Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[The Wizard Joseph]

An old copy of Grimm's fairy tales.

After a bit of selecting I'm to be reading some for the board and post the audio files in a new thread.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm reading The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris; she co-wrote Mistakes were made (but not by me) with Aronsen, and it was really good, so I picked this up and so far it is also very good. Basically, at this point, she is just talking about all the research that has been conducted in an attempt to find concrete neurobiological differences between men and women, and how that research has been interpreted.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

I'm reading The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris; she co-wrote Mistakes were made (but not by me) with Aronsen, and it was really good, so I picked this up and so far it is also very good. Basically, at this point, she is just talking about all the research that has been conducted in an attempt to find concrete neurobiological differences between men and women, and how that research has been interpreted.

LOL didnt Mistakes Were Made push False Memory Syndrome?

[Sung Low]

I'm reading The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris; she co-wrote Mistakes were made (but not by me) with Aronsen, and it was really good, so I picked this up and so far it is also very good. Basically, at this point, she is just talking about all the research that has been conducted in an attempt to find concrete neurobiological differences between men and women, and how that research has been interpreted.

LOL didnt Mistakes Were Made push False Memory Syndrome?

Yes yes Ron. You be the cleverest.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm reading The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris; she co-wrote Mistakes were made (but not by me) with Aronsen, and it was really good, so I picked this up and so far it is also very good. Basically, at this point, she is just talking about all the research that has been conducted in an attempt to find concrete neurobiological differences between men and women, and how that research has been interpreted.

LOL didnt Mistakes Were Made push False Memory Syndrome?

Yes yes Ron. You be the cleverest.

Also, it did the exact opposite.

Why does he respond to anything I post? Does he think I'm reading his posts? I only see them when people quote him, which I really don't understand why people bother to do. He doesn't have anything to say.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

I'm reading The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris; she co-wrote Mistakes were made (but not by me) with Aronsen, and it was really good, so I picked this up and so far it is also very good. Basically, at this point, she is just talking about all the research that has been conducted in an attempt to find concrete neurobiological differences between men and women, and how that research has been interpreted.

LOL didnt Mistakes Were Made push False Memory Syndrome?

Yes yes Ron. You be the cleverest.

Also, it did the exact opposite.

Why does he respond to anything I post? Does he think I'm reading his posts? I only see them when people quote him, which I really don't understand why people bother to do. He doesn't have anything to say.

WOW SON,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            


U BUT ANGREY I hav neer seen sum1 so pooper peeved u ned to tak chilpil and stop raping your ownasswit with husband you are the gayest fgt in fgtopia, no u r the mayor lol u troled so fukin hard u wan sum ice for the ASSBURN? U cry tears of blud and cum ur mom's penis out your angry butthole gb2 pussybaby land where u git own3d by dick "omg i love sukin dicks and crying to link park"-You ur butt is evaporating cum bcuz it is steaming wit angr SUMBUDY IS ANALLY ANGUISHED its lik u r seeding wit raeg

Also thats interesting. I might have to pick that book up since its so rare for mainstream scientists to call out False Memory creeps on their bullshit. Especially related to sacred cows of the "it couldnt happen here" consensus like McMartin.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

Why does he respond to anything I post? Does he think I'm reading his posts? I only see them when people quote him, which I really don't understand why people bother to do. He doesn't have anything to say.

Of course you dont sweatheart. Thats why you post consistently in every one of my threads.

[Sung Low]

Charming

/sarc/~~~~~~#######

[themanwhocreatedjazz]

I've been reading a lot of the poetry in Ratio 3: Media shamans - especially the Ira Cohen pieces.


Good stuff.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not reading it yet, but I just discovered this exists and I WANTS IT:

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

So, Hardboiled Anxiety is unbearably dull (I am not a hardboiled-author-biography nerd, and I suspect the only people who would enjoy this book are the kind of folks who would write fanfiction about Hammett and Chandler running into each other in a shrink's office & discovering their forbidden love).

I switched to bolo'bolo, which is interesting but just a bit too dense: it's the first anarchist tract I've read that really manages to drive home the whole "the system is made of people" thing and put forward a clear model of how parts of the global economic/political system could be subverted long enough to provide stable alternatives. That said, the author really likes him some neologisms (along with reappropriation of existing terminology: he has some simple infographics describing political ideas, but he calls them "yantras"), and it makes the otherwise short and interesting read drag a bit: I'm about half-way through this book, even though it's less than 200 pages long, because every few sentences I have to wrack my brain trying to remember what the author means by some term.

So, as a result, I started reading Thomas Rid's Rise of the Machines, a history of concepts from cybernetics as they impact culture. I'm not very far in, but thus far it's pretty readable (compared to other books I've read on the subject, which tend to be more technical and less eclectic); I've read some excerpts from later in the book that really convinced me it would be a good read. The main thing I worry about is that it might lean too far toward a general audience, and avoid actually addressing important ideas like shannon entropy or self-organizing systems. There's also one weird glitch in the introduction, wherein the author says that he, "like other people working in cybersecurity", always assumed that the "cyber" prefix originated with Neuromancer's coinage of "cyberspace", which seems kind of absurd -- who hasn't at least heard of cybernetic feedback, even though they call it systems theory now? -- but hopefully it'll turn out to be a strange one-off problem, like Gertner calling UNIX a "programming language" in his otherwise wonderfully well-researched history of Bell Labs, The Idea Factory.

Since I last posted in this thread, I also read two Warren Ellis books: Gun Machine and NORMAL. Gun Machine borders on standard police-procedural, and is probably the most mainstream Ellis has ever been, but it retains some of his trademark oddness and occultic ideas; it would probably be more accessible to a New Yorker with an interest in NYC history, because it sort of centers around geographically- and historically-themed events around NYC (sort of like Ghostbusters 2016 sets itself up to do). NORMAL is very entertaining, but most of the ideas in it aren't super new to me, and Ellis does less than usual to make them interesting; it's also very short.

I also read John Higgs' history of the KLF, KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band that Burned a Million Pounds. Higgs is always entertaining, and this book makes a good pairing with Gorightly's various histories of discordianism. It's sort of a strange parallel to Cosmic Trigger, insomuch as it follows a couple of guys who embrace their very minimal exposure to discordian ideas and get sucked in: one of the KLF members read only the first book of Illuminatus! (though he briefly worked on sets for Ken Campbell's stage play), and the other hadn't read any at all; both though discordianism was something made up for Illuminatus rather than something anyone actually practiced; as a result, when they became super famous with a discordian-themed musical group, they were jaked by various parties & took the jakes seriously, leading to The White Room, among other things. When they finally burned a million pounds, they didn't realize that they were performing an act that occurs in Illuminatus, & that chaos magicians have discussed at length as a very potent ritual.

[Abbot Mythos]

I'm reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

And, I learned a new word: 'trumpery.' Thoreau uses it several times in first the chapter.

[Abbot Mythos]

I'm now reading The Antichrist by F. W. Nietzsche.

According to the book's 'Introduction,' this is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I just started reading "Complications" by Atul Gawande. So far it's very engaging.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

"Magicians of the Gods", by Graham Hancock. Yeah yeah, I know it's bunk, but I'm a sucker for this stuff. And he's abandoned some of the more ridiculous theories (which he does admit to, not just quietly sweep away) from the last book in this series 20 years ago. In this book he presents quite a bit of actual real science from geology, including points from critiques and counterpoints to those -- from scientific papers published in journals, not just his own conjecture. Anyway as unlikely as his hypotheses are, it's a fun way to tour some ancient megalithic sites.