Crenshaw's Books & Decks

In Phising for Phools George A. Akerlof --co-Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics--, and Robert J. Shiller --co-Winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics--, discuss the myriad ways in which Politics, the Economy (stock market, businesses, marketers, advertisers) actively use deception and manipulation with all of us, they phish for phools, us. The chilling part is that most of those people are not evil people, they are playing by the rules in an Free-Market Economy that  allows them to deceive and trick us for their benefit using the natural working of the economic system, first, and by exploiting humans' psychological cognitive biases and weaknesses, then. "The free-market system exploits our weaknesses automatically". They lead us to misinterpret reality and act on our misinterpretations, they exploit the conflict between what we need and what we crave, they exploit the volatility of our emotions, they present things in ways that are deceiving but trigger our automatic responses. Thus, we will buy things and services we don't need, at prices that are way over their real value, they will are sell products and services that aren't what they say they are.  Phishing is inevitable. We are all phools by nature. 

The book is structured in three parts. The first is a sort of framework on Behavioural Economics. The authors heavily and explicitly rely on Robert Cialdini's lists of basic biases and principles exploited by marketers and sellers, and everyone that want something from you:   

"we are phishable because we want to reciprocate gifts and favors; because we want to be nice to people we like; because we do not want to disobey authority; because we tend to follow others in deciding how to behave; because we want our decisions to be internally consistent; and because we are averse to taking losses. 23 Following Cialdini, each of these respective biases is paired with common salesman’s tricks." (p. 7). 

Here we also find defined Phishing Equilibrium (those economic forces that build manipulation and deception into the system unless we take courageous steps to fight it.), a concept that will be repeatedly mentioned throughout the book.

Part Two presents the microeconomics of phishing for phools in different contexts: advertising, marketing, politics, real estate, car sales, credit cards, the food and drug industries and the alcohol and tobacco industries. We are also presented with two specific examples from the financial markets, how bankruptcy is used for profit by some financial institutions or financial gurus (examining the case of Michael Milken and his junk bonds) and the crisis of the 1980s. This part ends with a brief exam of anti-phishing heroes, that is, people, private and public organisations and associations in the US that have fought for the right of consumers and for fairer and more ethical business practices. 

Part Three contains two chapters.The Conclusion, which focus on the Economical policies of the US Government and how the change on focus after Regan had dramatic repercussions in the Economy, favouring phishing-for-fools practices like  never before. In the Afterword we are presented with the authors' particular view on the nature of the Free Market, what is good and bad with iy; they explicitly state that this chapter is addressed to their critics, i.e. other economists who advocate the wonders of Free Market and ignore its dark side, or consider economic crisis (resulting from phishing for phool practices) as something exogenous and exceptional, when they are actually endogenous, at the very core of how the Marke works. In this chapter, Akerlof & Shiller also try to contribute to behavioural economics by adding another element to Cialdini's list. The core of their contribution is:

We are claiming that economists’ view of markets makes similar oversimplification. It may be standard economics to pretend that economic pathologies are only “externalities.” But the ability of free markets to engender phishing for phools of many different varieties is not an externality. Rather, it is inherent in the workings of competitive markets. And the same motives for profit that give us a healthy benign economy if everyone is fully rational are the same motives that give us the economic pathologies of phishing for phools. (p.166)

***

This an interesting book, that succeeds mainly at three levels. Firstly, the authors make a terrific job at letting us distinguish the forest from the trees and vice versa. The trees are the phishers (businesses, industries, financial groups, corporations, dealers and facilitators of services, networking sites that have Phishing at the core of their economical practices). Phishing is everywhere, and that is so because the trees are part of a forest, the Economy of Free Market, of how this  works, and of the Politics and economical practises associated with it, which make possible the growth of the forest. Secondly, they succeed at presenting the forest for what it is, a beautiful luscious green forest full of berries and edible wonders that is inhabited by wolves, witches and nasty beings, allow me the analogy. Thirdly, the authors succeed at having a social conscience and at seeing beyond their own noses, and analysing the Economy with a bit of objective distance and with a good deal of ethics, advocating economical practices that are more beneficial for both the Economy and Society in general, not just a parasitic symbiosis that benefits the Economy and its actors. Fourthly, they succeed at adding another layer of interpretation to the biases mentioned in Cialdini's list, that of the mental script or framework. People are phishable because of the stories they tell themselves, or place themselves in, are very important (subconsciously) in the decisions they make, something that leads phishers to create manipulative stories that resonate with the phools and are advantageous to the phishers.

On the other hand the authors also fail at several levels. They fail at times to go beyond what we already know in general. Let's be honest, haven't you found two grandpas in a park talking about how the Economy was different in the old days when there was more protection for workers, Medicare was better when, University free and there was some sort of better life balance Don't you know, upfront, that Politicians would lie and manipulate in pre-election campaigns to get your vote? that lobbies are happy lobbying everywhere and selling things that make you sick? that the commercial that says that  a moisturiser is going to get rid of your wrinkles or the lotion that will make your receding hairline come back are BS and  manicured lies? or that the free stuff given to you by some businesses is never ever free? Don't you tell yourself at times, damn it, this seller was so good that despite me knowing that he was selling half-truths I still fell for them? Secondly, the psychological part, the biases and heuristics, and all the psychology on which Behavioural Economics rely are barely sketched as the information used, although very well presented, is not theirs. They haven't done any psychological study on phishing for phools.
Overall the book is very well edited, with barely any typo, and a good rendering for Kindle. I just noticed a few thingies, resulting from the conversion, like words whose syllables have been automatically split.

The noting system, the bibliography and the index are properly done and a a pleasure to go through. I love and respect any author that bothers to provide these following academic criteria, and that provides notes that are rich in content. Indeed, some points are discussed at length in them. In these case, they are also a sort of  treasure chest for me and I got a good list of new readings to add to my reading list. The notes occupy  52 pages! The index is properly linked back in the Kindle edition, something that I expect from any Kindle edition but it is rarely there.

Akerlof & Shiller have produced a book that has an unified style, with occasional references to them as individuals. They use a very approachable language and the examples they present are really interesting, intriguing and to the point under discussion. and some of them very entertaining. I am not familiar or comfortable with the language of Economics and Finances, so I really enjoyed how the authors describe and analyse the World crisis in the1980s and the collapse of the markets in 2008, or on how crap-bonus work. Some of their explanatory analogies are great.

The book is well structured and organised, very didactic. "We are going to", appears frequently. At the beginning of the book they summarise the parts and chapters of the book and this repeated again at the beginning of Part 2, which is the bulkier one, and the conclusion also makes good points summarising the approach, findings and conclusion. Besides. each chapter ends with a very pertinent summary about the main points discussed in it. However, overall,  the style of the book is a bit conference-like, sophomores course like, and a bit simplistic at times, a bit complex at others.

I dislike it when authors use pretentious words that aren't relevant for what is being said. For example, in this book, I found six times "parenthetically" in expressions like "(We note, parenthetically, that perhaps....) Can you see the brackets, yes? So do I. Unless you are blind you don't need this sort of thing.  I also dislike when the contrary happens, when words that are not popular should be there and are replaced for something too simplistic, in this case "monkey-on-the-shoulder" instead of subconscious. To put it differently, if your are going to be snobbish, great, do that consistently all the way, and if you are going to be pro-general-reader do so consistently and all the way.

