Truth by Doc Hall (Video 7 minutes) Is Truth Just a Better Lie? The arts of human deception have ever resided within us. On-line technology multiplies opportunities to practice them. Every morning before breakfast I trash a half-dozen or more e-mail scams. Fifty years ago no one began scamming you until you were awake. Scams […]
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle Angela Nagel is an Irish social critic specializing in the subcultures of the on-line interactive world, something that this reviewer and probably most readers don’t do. Tracking the logic warping feedback loops of troll wars is time-consuming […]
Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data Hardcover by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge Schönberger is a professor at Oxford and Ramge is a technology writer who has by-lines in The Economist. This book is not their first dance with Big Data. Their objective was to unveil its possibilities to those of us not […]
Toxic Assets (Video 3 minutes) Toxic Assets by Doc Hall The basic thinking behind our system of business is piling up problems faster than we can resolve them. It is has become so toxic that neither money nor magic technology can sustain it. We have to detox human thinking and rethink what we must become. […]
Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality by Andrew Newberg Andrew Newberg is an MD and Professor of Emergency Medicine and Radiology, and Director of Research, Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia (how does he cover all this?). Neurotheology, just out, is his newest book. The book attracted […]
Fables of the Bees (Video 5 minutes) Fables from the Bees by Doc Hall We can learn a lot from bees. Complex and intriguing, the little critters have inspired many human analogies to their habits of life. However, fables about bees may also be highly biased. Bee fables, like the bees themselves, need to be […]
An old adage is that if all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. General managers experience this as a “silo problem.” Each functional specialist has a different perspective, but few comprehensively grasp the situation, and personal experience shapes our thinking (worked for me). Not inquiring more broadly and deeply confines […]
More Than a Structural Economic Problem Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen Patrick Deneen is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame with a record of public service before academic life. His writing references ancient religion and classical studies, roundly debated by other liberal arts academics. Politically, Deneen is an all-around offender, excoriating both […]
Lost Skills = Lost Hope by Michael Hall America in 1790 was a nation where most people were able to learn productive life skills by observation, mentorship, apprenticeship and human curiosity to seek and self-learn when rudimentary education was not available. Small communities developed as self-supporting with the skills of almost everyone involved. Most people […]
A New Normal (Video 5 Minutes) A Purpose in Common Our present economic system is not only driving nature to the brink, it appears to be driving us nuts. Instead of bending nature to keep our economy growing, we need to upend our economic thinking to regenerate nature. To do this, no top-down mandate will […]
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, by Mark Fisher The initial promise of this book was a unique critique of economics. It is that. It is not a structural, fix-the-problems proposal, but an artful expression of anguish from a guy descending into depression because of “the system.” In 2017 at age 48 he took his […]
The Conquest of Bread, by Peter Kropotkin First written in 1892, this book was probably revised for 20 years or so afterward. It baldly asserts issues yet unresolved, not only why history evolved as it did then, but how it might evolve now, in the context of environmental dangers unknown at that time. Born to […]
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