiddishists. )
They might make good further reading.
Alan Dershowitz
2/5 stars
"Interesting thought process, but history has proven him wrong"
*******
I picked up this book because I knew that it was written a couple of decades ago, and I wanted to see how well it stood the test of time.
Dershowitz says (in probably more words than necessary) that the pull of assimilation is something that was only *slowed down* by the events surrounding the Second World War and now that Jewish people feel safe again...... They're slipping off in large numbers as they always have been. (Sociologist Samuel Heilman has observed that unaffiliated Jews are the fastest growing number. Even faster than Black Hats.)
He suggests that the strength of Judaism in the past was because they were focused on survival and had very easy enemies to keep them together (and hatred is a unifying emotion).
But now that that time of pogroms and imminent danger is past, can Jewish people find a way to keep interest in Judaism that is defined positively instead of being defined negatively?
Here Dershowitz offers 6 solutions:
Suggestion 1. Become less tribal and ethnocentric, and welcome converts.
Suggestion 2. Adopt a different approach to the increasing reality of intermarriage.
Suggestion 3. Recognize the validity of secular Judaism.
Suggestion 4. Jewish educators should find ways to make Judaism more interesting and attractive to Jewish people. (And this is a way to leverage the Jewish comparative advantage as Men of Words.)
Suggestion 5. There should be Jewish schools that are open to everyone. (In much the same way that Harvard started out as a religious school and became something else.)
Suggestion 6. A new type of curriculum needs to be developed, somewhere midway between Orthodox and Reform. I think he uses the word "low fat Judaism." (p.334).
How has this worked out for him?
I will cut to the chase and tell you that: ALL bets are off for ALL of his suggestions.
In present times (and these are just the answers to his concluding six suggestions):
1. Not only have Jews become less welcoming to converts, but the conversion practices have become more abusive than they have ever been in history (I'm willing to bet you that the number of people caught copulating/ trying to copulate with their conversion candidates just in the last 20 years is greater than in the last 2000).
Categorical invalidation of conversions has become a regular thing, and all conversions can be assumed to only exist in some indeterminate state at the pleasure of Some Big Enough Rabbi who wants to use them as a bargaining chip / tool to make a point.
2. Reform is the same as it always has been in that they accept intermarriage. In the time since this book has been written, Conservative has gone almost all the way to extinction. (And unaffiliated/secular Jews have had a population explosion. Reform has been gaining a few people.)
3. Secular Judaism is having problems even in the State of Israel because Neanderthal Haredim have voting power in such a way as to cause a lot of problems for Everyone
Else. (Governments in Israel are lasting for a year at a time these days, and it's only going to get worse.)
4. Not even close to being close. There are more people sitting around in Kollel for longer periods of time than there ever have been in history
All of these young men sitting around polishing seats would never deign to do outreach work. (Or, really, anything that could even be vaguely construed as work. Such as washing dishes or opening a window.)
And who knows what difference it would make, since: The kiruv/ outreach movement is dead. (2,000 people come in per year through all efforts, which is a small fraction of the number of people who leave.)
And these Kollel Penguins are some PROFOUNDLY ignorant people about anything outside of Gemara. (I would charitably say that the average level of literacy in "English" for them is probably about 7th or 8th grade. Recently, the state of New York gave a test to 1,000 students from Orthodox schools that were suspected to be failing to meet standards, and Every. Single. Student. failed the exam.)
5. Nope. Not only that, but schools are going further in the direction of being exclusive. (People are getting really stupid with the reference requirements, etc.)
6. Nope. Just, no.
Other thoughts:
1. Not only have Jewish people not found a positive way to keep things going, but some have actually doubled down on a negative references--even to the point of manufacturing internal enemies of all sorts: The religion of Haredism has run off the rails in the United States (and Israel).
Incessant bickering about conversion, and kosher certification, prayer at the Wailing Wall And really anything else you can think about.
2. Modern/Open Orthodoxy (and that is approximately the choice that Dershowitz describes) is a diminished minor fraction of the Orthodox world (and the Orthodox World itself is still a minor fraction of all Judaism, birth rates notwithstanding) has a substantial attrition rate.
3. I wonder what does it mean to "keep Judaism alive."
It's not like we're only talking about one thing here.