I have an problem with Academics using Wikipedia as a source of anything. We all love Wikipedia, don't we?, but we cannot ignore that, unless we are reading an entry about a celebrity (and even those) the Wikipedia can be misleading and heavily biased, and is not always properly curated. And hey, the Wiki is becoming the only source of knowledge, that is another way of phishing for phools... Wikipedia has the best phishers's crafted grabbing story ever. Besides, any professional editor will tell you that references to encyclopaedias and dictionaries are not recommended in an academic publication unless you are using very specialised terminology that is difficult to find in your usual Oxford dictionary or encyclopaedia or when the definition of word is vital a la Wittgenstein. Now, you can understand my surprise at finding 25+ references to the Wikipedia in the footnotes, when the information could have been obtained through other sources. If this wasn't enough, our Nobel couple use it to provide a contrast definition opposing theirs in the use of the expression... 'rip-off'. Yes, no joke. I'd rather go to the Urban Dictionary for definitions of modern terms, as they show that words aren't always used like a monolith or, I wanted to be  rigourous, I would go to any Oxford dictionary. Yet, do you need any dictionary or encyclopaedia to define 'rip-off'? And, if this wasn't enough, the definition the give of 'rip-off' is like buying "overpriced". Not only that, the same definition of what they mean by rip-off is repeated several times throughout the book as this was just a novelty.  I see in all this the hand of the undergraduates "assistants", not the work of two Nobel laureates.

Arkof & Shiller are gracious enough to enthusiastically acknowledge everybody, every single person!, who has contributed to the book. They are very honest about what they did personally and what their research assistants did. That is always to praise, especially with Academics, as too often this is not the case, sadly. They especially praise their three research assistants, three exceptional Yale undergraduates, who did the research for them, edited the book for them, and made suggestions: Victoria Buhler, Diana Li, and Jack Newsham. So, if they did the editing, why aren't they presented as editors of the book or co-authors? Undergraduates co-authors with Nobel prices, you must be joke, you might say. Yet, they are good enough to make some of the work for them. And the authors themselves say, :

 The ideas in this book are a collage of what we have learned, and what we have listened to, over the course of our lives as economists. (p. 77)

After seeing the bibliography, well, I understood why is so good and so large

 ***

Brilliant at times, mediocre at others, pretentious at others, thought-provoking overall, Phishing for Phools is a great reading that I don't think showcases properly the brilliant mind of the authors, but it is intriguing and entertaining enough.

Phishing for Phools reminds me of the brilliant animated clip below. I watched it about 3-4 years ago and is still one of my favourite animated shorts, i-Diots could be called i-phools as well.  

I have lived in different countries, and in areas within a given country, and I have always been the other, the alien, the non-native,  the foreign or the outsider. It has always shocked me to the core of my being that people would change their behaviour towards me, dramatically, depending on which country they think I come from, that they would treat me more or less or just as a different person for something that is not in me but in their eyes. 

 This is a short essay (not a book) on a subject dear to my heart: averse racism, cultural stereotyping, xenophobia, cultural imperialism, discrimination, and categorisation, the varieties of strong Prejudice we find (or at least I find) often in our daily life. This essay summarises well how Prejudice works, how to spot it and how to be aware of it in your own life, in other people, in the news, and, most importantly, in you. The essay uses well known studies and experiments about biases and heuristics to explain how Prejudice works and keeps alive, and provides ways of counterbalancing categorisation.

I like most of what Pollard has written, even though he has just written very little. He acknowledges that "the average person isn’t going to read a psychology textbook to learn these concepts, so I’m pleased to pack the ideas into a brief, concise book" (loc, 41-42) and that he is touching many subjects and is just scratching the surface. I always appreciate honesty and lack of BS.  

The essay is short and sweet, very well intentioned, and very didactic as it explains things in ways easy to apply to our daily lives, behaviour or what we hear or read in the news about "the others". Pollard uses simple analogies to explain things, leaving theories aside to present an essay on applied psychology that reads with gusto. I love works that remind the reader not to live on auto-pilot, not to relate to people as labels, and to see the beam in your eye instead of focusing on the speck in your neighbour's. That is always priceless and the path to high levels of consciousness. If you want a succinct, clear and useful first approach to the subject and you want to discover  your blind spot and see how you are prejudiced and a subtle racist, well, this essay will help you to do that easily.

If you are a Psychology student or just a connoisseur on the matter, this essay is not for you as it is simplistic, unoriginal, does not have a  proper academic referencing or even a recommended reading list, the bibliography mentioned is classic but outdated, and it reads more like a short seminar from University than anything else.

The most important message you get from this essay is this, 

By the time you finish reading, I sincerely hope you have a better understanding of people as a whole. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we all are. People. (loc. 66-67)

Now, who is the author James Pollard? No info in Amazon or Goodreads. Google the Ooragle knows it all. His Linkdlh. and  website show that Pollard is not a psychologist, he just has a basic three-year degree in Psychology & Business, and he is mostly a New Age money-making guru and financial advisor. This doesn't invalidate the contents of the book, just points to the fact that you have to go elsewhere to read something with more substance.  

Mind - 3 bucks for a 42-page essay that is not based on original research or own expertise is not really a bargain. But, I enjoyed it.

What a cool book

What is insight? How does it manifest? Which things favour insight? Which things prevent insight from happening? Which forms does insight takes? How can we increase insight in our private and work life? Klein does have the answers.

Klein departs from the analysis of the a classic work on insight, Graham Wallas's The Art of thought (1926), especially  the chapter "Stages of Control", which presents a four-stage model of insight: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. This model is still the most common explanation of how insight work. Klein acknowledges the good points that Wallas makes, but shows the deficiencies of this system  to provide an explanation to how many real cases of insight occur.

After doing his own research Klein proposes an alternative model, which allows researchers to explain all cases, major and minor, of insight. Klein calls it the Triple Path Model. In this model each pathway has its own means of altering the beliefs that anchor the way we understand things and restructure beliefs (that is, the story we use to understand events). Klein says that Wallas wasn’t wrong, he was addressing just one of the three paths.

Klein shows that there are five different strategies for gaining insights, although most insights are a combo of at least two: 1/connections, that is connecting the dots even when not all the dots are visible, which happens by being exposed to many different ideas. 2/ Coincidences, which are sparked by the question, what is going on here?. 3/ Curiosities, which comes for the realisation that there is something seriously wrong with the story we tell ourselves. That realisation can be achieved by having an open mind or just by having a critical sceptical mind to investigate paths that others have missed. 4/ Contradictions, which lead to paradigm shifts, and 5/ Creative desperation, which is the result of accidental unplanned events, of being in the right place at the right time. Point one four and five are the most common, while 56% of the cases were the 'aha!' type and 44% were gradual insights.

Klein digs in into his own research material and bibliography to try to understand the link among the five categories of connections. The second and third part of the book are devoted to an analysis of what interferes with insights and what promotes it. 

Among the elements that interfere with insight, beyond our daily moments of  stupidity fostered by  us being on autopilot, are 1/ flawed beliefs, 2/ lack of experience, 3/ a passive stance, and 4/ a concrete reasoning style, which is exacerbated by the constrictions that some software has in the work we do, the mere nature of the Internet, and organisational guidelines, procedures, filtering methods, and the zeal to reduce uncertainty and minimise errors with leads them to the  predictability trap and the perfection trap.
The ways unearthed by Klein to foster insights are 1/Critical thinking; 2/ opening up to contradictions and using other people's perspective and views; 3/ having encounters with different kinds of people, working in a variety of areas, peppering us with new ideas.; 4/ focusing on contradictions and 5/regarding organisations, it also involves not being so focused on the war on error, loosening the control filters, and increasing organisational willpower.

