Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Month: November 2013

  • Review: Chant of Ages; Cry of Cotton

    Chant of Ages; Cry of Cotton: The Biography of a South Georgia Jewish Community’s Beginnings 1865-1908 by Louis Schmier My rating: 4 of 5 stars NOTE: I have known the author since I was maybe 5 years old? His son and I were friends in elementary school. We worked in the same building for several…

  • Review: What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

    What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pro-tip: All the chapters are articles published for Gladwell by The New Yorker. Most are behind their paywall. However, his web site has an an archive where I found the ones mentioned below. The publication date is noted at…

  • Ad Fails

    An advertisement for a Porsche plug-in hybrid really fails. First, Porsche was old and lame by high school. Lotus, Lamborghini, Ferrari, and so many other car companies come ahead. Second, I do not have a job where an ostentatious car helps me. Third, I cannot keep my mobile phone properly charged. A plug-in hybrid is not the…

  • Windows Module Installer

    A pain in my side over the past year finally forced me into addressing it. Windows Module Installer runs as TrustedInstaller.exe and for most cases just does its job which is to keep in touch with the Windows Update service and apply the updates sent to it. Occasionally they develop a memory leak and consume…

  • Review: Divergent

    Divergent by Veronica Roth My rating: 2 of 5 stars The dystopian environmental use of Factions reminded me of the Houses in Harry Potter. People have a label by which they belong to another group of people who behaviorally are supposed to be like themselves. They are natural allies and yet frictions exist within the…

  • Review: Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang

    Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang by Paul J. Steinhardt My rating: 3 of 5 stars Tone of this book felt defensive. Too much reliance on ad hominems? I like the ekpyrotic theory presented by the authors and hope theirs is what wins out over the Big Bang. View all my reviews

  • Moral behavior in animals

    TEDxPeachtree focuses on ideas worth spreading in myAJC mentions this video. By the way, TEDxPeachtree returns this Friday, November 8th. This features Frans de Waal showing videos demonstrating animals cooperating on tasks, something we think of as human behavior. One I really liked was chimpanzees give the researcher a prosocial (feed both) or antisocial (feed…