∆∆If Maimonides rolled out of his grave this very day and walked into a Chabad house and met a couple of Meshichists, he would probably die a second time. And if that wasn't enough to kill him, then he could just walk into any Hasidic place and hear a couple of guys holding forth about dybbuks.
∆∆If the Vilna Gaon rolled out and found out that Hasidim and Mitnagdim were just about equal numbers and went to each other's shuls and referred to each other's rabbis...... he would roll right back in.
4.
Q:What has Dershowitz failed to understand?
A: Things that only a lawyer could misunderstand but of which no decent historian/social psychologist would be unaware.
Hoffer Quote: "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil."
And the positive attitude that Modern Orthodoxy has toward the world has NOT helped them to gain market share, nor has it even allowed them to hang on to their own people.
Haredim do lose a lot of their people (no, not everybody can extend Two Minutes of Hate into an entire life's mission; some people get tired of the sexual abuse scandal of the week/ chumra of the month), but their rabid hatred of EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY is an effective tool to keep them going as an active/non-shrinking movement.
And the fact that hatred is a stronger adhesive to a mass movement than love has been known for a long time. At least a half century before this book was written.
Other observations.....
Dershowitz observes that if you want to get attached to some secular movement, there is already one in existence that has Jewish overtones:
1. Jewish feminism (p.318);
2. Jewish environmentalism (p.317);
3. Jewish ethics (p.315);
4. Jewish spirituality (p.311--"You Don't Have to Become Buddhist.").
*****
Verdict: This book is fairly well written, and I'm agnostic on whether or not to recommend it to other people.
1. Books in the future that discuss the state of Judaism will recapitulate the observations that Dershowitz has made--and that other authors have *been* making.
And probably with many fewer words (I would estimate that this book can be condensed into 3 pages in a future book).
And you can see this happen all the time when people discuss the history of Reform/Conservative Judaism.
2.. "Israel: The Ever-dying People" was written by the twentieth century Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz. Essentially, every generation of Jewish people thinks that they're going to be the last. And in this respect, Dershowitz is putting very old wine in new bottles.
3. There are a lot of good references in the book to not-quite-classical Jewish literature. (The work of people like Theodore Herzl and the Yiddishists. )
They might make good further reading.
Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations by Arnold van de Laar
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
"Under The Knife"
5/5 stars
Of the book:
-309 pages of prose/29 chapters
≈11 pps/chapter
-62 references (exactly 31 books and exactly 31 journal articles)
-A glossary
-A good index
This is a brilliant book, and I recommend that it be read in conjunction with "Complications," by Atul Gawande.
It is just what it claims to be, which is: a brief history of surgery with a narrative are constructed by the history of 28 specific surgeries.
There are some pictures, but absolutely no graphs or diagrams.
It really has the feel of being written by a surgeon, because there are absolutely no wasted words in this book.
I'm also not clear whether or not it was originally written in English, but if it was: this Dutchman has an impressive command of the English language. His prose is so clear and engaging.
One of the central observations of this book is/has been/will be very much lost on most people, but: It is not sufficient to reason your way to what works; experiments have to actually be conducted, and hypotheses falsified.
In the case of surgeons, this means that a lot of people must die in botched procedures before it can be figured out what actually does work.
And it is amazing how long it took for surgery to reach the state that it has today.
Overarching thoughts:
1. "WOW! This author really/ REALLY does not like the Catholic Church / pontiff / papacy."
He finds a way to blowtorch pontiffs at some length.
Ch.5: Obesity/gluttony; witch hunts; draining patients of their blood so that they could give transfusions to corpulent popes; obesity caused obstructive sleep apnea; selling indulgences; continual anal fistulas and fissures from WAY too much receptive butt sex (Leo X).
Ch.6: Dementia (but, he referred to John Paul II as a "demented old man" instead of as a "dementia patient.")
2. I've heard a number of my relatives say on many occasions / independently of each other: "Damn! White people are so nasty."
And I had just thought that was a mean-spirited stereotype...... Until I read this book's documentation of appalling European filth (by a European, no less).
i. Louis XIV didn't have any teeth left by the time he was 40;
ii. He didn't take more than one shower in 72 years on the throne; and, he received visitors and held court on the toilet. (It appears that's where LBJ got his inspiration.)
iii. (p.142) The hygiene standards in Europe all the way up until probably past the time of Pasteur were ABSOLUTELY APPALLING
And this is not the first time I've read something like: "Washing or changing your clothes daily was not done in the 17th century. There was a good reason why wigs, perfume, and toilet waters were so popular. They were necessary to disguise the unwashed hair and the stench of the body and clothing."