Klein makes a detailed and clear exposition of how he approached this research and is honest about the sources and method he uses. He uses a naturalist approach, that is, he uses examples from people acting in the real world under natural conditions, and not from people subject to artificial lab psychological tests. I am sure the Academia, the establishment, will hit back and question his approach, but I love when people who are part of the same Academia question it and come up with new approaches and theories. Klein is a Ph.D. scientist, a respected psychologist, who has been there, done what he is supposed to do and seen that it does not always work. When he criticises lab experiments in the field of Insight, he is not using generalisations or is not saying that lab research is not good, he is saying that lab research is leading nowhere in the field and that models developed in the early 20th century are not good enough to explain how insight occurs. His critique is elegant, tamed and conciliatory. I love that true researchers are always non dogmatic. They are the ones giving us breakthroughs in Science not the others.

The examples he uses for his study come from the real world: the military, astronomy, medicine, fire fighting, scientific discoveries, the stock market, corporate world, sports, and from Klein's own personal and family life, and they are truly illustrative, and very interesting for the lay reader.

Some brilliant quotes by Klein in this book
 >> "I don’t believe insights are the same as “aha,” any more than conception is the same as orgasm."

>> Systems such as Google determine what we don’t want to see and either filter it out completely or bury it so deep, perhaps on page 25 of the search results, that we probably won’t find it. The personalised searches we get from Google, Yahoo, and others gauge our preferences and then screen out the items we’re likely to find irrelevant. Pariser argues that searches also need to show us items that are challenging and even uncomfortable. They need to expose us to other points of view. (p. 147).
>> Our insights transform us in several ways. They change how we understand, act, see, feel, and desire.
>> Intuition is the use of patterns they’ve already learned, whereas insight is the discovery of new patterns (p. 27).
>> I don’t believe the purpose of science is to do “good” science. The purpose of science is to learn more about the world, including the world of insights. We don’t want to be sloppy about it. We want to use methods that yield results worth taking seriously. We shouldn’t, however, become so fixated on the methods that we lose sight of the object of our inquiry. We shouldn’t evolve a set of methods that don’t fully capture the phenomenon we want to understand. (p. 178)

The book has two main downsides. The first, is that Klein's considerations about his naturalistic approach are repetitive and redundant at times, split in two different parts of the book. A chapter on methodology would have sufficed and, honestly, I would have expected the editor to regroup Klein's considerations in whichever part was most convenient. Regarding content, many of the considerations that Klein makes regarding how to foster insight in the corporate world and organisations are a bit 'wouldn't be nice?', because although he solutions he proposes are great, they go against how the corporate world and organisations are structured and function internally. 

This is a book really easy to read, well structured, entertaining, and with substance, and some aha moments that make any reading always special.

Paul Auster is one of my favourite writers, and I have read a good deal of his books. This is the favourite of one of my friends so I got it from my public library basically because of his insistence I would love it. Yes, I did love it. I was  mesmerised, once again, by Auster's mastery.

Unlike many of Auster's books, this story is not contemporary or fresh, immediate or "abstract". However, the book shares with other books the quality of the writing, the importance of Magic Realism (Auster is a master at creating a distinctively American magic realism), his use of the English language, and the brilliant way in which he builds his characters and stories to make them utterly realistic and believable no matter how outrageous the premises are.

Mr Vertigo is a delightful entertaining reading, full of adventure, fun and surrealism. It is also a lesson on how to write an a-priory fantastic story in a believable way, and on how to write a historical novel without writing one, yet capturing the events of a decade with freshness, verisimilitude, accuracy and respect.

Have you ever dreamt of levitating? Do you recall the feeling in the dream? I do, and I felt that part of those sensations, feelings and experiences were captured in the levitation phase of the book. The childhood and circus years are infused, to me, in an end-of-the-19th century feeling, perhaps because there is a transitional mood from an old era to a new one in these pages. This part is, indeed, my favourite. I felt that Walter's adult years, despite being greatly narrated, didn't have that enthralling magic feeling that the first part of the book had; in that regard, the mood of the book is uneven. 

Walter's life is full of wonder and you want be part of it. Levitate!

The Internet of Garbage is a personal reading for me because many of the issues discussed in the book have affected me personally, directly, in my online life, and too often to consider them isolated incidents. Herewith just three examples of a long list of personal examples of vilification due, mostly, to me being a woman.

***

Long ago I was in Flicker. My nick didn't show my gender. A contact used to praise my photos to the heavens. That was until he called me "man" and I told him that I was a woman. He started visiting my photo stream to abuse me, not my photos. From great photo to you are mentally disabled by making this photo, from a comment on my photo, you are an idiot. I ended blocking him because his vilification seemed to have no stop. In real life he seemed to be a normal guy, newly-married, happy, very social. That was his mask. With me he showed his real self. The abusive sexist prick he really is.

Long ago, I visited one of the Whirlpool forums to comment on an online company's misleading info about one of the products I had purchased from them. There was a representative of the company in the thread. He was the only person who treated me with respect and didn't bully me for just posting a post that wasn't offensive. I ignored the pricks. Yet, when I left, the bullying was in crescendo for no reason. My nick was female.

 ***

The Internet of Garbage is a short book, (or rather booklet) on different issues related to the garbage invading the Internet. The book is a very honest in-depth approach to the Internet on areas like gender harassment and vilification, doxing, SWATing, trolling, moderation, free speech and spam from a person who knows, inside out, how social networks and online platforms work and their legal and technical intricacies.

What is garbage? What does constitute spam? What does spam and harassment have in common? How does garbage present itself online? What we do with it? What should we do with it? Are the procedures to control online garbage working or not, and why? Moderation or blocking? Free speech or banning? Which groups are more likely to be harassed? Which groups are more likely to take the case to the Police and Court? Is harassment gendered or coloured? Why is online harassment so scary? Does harassment occur because the Internet is too big or too small? These are some of the questions that Jeong tackles and replies to in this book.

What I like the most about this book is not the focus on issues that are of great interest to me, or the knowledge on the area Jeong has, but the fact that she has a natural tendency to balance her own discourse, to see the pros and cons of anything she says, and to analyse any given aspect from different sides, never in a monolithic way. You have to praise that sort of old-school savoir fair because it is a rara avis nowadays.

Jeong offers a deep analysis that is missing from many books on the Internet, which can pinpoint and whine about the flaws of the system but aren't able to propose solutions to tackle situations for very difficult online issues. Some of the stuff Jeong discusses is very technical, with legal implications, but it is presented in an approachable language.

Jeong makes terrific points about how to deal with the crap on the Internet. She is convinced that the architecture of the Internet and the focus on behaviour (and not content) in my site's  conduct codes and policies are the key to curb down the volume and nastiness of online garbage. You cannot solve the problem of harassment, threats and abuse on the Internet by focusing just on the content posted, but by focusing on and addressing the behaviour that generates it. You can remove all the nasty comments manually but you aren't really creating a well-behaved online community that promotes healthy behaviour and excludes the usual mob of sociopathic misogynists and those who befriend them. She shows how functional platforms can be built and structured to promote a flow of  information, code of conduct and self-regulatory rules that promote healthy behaviour and naturally shred the garbage. Banning, blocking, filtering are just small tools that won't solve the problem, just give relief to the victims. Code is never neutral, the architecture of the Internet matters enormously.

