Books reviews, current events, and other musings

Here's some amusing computer humor.

Recent experiments have shown that Higher Primates Can Program.

Here at the San Diego zoo, experiments last month with baboons have proved that higher primates can perform software testing, traverse complex menus, and code simple XML schemas.

Also, GameSpot has a review of Real Life (from Space Waitress).

Featuring believable characters, plenty of lasting appeal, and a lot of challenge and variety, real life is absolutely recommendable to those who've grown weary of all the cookie-cutter games that have tried to emulate its popularity--or to just about anyone, really.

posted by Julian at 10:30 PM

In Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, Wendy Kaminer analyzes a variety of American beliefs that conflicts with the scientific worldview. Her topics include traditional religions, New Age spirituality, junk science, recovered-memory therapy, and cyberspace wackiness.

The religion chapters were the weakest, since its arguments are so familiar to anyone who’s sufficiently well-read to pick up this book. Yes, most Americans, across the political spectrum, believe in God, and publicly expressing that belief is much more socially acceptable than disputing it. Obviously, right-wing Christian fundamentalism and state-sponsored religious activities are serious concerns.

The pop spirituality chapters – about New Age movements, UFOs, angels, The Celestine Prophecy, etc. – were more illuminating, since I haven’t thought about those topics much since reading Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science before I went to college. It’s amazing how many people believe that nonsense. Kaminer lays out the emotional needs that these movements satisfy: helping people feel loved and protected, handling their fear of death, and promising future salvation. Intense emotional experiences and fantasy provide the basis for their view of reality, while their advocates express disdain towards skeptical reasoning and science.

The junk science overview repeats common complaints, such as the way New Agers call upon misunderstood scientific theories, especially quantum mechanics, to support their ridiculous claims. Kaminer goes on to examine the irrationality of the War on Drugs and faulty research into intellectual differences between men and women.

The recovery movement, in which therapists help their patients discover repressed memories of past sexual abuse, is very scary. Kaminer argues that most of those remembered events never occurred and their false recovery damages the patients. For example, there’s no evidence, besides recovered memories, supporting the existence of satanic cults engaged in ritual abuse.

The cyberspace treatment seemed rather weak, mainly because of my prior exposure to those ideas. Sure, technospiritualism is rather ridiculous, but few people take that stuff seriously. Kaminer laments, fairly enough, that most online material lacks the intellectual coherence of written publications. However, she doesn’t appreciate the benefits of a medium that lets almost anyone generate new material and allows richer interactions between readers and writers.

Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials is a quick, easy read. My postmodern side objected to her implicit presumption that liberal non-superstitious atheists and agnostics are completely rational, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, the book is worth reading for its insight into the irrational side of American life.

posted by Julian at 8:00 AM

 
Here's some sad news.

The banana is about to disappear from store shelves around the globe. Experts say the world's favourite fruit will pass into oblivion within a decade. No more fresh bananas. No more banana bread. No more banana muffins or banana cream pie.

Why? Because the banana is the victim of centuries of genetic tampering. Scientists say they will be unable to prevent the extirpation of the banana as an edible commercial crop.

So, you'd better enjoy those bananas while you can. I'll bring one for lunch tomorrow.

posted by Julian at 11:30 PM

 
David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East explores the dramatic events from 1914 to 1922, which transformed the political geography the Middle East. Fromkin's thorough analysis, 600 pages long, approaches those events from the perspective of the British government, dwelling on the bureaucratic struggles to formulate and implement Middle East policy.

The British experience was in many ways reminiscent of what the US is dealing with in Iraq today. Before the First World War, Britain propped up the Ottoman Empire, since they didn't want Russia to gain control of the region. As the European war bogged down in trench warfare, Britain attacked the Ottomans in a desperate attempt to break the stalemate. Meanwhile, the British sought post-war control of the Middle East, in order to protect the route to India and block Russian expansion. After the war ended, the British Empire, at its largest size in history, occupied much of the Middle East or controlled it though client states. However, the withdrawal of British troops, delayed peace talks, and widespread unrest pressured the Brits to relinquish much of their power.

You have may heard that some guys in a room in London drew the national borders of the Middle East nations; this book describes how that happened. You can see how Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia came into existence with their current boundaries. Fromkin spells out the dynamics of British policy, as government figures responded to and shaped world events.

Fromkin elaborates on the beliefs and perspectives of the relevant British officials, such as Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, Lloyd George, and Mark Sykes. One example is a bizarre report, written by the British ambassador in Constantinople, that a Jewish Freemason conspiracy controlled the Ottoman Empire. The description of British internal debates becomes somewhat monotonous, though it was amusing when the imperial forces in Egypt and India argued over which should have influence over the Middle East.

I strongly recommend A Peace to End All Peace, both for its historical background and for the way it highlights the intrinsic difficulty in controlling events in the Middle East.

posted by Julian at 6:45 PM