Much public discourse, if you can call it that, revolves around keeping economic expansion going, assuming that no alternative exists. Economists refer to the opposite of expansion as contraction, presuming that it’s a temporary blip in inevitable expansion. All their nostrums propose to revive expansion. By contrast, “Compression” proposes living with less, presuming that we have put Planet Earth […]
Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity, by Denis Noble Book Review by Doc Hall How we explain to ourselves the answers to two big questions underpins the myriad assumptions that guide how we behave: Why are we here? (Our purpose for existence) What is the environment in which we live? (From quantum-scale to […]
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz Kathryn Schulz is a professional journalist and writer covering a broad range of topics. This book was her foray into heavier non-fiction topics, and she researched it well. It’s been out a while, and well acclaimed. Obviously leaning on a liberal arts education, she […]
The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman Book Review by Doc Hall The philosophical and scientific quest to define consciousness is one of the foremost issues of our time. Don Hoffman is at the leading edge of this field of inquiry. A professor in the Department of Cognitive […]
Should Humans Adopt a Mushroom Strategy? The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna L. Tsing In some ways, mushrooms are smarter than people. We should pay more attention. Although not quite said, that’s the conclusion of Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology at the University […]
Call of The Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth by Charles Massy Review by Don Stewart Massy is an Australian farmer who earned a mid-life PhD in Human Ecology. In the course of doing the research for his dissertation, he met and studied the methods used by many “regenerative’ farmers,” mostly in Australia, and […]
Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again, by Eric Topol Eric Topol hit the news big time in 2004 as the chief whistleblower questioning the validity of research that led the FDA to approve the Merck drug, Vioxx. Amid scandal, Merck withdrew Vioxx and paid a big fine. The New York Timesinvestigated Topol’s […]
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff Shoshana Zuboff is Professor Emerita from Harvard Business School. Her research career began by studying the history of work, and she gradually focused on how the digital world was changing the work world. It’s a long […]
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra Fritjof Capra is well known for scientifically proposing that the universe, including humans, is a complex web of relationships, and for examining the concept of universal unity in religious beliefs, especially Buddhism. Originally written in 1975, The Tao of Physics is the classic book about the integration of everything. This […]
Commercial Thinking vs. Scientific Thinking Unsavory Truth, by Marion Nestle Except for political propaganda, hardly any field is more laden with misleading BS than nutrition. It comes from purveyors of food all wanting to sell their products. Those most influential are big food corporations. They can and do influence nutrition research. Marion Nestlé (no relation to […]
Background for Environmental Symbiosis A Rough Ride to the Future, by James Lovelock This book is a fun read by a scientific maverick, written at age 95. He’s now 99, still going strong. A prolific scientist and inventor, Lovelock is best known for two things: 1) inventing the electron capture detector, which detects particles in […]
Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy, by the National Academies of Sciences This report is a short book in length, but a slow read if like me, you do not have extensive background in microbiome research. Absorbing a minimum of terminology used in the field is necessary to follow it, […]