 I find this very important, personally. I was recently insulted for a review that has 3.5 stars and the troll thought it was too low. He didn't uttered a swear word, but insulted me upfront, obvious to anybody who can read. I contacted the moderation team, as this troll is not a regular reviewer, and every time he comes to the site is to annoy me. The moderator told me that, unless the comment is explicitly racist or contains profanity (something very subjective as it varies from culture to culture, religion to religion), they cannot erase his comments. I deleted them myself. His activity in the the site is being tracked by the moderation team.  Even if he is eventually banned, he could reappear using another email address and nick and nothing would be solved. That is so because bad behaviour is not tackled by the moderation policies of the site. I  mentioned this book to the lovely guy who attended my complaint. Oh, Yes!

Although Jeong focus a good deal on well-known cases of female harassment (Caroline Criado Pérez, Anita Sarkeesian, Amanda Hess, Zoe Quinn, and Kathy Sierra), she calls the attention on the fact that not only women are targeted. independent male thinkers also are. And, of course, Afro-Americans, Latinos, gays, immigrants, and any 'minority' who are not in the media often because, at least in the States, they think it twice before going to the Police to complain about any issue, not just about online harassment.

I love Jeong's analysis on how online sites deal with spam detection, deletion and control, ad extracts positive conclusions that could be applied to the fight against online harassment. Also inspired is her discourse on the relation between discourses of free speech on the internet, banning and the USA's First Amendment to the Constitution. 

Jeong is also great at showing how the inadequacy and inefficiency of the system lead people who suffer from severe harassment, doxing, SWATing and physical attacks included, to retort to intricate legal  openings, like Copyright Laws, to find a way to deal with their issue (García v. Google).

Despite this being a great book, the language used is dry, clinical and a bit uninspired for the general public. It is jargon-free, that is great, but also a bit aseptic. I understand that, for a lawyer, the definition of what a word means is utterly important, that matters in Court, as much as the punctuation or tone of a given text. Yet, unless you are in Court or writing and targeting a specific group of readers, you don't need to define what spam is or what garbage is. My opinion.

A typo correction. Please, write Spanish surnames with their proper accent, Pérez and García are not accented throughout the book.

The title doesn't make any favour to the book as it is misleading. It seems to imply that all Internet is crap, while, in fact, the book focus on how much garbage the Internet has, and the need to clean it up and how to do this. One day Internet and garbage might be synonyms but, they are not so as yet.  

The Internet of Garbage is a great reading, a very thought-provoking book with a babble-free crappola-free discourse. This is also a great book to quote when we deal with moderation teams that adduce obsolete codes of conduct that focus on content not on behaviour to leave trolls and pathological misogynists camp at will in our space. 

Ayurveda for Dummies is a basic approach to what Ayurveda holistic medicine is, its origins, principles, practices, beliefs, ways to incorporate it into your life, and traditional remedies. 

I didn't know much about Ayurveda, beyond Ayurveda beauty and relaxing treatments, so it is great putting things into perspective to  understand how a whole continent and culture approaches health, wellness, disease and healing.

Put it simply, Ayurveda is an alternative and millenarian medicine system born and widely practised in India, but with many devotees and practitioners all over the world. Many of the practices are common-sense ways of taking care of your body mixed with traditional herbology and Eastern philosophy and beliefs.The originality of Aryuveda resides in its integrative philosophy, in which body, mind, soul and energy are all interrelated and presented in your body; a system in which your lifestyle, diet, exercise, and spiritual practices are extremely important and clearly related. Yoga is an integral part of the system as well as herbal remedies. Also characteristic of Ayurveda is the classification of human beings into three basic doshas or types (these doshas have common traits regarding their physical constitution, temperament, psychology, levels of energy and ways in which the body reacts to food and healing). Aryuveda considers sickness an expression of lack of balance in the body. Aryuveda, as Western Medicine, has different branches and specialities.

The Ayurvedic mode of living aims to maximise your lifespan by optimising your health through interventions that care for your body, mind, spirit and environment. Ayurveda places a great emphasis on the prevention of disease and on health promotion, as well as on a comprehensive approach to treatment. (...) Ayurveda places great emphasis on the effects of the different seasons and your diet on the equilibrium of the body (...) Ayurveda recognises the importance of the environment to your health (...) addresses eating the best food to improve your immune system. (Locations 453-455, 484-485, 489-490 and 495)

Isn't that the aim of Western Medicine and dietetics? Ayurveda reminds me immensely of pre-modern Western Medicine, the one in which body and soul, mind and body were tightly linked, a Medicine based in the four temperaments-humours-elements minus the Yoga and the chakras.

However, I want to mention two things that caught my attention and I find utterly intriguing and specific to Ayurveda. The first is that Ayurveda cannot be separated from the Sanskrit word:

The second is the consideration of the individual as a part of a cosmic whole:

Commentators of Ayurveda, tells us that ‘Each individual is the unique expression of a recognisable finely tuned cosmic process occurring in space and time.’ (...) Because you are formed of the same substance as the creation, you are truly a microcosm of the universe.(Kindle Locations 575-580)

Explaining some of the concepts in Ayurveda is not easy, but Murry does a great job at introducing those concept for us, adding very useful explanatory tables and illustrations, and providing us with Western medicine terminology to match the one found in Ayurveda.

I am a fan of tables, Anything can be explained, clarified and organised in them. This being the case, I really like the many tables in this book, which are really helpful. They are great to discover what your dosha is, the best foods, exercises and medical approaches for every dosha, the characteristics of chakras and so on. The illustrations are also very helpful and simple to understand.

Many items of advice in the book can easily be incorporated into your daily routines if you feel like, even if you don't want to follow Ayurveda. Murray is keen to provide readers with simple remedies to be incorporated into our lifestyle, some of them might be for you while others might not.

I found very useful the glossary of Sanskrit words and the botanical glossary with equivalences between Sanskrit, Latin, Hindi and English names. If you are really into Ayurveda, the final appendix contains a list of links to suppliers of herbs, journals, organisations and institutes of Ayurvedic education that will come handy.  

Murray takes literally that she is writing for dummies and some of the writing is overly simplistic, repetitive, bloggish, and some of the content in the book a series of truisms that apply to the way of understanding well-being by your grandma or you if you have a minimum dose of common sense and are keen on keeping healthy. 

The formatting has too many headings and too large (some of them occupy the space of four lines, see photo), and to me this always feels as a naughty way of filling pages, not a way or making the headings and subheadings clearly visible.  

Dying to Be Me is Anita Moorjani's candid memoir. It would have been a normal memoir of an Indian immigrant growing up in Hong Kong, if it wasn't because Anita had a remarkable Near Death Experience (NDE). Although there are many books and documentaries on NDE, Anita's story is unique because, unlike most NDEs, it involves a medically checked healing from a terminal cancer (lymphoma stage 4B), which occurred soon after her return from "the other realm". Although she received the first doses of chemotherapy when she came out of her comma, the medical profession cannot explain the way and speed of Anita's full recovery.

Anita's memoir takes us from her childhood dreams, her young self, her cultural and gender issues, and her personal life, to the years of deteriorating lymphatic cancer until she was hospitalised, her organs shutting down, and her family was told that she had a few hours of life left. Anita entered a comma, which was the moment in which she also experienced the NDE. Anita shares with us what she experienced during her NDE (a state of pure consciousness and love, a state of oneness and bent time, in which the Universe is one and many at the same time). She shares with us, in a very intimate way, how her view of the world, life and afterlife changed dramatically, the set of synchronicity events that led to the publication of this book, and why she thinks she got sick and healed in such a remarkable way. The book has a final chapter with some questions and answers from people that are rather interesting.