How could people be romantically intimate with odors like that? Unless they been naturally selected to just not care about odors.
*******
There are so many good observations, that I will just give a selected listing of the most interesting points:
1. The author reevaluates the autopsy of JFK and shows that a "magic bullet" is not necessary to explain that President's death. (And that you could save yourself 3 hours of life watching the Oliver Stone documentary.)
2. Way back when, circumcision was a procedure of diabolical brutality. (These days, it's no more complicated than clipping a fingernail.)
3. Surgery involves three essential things: i. Tending to wounds; ii. Draining pus; iii. Treating fractures.
4. A lot of the surgical techniques that have been learned in the past century or so have only become needful as a result of increasing lifespan: arterial sclerosis was not something that doctors had experience with a century ago because patients didn't live that long.
5. Several centuries ago, surgery was an itinerant profession. (The mortality rate was very high and if your patient died you might want to skip town before his family got ahold to you.)
6. Out of the 305 pontiffs, the 5-year survival rate was only 54%. I think the shortest Pope was in office for 33 days.
7. (p.79) The red and white pole outside of a barber shop has its origin in the habit of hanging out blood splattered bandages so the people would know that a barber was also a surgeon. (Incidentally, Noah Gordon wrote an entire book about traveling barber surgeons.)
8. "No cure, no pay" has been legally changed to a surgeons being obligated to provide "duty of care." (p.82).
9. Walking upright has created a lot of work for (orthopedic) surgeons: varicose veins, hemorrhoids, broken hips, hernias.
10. Anesthesia was introduced to us in 1846. With diethyl ether.
11. Who knew? St Martin is an island that has been divided between a Dutch and French half for about 4 centuries now. (And everybody speaks English.)
Also, Italy as we know it just came into existence since 1870. Before, it was divided between France, the Papal States, and various other spheres. (Giuseppe Garibaldi was the one that unified the state.)
12. (p.117) The pirate with a peg leg is a cinema archetype, but in historical reality: a lot of them used to be seamen that had an amputation in the line of duty and could not return to service. They could have been beggars on land or pirates on the sea.
13. Bob Marley's death was a Darwin award. It seems that his cancer started out only in his toe, and it could have been eliminated by amputation of the toe. But for Rastafarianism.
14. Three types of surgical treatment: conservative, expectative, and invasive.
15. The course of X is Y days. If X has not happened by then, then it will not happen.
16. Hernias (protrusions) are actually of many types. (Umbilical. Diaphragmatic. Incisional. Femoral. Groin.)
And not everything that is referred to as a hernia actually is.
17. Biological age≠calendar age
18. Most problems with surgery occur after the fact, and never on the table.
19. The fast track / short stay approach has only been popular since 2004. But, really it has always been true that people need to get up and start moving as soon as possible after a surgery.
20. Several centuries ago, normal citizens could buy tickets to watch the Royal Family eat. Queen Caroline was so fat that she couldn't even turn over without the help of her servants. (p.208)
21. VI Lenin may have had a reason to have been so insane and despotic. Seems that it was a result of being shot and lead poisoned.
Second order thoughts:
1. Surgery is a nearly 100% empirical profession.
a. It is interesting how long it took before demanding empirical evidence became a common way of thinking. (The Four Humors were something that were not disprovable. )
b. By dint of its being empirical, all surgical knowledge proceeds by trial and error: some patients just have to die so you know what NOT to do.
c. There are SO many treatments that were empirically false that had been swept into the dustbin of history. (That should make people a little bit more humble in present times.)
2. Because surgery is so empirical / hit or miss/trial and error, the best thing you can do is not put yourself in a position to have to see the surgeon. Because you really have almost no idea what you are getting when you go under anesthesia (and that is in terms of the skills of the surgeon, to say nothing of procedures that don't have a long track record).
Eat less, exercise more, and don't smoke.