This is a very fresh, warm and intimate narration of Anita's personal experience. I love that Anita does not preach anything, does not try to convince anybody of anything, and that she does not present herself as a victim or a warrior. She tells us her personal views and beliefs, and does not pretend to be a guru or have the key to "the truth"; she just wants to share her personal story with the world.

Although I don't agree with some of the things Anita says, I have a deep respect for people like her, who do not pretend to be anything and do not preach any religion or try to convert anybody, and, most importantly, walk the talk. I think the reader gets an unadulterated view of who Anita truly is from this book.
 
Anita's narration of her NDE is beautifully evocative and clear to understand, something that is remarkable because her experience is nothing that can be easily put into words. Her heaven is not a heaven that we are familiar with. I also love her comments on how she experienced life differently after her healing (when her focus, attention and priorities just were different), and what her beliefs are regarding the afterlife, past lives, reincarnation, organised religion, sickness, medicine, healing and human relationships among other subjects are. I also like the fact that the narration does not linger on the description of her sickness beyond what it is strictly necessary.

The book reads more like a transcription of a speech at times, unpolished and repetitive. Anita is not a writer, so in cases like this I blame the editor, especially when Hay House is the editorial house and they have the resources to edit a book properly. A better editor would have polished the book, still keeping the message and tone of the book intact, and would have advised the use of references when she mentions the medical investigation and verification of her medical records by oncologists Dr Jeffrey Long and Dr Peter Ko. Otherwise, anybody could say that this is a made up story. Her website has a testimonial of both doctors, but, personally, if a medical report is mentioned, I want it mentioned and accessed in a footnote.

Now, something important. Anita says: "Even criminals are victims of their own limitations, fear, and pain. If they’d had true self-awareness to begin with, they never would have caused any harm. A different mind-set—for example, a complete state of trust instead of fright—can turn around even the most depraved person, the same way" (p. 149). She also adds: "We still judge perpetrators of crime as exactly that—criminals who deserve to be condemned, not only in this life but in the afterlife as well! We’re still unable to see them as victims of fear, creations of a reality that we, as a whole, have built." (p. 152).

I agree that many people become criminals because of their specific circumstances, childhood abuse, poverty, drugs, hanging with the wrong people, mental problems and so on and they have a good nature in essence. I agree that some criminals can rehabilitate and turn their life around. Yet, there are many people surrounded by the same circumstances who have never hurt anybody or done any damage to anybody. It is also true that there are people who had a good upbringing, a good childhood, grew up in affluent environments, were loved by their parents and turned out to be evil. Like psychopaths, like sociopaths, like malignant narcissists, like mass murderers and genocides, among others. These people do NOT have a soul, these people do NOT have empathy, goodwill, or remorse wired into their cells. There are too many examples of people leaving on bail "rehabilitated" to go out jail and kill, cold-heartedly, the first person they come across in the street (usually a woman). Even if the heaven Anita describes exists, and it is the way she says it is, she is a decent human being, so you expect a decent human being to experience afterlife the way she experienced it.  Would a psychopath or genocide experience it the same? We don't know. Perhaps there is no afterlife, and we are all nothing, a bunch of dust with an expire date. That is another possibility. I don't want to be One with women's beaters, children rapists, serial killers, human genocides, mass murderers, psychopaths, or other people who, to me, do not have a soul or a milligram of pureness in them. 

***

After reading this book I checked the Wikipedia's entry on the author. I am not surprised, but in a way I am, that statements from people who seem not to have read the book are presented as a critique on something supposedly said or claimed in the book and by the author. There is nothing I dislike more than "scientists" preaching. That is anti-scientific. Science does not preach, Science convinces with proven facts, and Science is not dogma, Science is learning and discovering, and modifying, and correcting.

You will find these statements in Moorjani's book, I think it is important to mention then, so people who are interested in reading the book do so with an open mind:
> It’s not my style to overtly teach people or tell them how to live their lives, nor do I like advising anyone on what changes they need to make, even if they ask.
> I’m not claiming to know any universal or scientific truths or to be anyone’s spiritual guru. Nor am I trying to start yet another religion or belief system. My only aim is to help, not convince.
> I don’t advocate that if we “believe” a certain way, we’ll eliminate disease or create an ideal life.
> I strongly believe that it’s not necessary to reach the extreme state of an NDE in order to heal or have a great purpose in life, I can see that my personal path has led me to this point.
> I absolutely do strongly believe that we all have the capacity to heal ourselves as well as facilitate the healing of others. When we get in touch with that infinite place within us where we are Whole, then illness can’t remain in the body.
>  I don’t advocate “positive thinking” as a blanket prescription.
>  Sweeping statements such as “Negative thoughts attracts negativity in life” aren’t necessarily true,
> Going out and changing the world doesn’t work for me,
> What flicked the switch, to turn the body around from dying to healing? As for my own situation, I know the answer…but it’s not something that can be found in medicine. (Yet, she accepted chemotherapy and visited regular Western doctors and hospitals during her sickness. She also says that she prefers Aryuveda or Chinese Medicine to Western. Well,  that is respectable, even if it is not our cup of tea).

***

I am a sceptic about NDE. Firstly, I have never had one. Medical science gives reasonable experiences about why people having a NDE experience what they experience. However medical experience is not able to explain how a person who is officially dead can see and hear conversations on the room, or a person in coma can hear conversations that are not taken place in the same room or building, or why people like Anita can heal in record time from terminal cancer. On the other hand, there is an interest among some evangelical Christian groups to turn any NDE into a seal of approval to their specific views on heaven and spirituality, and that is never acceptable (or respectable) to me. In that regard, Anita can be set apart from the rest. Is the NDE experience the result of the firing up of the chemicals in the brain when this is dying or is is a door to the source/heaven? We don't know. There is not reply to this yet. The main proof is out there in the world of the dead. I recommend watching a quite neutral documentary by the BBC with both sides of the coin presented. Then, read Anita's book.
 Dying to be Me is food for thought, and food for the soul even if you don't think you have one. Even if you are an atheist or agnostic, or even if you think that the story is made-up, there is an undeniable wisdom in the book that we all need to remind ourselves of regularly, and many pearls of wisdom and views of the world that resonate with me.

I read this book after finishing this book on apocalyptic predictions. I missed in it some insight into what makes people want to predict the future, date the end of the world or make predictions, prophetic or not. Future Babble gives you the answers! So it has turned out a perfect companion to the other one. Actually, I would recommend reading this one and then the other.

Although based on economical, demographical, political and social predictions in the last century or so, Future Babble is a brilliant book with a great work of research, and a sound historical and psychological approach to prediction making and the power of the expert in Society in general, in the contemporary world in particular. In a way, Future Babble is an X-rayed view of the sugar-coated magic ball that experts' predictions are.

 The goal of this book is not to mock particular individuals. Nor is it to scorn the category known as “experts.” It is to better understand the human desire to know what will happen, why that desire will never be satisfied, and how we can better prepare ourselves for the unknowable future" (Locations 69-71)

The book replies with specific details to questions like these:
> Why do we want and need predictions on anything?
 > Is anything predictable and subject to future predictions?
> Why do we trust some experts and not others?
> What does make an expert an expert and trustworthy for prediction making?
> Why are tides and eclipses predictable when predictions about so much else can be blown away by the flap of a butterfly’s wings?
> Why can we calculate insurance premiums, but not the world markets in 10 years time?
> Why experts whose predictions failed miserably consider them successful even the evidence is undeniable?
> Why experts whose predictions failed are constantly called to make more predictions?

> Why experts who make real successful predictions are rarely believed and those who have no clue are listened to, and unquestionably so?
> Why do experts fail in their predictions?
> Are there patterns in the Economy, Demography, History, Politics or human relationships that can explain the future in those areas?
>  If the future is unpredictable, doesn’t that mean all our planning and forecasting is pointless?
> Are experts really so bad?
> What distinguishes the mass of delusional experts from the few impressive ones? 

The book is well structured and discussed, without being boring or pretentious. Yet, all the examples are historically and statistically backed, and explanations are given to every single point in which you might find yourself asking, "but why?". The whys are the most important and interesting part of the book, and they are explained by a psychological approach. Among others, some psychological biases and heuristic involved in prediction making, justifying the failed predictions and forgetting about the expert's constant failures are: :
< Optimism Bias.
< Confirmation Bias.
< Status Quo Bias.
< Negativity Bias.
< Hindsight Bias.
< Rationalization Bias.
< The bias bias.

< Anchoring-and-adjustment Heuristic.
< Availability Heuristic.
< Representativeness Heuristic.
< Confidence Heuristic.
 
The point of departure needed to be scientifically sound. And it is sound. Gardner needed of an academic and scientific study to figure out the rate of failure among experts and how accurate expert's predictions are, and which characteristics do successful and unsuccessful prediction experts display. Otherwise, the whole discourse could have crumbled before even starting. Lucky Gardner had a brilliant stand on the research on this very subject by Philip Tetlock.

The book has many specific study cases, cases of international experts who predicted and failed miserably, of predictions that sound utterly ridiculous today but sold millions of books and were listed as the most important books of the decade at the time, and many small cases that showcase how and why people make predictions, and why they are bound to fail, or not.

I thought, well, it is great that Gardner sees the speck in the neighbour's eye, but not the log in his. So, how does he do (or how do we do) to see our own log? Gardner knows that all the biases he mentions affects us all, so how do we do to balance them?  The last chapter, The End, comes with the answers. Gardner does not focus on himself, of course, he shows how that can be done by using Alan Barnes' system on dealing with the documentation and research for the Privy Council Office of the Canadian Government. There are three key elements to balance your own biases: metacognition, information aggregation and humility. Not easy. Especially meta-cognition. Most people out there are not even conscious. Now, how did Gardner do that with this book? Did he do it himself?  Or was his editor or anybody else? Did he stop to ask himself, hey gorgeous me I am being biased here by any chance?  I would love to know that from the author himself, the specific method he applied to this specific book. Out of academic interest. 

This is not only a good book, it is very engaging  and intriguing, that gives answer after answer after answer. Besides, the book is well written, researched and referenced and has an impressive bibliography. Barely any typo in sight, as well. And Gardner is able to explain complex things in ways that any lay person can understand them. Kudos to him.

The Kindle Edition is flawless. However, if you read the book on Kindle for PC, the Lateral Index of  Contents does not display in it, while display perfectly in android devices.

There are other books on randomness and market prediction but this is the first I read on the subject and it is flawless.

Number one in my list of best books of 2015 so far.

This book fell in my hands because I have a natural predisposition towards slap-on-the-face books that deal with subjects and approaches that are not mainstream. They grease the wheels of my thinking like no others. I developed a liking for those when I was in my teens and they still are the sort of book that thrill me, no matter the flaws. That is so because having our brain enticed is the most wonderful feeling in the world, and something that we get rarely, rarer and rarer, nowadays.   
Equally thought-provoking and irritating, fascinating and annoying, "The Internet is not the Answer" is  a book about the hidden faces of the Internet and its impact in contemporary Economy and Society. We see the Internet not by entering through the main door where a nice bellboy kisses your feet and the hall looks like in a magazine cover, but by entering through the back door where all the sh+t is piled up, nobody is cleaning and the shift worker is going to spit on your face.We can enter that door because Keen is a Silicon Valley boy, even if not golden, and, therefore, an insider.  

Keen knows his trade and his field of expertise and that shows in a book that is well written and referenced and with no typo in sight. Keen channels, like a medium in trance, the voices of myriad critical Internet experts to create a patchwork of a discourse made by stitching together opinions that are not his but, actually,  are his. Keen does not hold his forked tongue a bit and speaks of people (names and all) and facts with irreverence and nausea, irritation and despair, but also with depth, insight and passion.  

Keen does a great job at summarising for us the History of the Internet from its gestation, birth, the arrival of the web 1.0 and the complete reinvention of Internet 2.0 with its different phases. The book explains in simple language the differences between the old and the contemporary Internet, how Internet went from a helpful tool, to an all-free paradise, and ended being a malignant narcissist pubescent monster. We go from the utopian libertarian and equality expectations and dreams of the web 1.0 to the dystopian reality in which everything is for sale, our soul included, and supranational corporations make money out of us but sell us fairy-flossed lies.

Keen highlights the hypocrisy of the Silicon Valley's elite and gurus who preach and sell a revolution, freedom, the power of the commons to create a different world, the value of failure to succeed, openness and transparency, and that they are the anti-establishment. However, de facto, they act as a mutant nastier version of the old rusty capitalists who made their fortunes after the first Industrial Revolution; they make the old capitalists look like the Sisters of Mercy; despite what the new gurus say, they have created opaque, non-egalitarian secretive organisations and groups of power and world domination that disregard governments, get your data without permission and sell it to the best bidder, do not pay or evade taxes, give a dam about work relations or exploitation, disregard the welfare of Society and of their workers, and act worse than the old establishment rich people did. These corporations are ran by white Western sexist males.

The example of what San Francisco has become since the Valley and the Bay were "Siliconed" it is exemplary enough: increased social differences, poorer work conditions and salaries, a ridiculously inflated house market, higher number of homeless people, and the big Internet companies creating a sort of segregated bubble that feeds on their own lies and purpose-created clichés and look at real people as if they did not get the world. What the contrary is true. 

The Internet companies are as hostile to trade unions, taxation and regulation as Rockefeller, Morgan or Carnegie, but these new titans employ less people. have higher margins and are less harassed by governments than their predecessors. 

Sometimes simple items of information work better than lengthy pages. Here some interesting ones:

> General Motors has a market cap of around 55 billion and employs 200.00+ people to manufacture cars in its factories. Google is seven times larger than GM but employs less than a quarter of the number of workers, is not creating many jobs and avoids paying taxes in some of the most developed countries in the world.
> Uber has received a quarter-billion dollar investment from Google Ventures.
>  Tumblr has 300 million users and just 178 employees and was sold for 1.1. billion bucks in 2013.
> WhatsApp employs 55 people and sells for 19 billion.
> Instagram has just 13 full-time employees while Kodak had 13 factories, 130 photo labs and about 47,000 workers. However, people in sharing sites like Instagram don't own their own photos and their Terms & Conditions allow Instagram a perpetual use of your photos and the right to license them to any third party without your permission or knowing.
>  The Internet has created a surreal economy in which we are not only the creator of the networked product, but also the product itself, therefore, the "free" stuff we get from these companies is not really free.