3. There is a shaky discussion ("Diagnosis" chapter) about the philosophical distinction between physicians and surgeons, and therefore a more general discussion of aspects of epistemology. (I really believe that the author confuses deductive and inductive reasoning, and that he would have made a more clear argument if he included ABDUCTIVE reasoning, which is actually nearly all of what physicians use.)
a. The Scientific Method, à la Karl Popper, combined both inductive and deductive reasoning less than a century ago.
b. Physicians come up with diagnoses as a result of process of elimination/exclusionary diagnoses/working diagnoses. What is "true" is least likely to be *untrue*.
4. European royalty has been extremely weird for centuries: Houses that are intermarrying, inbreeding, and exchanging members while their populations are at war with each other. As far back as the 1700s, "The Royal Family spoke French to each other and incomprehensible English with a German accent in public." (p.210).
The Windsor Family of the United Kingdom used to be "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" up until just a century ago.
****
Verdict: Strongly recommended.
Good quote (p.208): "For a patient with symptoms that you cannot explain, there is no better cure than to wait."
New vocabulary:
Intermittent claudication
Arthrosis
Gorget
Lithotomy
raspatory
Basso continuo
Busier (job title, p.217)
ordure
Mors in tabula
"Under The Knife"
5/5 stars
Of the book:
-309 pages of prose/29 chapters
≈11 pps/chapter
-62 references (exactly 31 books and exactly 31 journal articles)
-A glossary
-A good index
This is a brilliant book, and I recommend that it be read in conjunction with "Complications," by Atul Gawande.
It is just what it claims to be, which is: a brief history of surgery with a narrative are constructed by the history of 28 specific surgeries.
There are some pictures, but absolutely no graphs or diagrams.
It really has the feel of being written by a surgeon, because there are absolutely no wasted words in this book.
I'm also not clear whether or not it was originally written in English, but if it was: this Dutchman has an impressive command of the English language. His prose is so clear and engaging.
One of the central observations of this book is/has been/will be very much lost on most people, but: It is not sufficient to reason your way to what works; experiments have to actually be conducted, and hypotheses falsified.
In the case of surgeons, this means that a lot of people must die in botched procedures before it can be figured out what actually does work.
And it is amazing how long it took for surgery to reach the state that it has today.
Overarching thoughts:
1. "WOW! This author really/ REALLY does not like the Catholic Church / pontiff / papacy."
He finds a way to blowtorch pontiffs at some length.
Ch.5: Obesity/gluttony; witch hunts; draining patients of their blood so that they could give transfusions to corpulent popes; obesity caused obstructive sleep apnea; selling indulgences; continual anal fistulas and fissures from WAY too much receptive butt sex (Leo X).
Ch.6: Dementia (but, he referred to John Paul II as a "demented old man" instead of as a "dementia patient.")
2. I've heard a number of my relatives say on many occasions / independently of each other: "Damn! White people are so nasty."
And I had just thought that was a mean-spirited stereotype...... Until I read this book's documentation of appalling European filth (by a European, no less).
i. Louis XIV didn't have any teeth left by the time he was 40;
ii. He didn't take more than one shower in 72 years on the throne; and, he received visitors and held court on the toilet. (It appears that's where LBJ got his inspiration.)
iii. (p.142) The hygiene standards in Europe all the way up until probably past the time of Pasteur were ABSOLUTELY APPALLING
And this is not the first time I've read something like: "Washing or changing your clothes daily was not done in the 17th century. There was a good reason why wigs, perfume, and toilet waters were so popular. They were necessary to disguise the unwashed hair and the stench of the body and clothing."
How could people be romantically intimate with odors like that? Unless they been naturally selected to just not care about odors.
*******
There are so many good observations, that I will just give a selected listing of the most interesting points:
1. The author reevaluates the autopsy of JFK and shows that a "magic bullet" is not necessary to explain that President's death. (And that you could save yourself 3 hours of life watching the Oliver Stone documentary.)
2. Way back when, circumcision was a procedure of diabolical brutality. (These days, it's no more complicated than clipping a fingernail.)
3. Surgery involves three essential things: i. Tending to wounds; ii. Draining pus; iii. Treating fractures.
4. A lot of the surgical techniques that have been learned in the past century or so have only become needful as a result of increasing lifespan: arterial sclerosis was not something that doctors had experience with a century ago because patients didn't live that long.