Keen explicitly says that he doesn't deny the value of the Internet or how our lives have changed and the benefits we get from it, (I mean, that would be stupid) but he focuses on the damage that the Economy of Internet Corporations is creating outside the web. 

Chapter 7 "Crystal Man" in perhaps my favourite chapter. Keen compares the ways in which the Eastern Germany's Stasi (the Secret Police and its mastermind Erich Mielk) organised the spying and profiling of the citizens of  the country with Google and Facebook, among others, which are doing the same but a global scale and with more precision. We are being profiled through our use of the Internet in ways that are terrifying, mostly because this is done without our consent and knowledge, or that of our governments at times, and we are being sold, literally, to whomever wants us. Internet Data Collection Companies (Indigogo, Kickstarted, Acxiom, and Palanquir among others) and their mere existence is just a bit scary if you are a normal citizen with no criminal mind and a normal average life and family, and that life is sold by somebody who is not you. 

I agree with Keen's observations and reflections on the narcissist culture that the Internet has exacerbated. Yes, narcissism is not new, but the worrying part is that it has become the new way of being, the new "normal". Like Keen, I hate the obsession with the selfie, the spread of crappola, the mob in social networks, the hyper-obsession with the me and the now, Zuckeberg's idiotic discourse and "necromantic" Facebook; the use of social media by sexist, racist, and terrorist people without that filth being pulped down by anybody; I dislike most social networks out there (I've used most of them and quit them in the blink of an eye). I'm personally worried about a society that is every day more "Googled" and the fact that I rely more than I would like on a Google calendar, a Google blog, a Google phone and a Google tablet. Yet, I love the web.

What Keen describes for us is upsetting and seems not to be heading anywhere good for us, the commoners, the data-producers, the pawns.

I was looking forward to the conclusion and Keen's answer to the gloomy panorama he presents us with. Keen supports the intervention and regulation by individual states and supranational institutions to put a limit to the Internet Masters and force them to pay taxes, to respect anti-trust policies, and not to profile citizens without the consent of their country of origin. I love the idea of a Magna Carta of the Web with Internet rights and duties that protects the web's neutrality against governments and Internet corporations. Yes, it would be great breaking down Google, Apple, Facebook and other big Internet companies by creating legislation against plutocrats. Keen is keen on the elimination of Piracy and Peer-to-Peer as well. I am not that optimistic, though, the corruption of politicians and the political system in most Western countries is nothing I rely on; many of our politicians are corrupt to the bone and love being part of the plutocracy and give a dam about us all.

Yet, what resonates the most with me is "take responsibility for your online actions" because it  is something that I believe in and practice. I deeply believe that we have the tools to change anything, and the tools are our own behaviour and actions. No magic formulas. Thus, is up to us to become a mob or not in the Internet, to allow ourselves to be seduced and abducted by the need to be cool and liked to feel better about ourselves. It is up to us to stop the big companies using our data by simply not being in sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Yelp or any big corporation. And if we stay, we keep alert about manipulative actions of the site, and do our best to keep our privacy levels high. The way we use our credit card, the way we (don't) use our name not even in our email unpaid address, the browser and adds-on we choose, are little things we can do to hide a bit from Big Brother. There are gazillion things we can do with a click that cost nothing and offer relief and protection. Yet, the Internet has created a monster because the mob wants a monster they are happy to feed.

***

THE BUTS...
There are many things I don't agree with Keen, which justify the polarised reviews this book is getting. Beyond some dialectic strawmen he uses at times, I would like to comment on a few things.

The book reads quite often as an endless series of quotes by other people. Keen is a good writer, so it is difficult to understand why the need to quote ad nauseam. Why not saying what he thinks in his own words and quoting when it is necessary or the quote is really relevant? Aren't editors supposed to control this sort of thing?

Keen's narrative is like one of those mini-me on each shoulder, one is a devil the other an angel. However, the voice of the devil is louder in this book, even though Keen explicitly play devil's advocate with his own approach. Yet, this voice is not as strong. This produces an unbalanced discourse that it is easy to be attacked as biased.

I don't like the tone Keen uses at times when he speaks of some of the Silicon golden boys because it rests power to his discourse. I mean, they behave in disgusting ways, OK, I get it, but I suppose that Keen is not the only Silicon boy with a bit of decency, right? And truly, if he despises these people so much, why does he hang out with them? Talk to them? Go to conventions in which he does not belong and he abhor? Why does he slash Amazon and Jeff Bezos and then go and sells his book in Amazon? 

Many of the things Keen complains about the Economy of the Internet are actually pre-Internet and, even today, year 2015, not linked to the Economy of Internet at all. It is called savage capitalism and unfair competition and monopoly practices. To this very day big supermarket chains are pushing small supermarkets out of business with dirty tactics that have nothing to do with the Internet. Huge book stores forced decades ago the closing down of hundreds of small book stores even before the web 2.0 was invented. 

Yes, the Silicon boys are despicable, they preach one thing and they have super mansions with private beaches closed to the public. Well, you have celebrities and movie stars, whose contribution to Society has been zero, doing the same, or buying whole islands and nobody is complaining.

Yes, it is true that the current web system does not spread good information or good news and is actually misinforming. Yet, before the arrival of the Internet 2.0 TV stations like CNN (where Keen is a contributor) have been unashamedly manipulating international news for the mobs for years. British and Australian newspapers managed and operated by off-line professional journalists regularly spread racist and culturally imperialistic views of the world with a constant vilification of the Mediterranean and its people as a whole selling patent lies to any people who knows some of those countries. And no, I am not talking about Greece.

Keen's view and use of creative disruption is infused in negativity most of the time. The French Revolution was disrupting and bloody and still changed History for good. The invention of the steam machine and the Industrial Revolution created similar gloomy forecasts about humanity, the environment, mechanisation, the destruction of traditional jobs and other issues. Sometimes disruption is needed to get to better places in life, and is not done the rosey way. Other ways disruption is just destruction. Keen's discourse is unbalanced because he does push the negative button too often. Perhaps a simply rephrasing of many of the things he says would have conveyed his message better and more fairly.  

Keen has a sort of romantic vision of what the middle classes and society were in the 50s and 60s. It might be so in the UK and the US. My parents lived the 50s surrounded by misery, hard working conditions, poor salaries and a very hard life.

Regarding the kingdom of the amateur is nothing new, just a exacerbation of things. Why is this kingdom spreading so easily? My answer is because people want to be cool, want to get fame, want to get money with the least possible effort and personal investment. People don't want to be the best in their job, they want to be the best paid, the most popular, the most liked, the most featured, the one in power. People aren't happy being themselves, they want to be more than they are, and they create a life full of lies to fool themselves; not only that, they will do anything and everything to obscure and destroy those who shine without the need of a flash. Have you even met a moron or an ignoramus giving lessons? There you have the new model. That was not born with the Internet. Yet, to balance my own discourse, I have seen amateur artistic photographers and artists on Flickr who were better than many professionals. Some people selling on Etsy sell handmade wonderful stuff at a fraction of the price even some of them are not professionals. Not everything is monochrome.

I don't agree with Keen on Piracy and Peer-to-Peer being the same, Pirate Bay is one thing, sharing music or movies with my best pal for free another thing. Also, Keen does not scratches the surface on the main question. Why  do people download pirated material? Keen replies to it easily, because piracy material is easy to find and not enough is being done to avoid this. Yet, is that the only reason? Are all people downloading for the same reasons? I wonder how people without a job, people who have difficulties making ends meet, or students living on the verge of poverty do to go to the cinema (or pay a paid TV channel) and buy hard copy music regularly. Libraries allow customers who pay nothing to get books, CDS and DVS, and that is legal. People love going to the cinema, I don't know anybody who does not, why don't they go more often? Are the prices demanded by multinational record companies really fair and benefit the artists as much as they deserve? How much is too much for a CD or DVD and why?  There is lots to scratch here before getting my itch comforted.   