5. Several centuries ago, surgery was an itinerant profession. (The mortality rate was very high and if your patient died you might want to skip town before his family got ahold to you.)
6. Out of the 305 pontiffs, the 5-year survival rate was only 54%. I think the shortest Pope was in office for 33 days.
7. (p.79) The red and white pole outside of a barber shop has its origin in the habit of hanging out blood splattered bandages so the people would know that a barber was also a surgeon. (Incidentally, Noah Gordon wrote an entire book about traveling barber surgeons.)
8. "No cure, no pay" has been legally changed to a surgeons being obligated to provide "duty of care." (p.82).
9. Walking upright has created a lot of work for (orthopedic) surgeons: varicose veins, hemorrhoids, broken hips, hernias.
10. Anesthesia was introduced to us in 1846. With diethyl ether.
11. Who knew? St Martin is an island that has been divided between a Dutch and French half for about 4 centuries now. (And everybody speaks English.)
Also, Italy as we know it just came into existence since 1870. Before, it was divided between France, the Papal States, and various other spheres. (Giuseppe Garibaldi was the one that unified the state.)
12. (p.117) The pirate with a peg leg is a cinema archetype, but in historical reality: a lot of them used to be seamen that had an amputation in the line of duty and could not return to service. They could have been beggars on land or pirates on the sea.
13. Bob Marley's death was a Darwin award. It seems that his cancer started out only in his toe, and it could have been eliminated by amputation of the toe. But for Rastafarianism.
14. Three types of surgical treatment: conservative, expectative, and invasive.
15. The course of X is Y days. If X has not happened by then, then it will not happen.
16. Hernias (protrusions) are actually of many types. (Umbilical. Diaphragmatic. Incisional. Femoral. Groin.)
And not everything that is referred to as a hernia actually is.
17. Biological age≠calendar age
18. Most problems with surgery occur after the fact, and never on the table.
19. The fast track / short stay approach has only been popular since 2004. But, really it has always been true that people need to get up and start moving as soon as possible after a surgery.
20. Several centuries ago, normal citizens could buy tickets to watch the Royal Family eat. Queen Caroline was so fat that she couldn't even turn over without the help of her servants. (p.208)
21. VI Lenin may have had a reason to have been so insane and despotic. Seems that it was a result of being shot and lead poisoned.
Second order thoughts:
1. Surgery is a nearly 100% empirical profession.
a. It is interesting how long it took before demanding empirical evidence became a common way of thinking. (The Four Humors were something that were not disprovable. )
b. By dint of its being empirical, all surgical knowledge proceeds by trial and error: some patients just have to die so you know what NOT to do.
c. There are SO many treatments that were empirically false that had been swept into the dustbin of history. (That should make people a little bit more humble in present times.)
2. Because surgery is so empirical / hit or miss/trial and error, the best thing you can do is not put yourself in a position to have to see the surgeon. Because you really have almost no idea what you are getting when you go under anesthesia (and that is in terms of the skills of the surgeon, to say nothing of procedures that don't have a long track record).
Eat less, exercise more, and don't smoke.
3. There is a shaky discussion ("Diagnosis" chapter) about the philosophical distinction between physicians and surgeons, and therefore a more general discussion of aspects of epistemology. (I really believe that the author confuses deductive and inductive reasoning, and that he would have made a more clear argument if he included ABDUCTIVE reasoning, which is actually nearly all of what physicians use.)
a. The Scientific Method, à la Karl Popper, combined both inductive and deductive reasoning less than a century ago.
b. Physicians come up with diagnoses as a result of process of elimination/exclusionary diagnoses/working diagnoses. What is "true" is least likely to be *untrue*.
4. European royalty has been extremely weird for centuries: Houses that are intermarrying, inbreeding, and exchanging members while their populations are at war with each other. As far back as the 1700s, "The Royal Family spoke French to each other and incomprehensible English with a German accent in public." (p.210).
The Windsor Family of the United Kingdom used to be "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" up until just a century ago.
****
Verdict: Strongly recommended.
Good quote (p.208): "For a patient with symptoms that you cannot explain, there is no better cure than to wait."
New vocabulary:
Intermittent claudication
Arthrosis
Gorget
Lithotomy
raspatory
Basso continuo
Busier (job title, p.217)
ordure
Mors in tabula