***

A NOTE ON THE BOOK COVER
Is there any need to have a dreadful cover for both hard-copy and Kindle? Is plain ugly the new creative? 

Update
The cover of the Kindle Edition has been changed since I wrote this review in Amazon to something decent, but not great yet  =) 

IN SHORT
A great book to munch on, with a bit of crappolina. Read it with care, though.

Update2
I got this video in my Mozilla's front page Funny. It summarises well many of the issues discussed in this book
We are all for sale

Medieval Historian turned novelist Sharan Newman takes us in a long journey that goes from the beginning of times to the modern era on an apocalyptic quest. Written just before the end of the year 2012, the book replies to questions that were specially relevant that year: How have humanity, different cultures and civilisations dealt with the impending end of times? Which things do they have in common? Which elements are particular to each culture or religious group? Do all cultures have or had an Armageddon myth?

This a book on popular History, simply written, but with a good reference system and serious research work. A wicked witty sense of humour pervades the entire book, so it is very enjoyable to read and will give you some laughing moments. However, this is a reliable book. 

The introduction and conclusion are simple and focused. Newman explains how she has approached the study, why some things are included and not others, as well as the common denominators or themes in all apocalyptic groups. There have been "gazillion" doomsday groups throughout History, so Newman has chosen the most significant historically, others that intrigued her, and others that are representative of patterns:

movements, such as people who believed their leader to be the Messiah, or a prophet, who would build a heaven on earth or give them a free pass to the real heaven; those who thought that the thousand years of happiness would start if they helped it along with military force; and those who thought that we were at the end of the thousand years and braced themselves in various ways to survive the horrors of the final battles and breakdown of society before the final judgement (location 156).

Then, we are presented with a straightforward chronological study that covers all major religions and areas but heavily sided on the Western Word and Christianity. However there is plenty of information about Muslim and Jews groups as well. Beyond Western Europe and the USA we are given some details about the Middle East, China, Nigeria, India, the Mayans, and some Indigenous people (the Cherokees and Hopi nations in the USA and the Natives of Guinea and Papua-New Guinea). Once we we enter in the modern era, each chapter has details about specific religious movements and groups, the leading figures and their specific views on the end of the world. 

The reference system is good. I always check the footnotes out of professional bias, but also because it is clear to me that a good footnoting/endnoting system are the best indication of the seriousness of any book, especially when controversial or sensitive matters are under discussion.

The period and field covered is vast, so the research work involved is remarkable. Although primary sources are used, most of the book is based on secondary sources, something that is always questionable from a historical point of view especially if you are a doctorate. Yet, this book is addressed to the general public not to the Academia, and Newman does a great job at giving an overall view of the subject and is honest enough to mention some of the shortcomings of her own research when necessary.

One of the things I like the most about Newman is that she contextualises all the movements she discusses, and tries to explain them using the parameters of the cultural and religious humus they fed upon. That very fact is what distinguishes true historians from pseudo-historians, those who are becoming the voice of culturally imperialistic TV shows and documentaries made to manipulate the masses and present an image of the world that is purposely culturally and religiously biased, and obviously superior.

I really enjoyed Newman's explanations on the Mayan Calendar, the Cargo Cults, the somewhat esoteric nerdy computation of  a date for the end of times that obsessed scientists of the 18th and 19th century (Newton included), how the creation of the State of Israel was supported by fundamentalist Christian groups that did want the Jews to disappear, or the utopian happy and peaceful (rare!) end of time envisioned by Joachim de Fiore and  Joseph Priestly, who are the exception to too many Armageddon nightmares. You certainly will find your favourite doomsday group and moment.

I also loved the tables at the end of the book with a short summary of the dates, type, and brief description of the apocalyptic movements mentioned in the book.

THE WEAKEST LINK

The main downside of this book, to me, is that it is a bit linear and one-dimensional as, from the very beginning, Newman  discards going beyond the facts or even considering psychological or sociological theories to give some sort of explanation to the pervading "doomsdayness" in the history of human race. The juice is always in the "why?", as the "why?" is what gives us historical understanding. Therefore, questions that were were in my mind when I purchased this book are replied with lack of seriousness, for example why do humans need of this apocalyptic Armageddon in the modern world? She replies

"among nonreligious people is the same as that with ghosts, mutant ants, vampires, and invasions from space. Most of us don’t really believe in them, but it’s fun to let ourselves be scared for a while" (location 4496).

Other questions are not even posed. For example, which social or psychological function do they have, if any? Why  dreams and visions are so important in millenarian beliefs? Why charisma and not integrity are associated with fundamentalist messianic movements? Why non-religious doomsday beliefs are so widespread in the age of technology beyond being "cool"? What is the Antichrist, specifically?

At times the chapters stretch unnecessarily with details I found superfluous as there is not much information about the beliefs of a given group beyond them being millenarian. Besides, I missed more focus on other areas of the world. India is passed in a few pages. We are not given any details about Indigenous populations in the world, that is, do Indigenous Australian nations have had any end of the times sort of belief? What about African societies before the colonial times? The Inuit? No idea, because they are not even mentioned. Perhaps they never had any belief about the end of the world, but I would have loved being told so, if that is the case!

There are too many "perhaps",  "it is said",  "my guess", "probably", "some say" and other vague language that is not always reference-based. Guessing is not academically valid amongst academics unless you are the specialist on your field of study, and your field of study has a very delimited place, time or social group of study.  

The glossary might have been expanded, easily, with some of other words that the author uses throughout the book. 

WHAT WHAT WHAT?!
I found this statement about Joachim de Fiore and my jaw dropped to the floor: "He was born in 1135 in the Italian town of Calabria" (Kindle's location 1455). Since when is Calabria a town? She means in a town in Calabria.Which town?

Her biography of Nostradamus, footnote number three, states:

 This biography is based on the work of Edgar Leroy in 1972. This book is almost impossible to find, showing that accuracy is not always rewarded. I have compiled this from quotes of his work in other sources. Not my favorite way of doing research. (Location 2098, note no. 3)

  Isn't that what degree students do (and the sort of excuse they present) in end of the year essays?

BAD KINDLE EDITION
I am tired of purchasing books on Kindle, being charged full price and finding that that they are badly rendered in e-book format, out of care, respect and consideration for the e-book reader. Like here.

Look at the mess of the notes system in this book. The book uses endnotes as far as chapter 17, they are not numbered,  but correlative, starting from a to z, then aa, ab, ac, and so on. Then, you get to chapter 18 and the notes start to be numbered, but they are endnotes at the end of each chapter not at the end of the book as the first, and they are not correlative between chapters.

The final index is not paginated or linked, so partially useful. You can check for a specific word, and see if it is there, but if it is there, you won't know where. Ridiculous!

Giralamo should be Girolamo...

Light, entertaining and informative with a good deal of research and written with a great sense of  humour, this History of the End of the World sheds light on the myriad forms that the fear of the end of times has taken among humans from different parts of the world, Christians especially. Yet, the great work is somewhat wasted by a lack of depth in a study that rarely goes beyond the merely factual.