OYENTE

Scot Potts

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Suite Francaise Audiolibro Por Irene Nemirovsky arte de portada

Beautiful

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-12-19

Irene Nemirovsky wrote these two closely observed novels about the chaos which was the evacuation of Paris before the Nazi occupation of the city and about the German occupation of a small French village. I say closely observed because she includes a multitude of small details which really allow one to enter the smells and sights of France 80 years ago. Her portrayal of the people and the gardens, the roadsides and the rooms, the scent of lime flowers as the German soldiers march out of the village, the strawberries as they enter the village, they are all true to life and bring the reader directly into Paris, the roadsides along the evacuation, and the village. Her observations of human nature are timeless. Her sympathetic portrayal of the occupying German soldiers is all the more poignant and moving as her death in a German concentration camp before she could complete the last three books planned in her suite hangs in the background of one’s reading of this book. The narration of both books is fantastic.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Brain Bugs Audiolibro Por Dean Buonomano arte de portada

Engaging tour of the highlights of neuroscience

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-10-13

This book investigates structural and procedural aspects of thought, imposed as evolutionary solutions to selection pressures. Problems with memory, both accuracy and quantity, problems making accurate judgements of time, problems with disproportionate and distorting influence of fear, and problems with reasoning in which our intuitions conflict with what we can establish to be true by more rigorous statistical thinking are areas which are discussed. The neurobiologic mechanism underlying these problem areas is laid out and then the "bugs" which follow from the evolutionary solutions are examined.

An example of the difficulties which arise in the attempt to use the brain for thinking rationally is rooted in the use of association for understanding the deluge of data each brain is presented with on a daily basis. Association works well to correlate a red color with a poisonous plant, less well to serve our own interests when it associates promise of sexual fulfillment with a cigarette brand, a make of car, a perfume fragrance, or a particular type of underwear, as a result of some advertisement. The book examines how these faults are capitalized on by advertisers and purveyors of political propaganda in order to sell us goods or to capture our vote.

A chapter on the human propensity to believe in supernatural causes provides thought provoking associations between the fallacies to which the brain is prone based on its neural hardware and beliefs in supernatural entities. By reading other reviews of this book, it is clear that a large number of people don't want this particular box opened and peered into. In all fairness, the data in this regard is far from conclusive. Moreover, Buonomano paints with a pretty broad brush in parts of this chapter, making several arguments which will only appeal to those who already agree with his viewpoint. On the other hand, he reviews several scientific hypotheses for why belief in a deity is such a common feature of human society.

Science is based on examining evidence and determining causal or likely correlations within this data. Ideally this is followed by testing an hypothesis in an experimental setting in which confounding variables are controlled for, thus allowing for a test of correlation or causation. As the belief in the presence of a god is based on faith, it falls outside of the realm of what can be investigated by methods of science. One question science can ask is why, in absence of compelling evidence for a God or gods in the external world, does this belief so commonly exist in human brains. Several thought provoking hypotheses are reviewed. Unfortunately, creating a controlled experiment to test these hypotheses is difficult to come by, short of creating an experimental earth complete with craggy fjords overseen by hyperintelligent pandimensional beings with the manifestation, in the human dimension, of mice.

A weakness of the book is the short chapter at the end of the book on avoiding the inherent limitations of the brain. Essentially he recommends scepticism and common sense. Fair enough as far as that goes, but one could expect a little more directed and helpful analysis.

This is my main criticism of this book: its lack of a more cohesive, comprehensive argument, particularly in the last two chapters. But that is not the aim. This is a quick, engaging, easily digested examination of the highlights of neuroscience and applications to areas pertinent to daily life, and in that regard it is successful.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

The Black Tulip Audiolibro Por Alexandre Dumas arte de portada

Tulips, murder, love, and mystery

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-10-13

The Black Tulip is an engaging romp through Holland in 1673 when religious differences cost people their lives in brutal fashion and tulip bulbs were so highly valued as to provide fodder for a tale of spying, mystery and imprisonment. Alexandre Dumas is on a par with Walter Scott for creating novels filled with intrigue, mystery, action and passion.

Other reviewers have praised Dumas' gift for dialogue. I find that his dialogue is elevated, yet still usually a pleasure to read. It is, however, unlikely to be reflective of the reality of speech of the uneducated peasant characters. On the other hand, his appreciation for human motivations and personlities is superb, his sense of pacing in building suspense keeps the pages turning, and his third person narration style is highly entertaining. His asides to his "gentle readers" lend personal warmth, amusement, and intimacy to his tale.

While this novel does not provide great philosophic depth, that would be equivalent to criticizing shrimp for not tasting like steak. My only real complaint is the overblown romance scenes with the constrained desires, pent up yearning, and prudery of Walt Disney's Cinderella. I suppose this is, to some extent, a byproduct of writing of the topic of sexual attraction during the early 19th century.

Overall, this is a fun tale, full of action, suspense, and enough interesting historical details to keep at bay the gremlins of self-reproach for time wasted through frivolous reading.

This audible version was well performed and easy to listen to with clear delineation of different character voices.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Andy Warhol Audiolibro Por Wayne Koestenbaum arte de portada

Shallow

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 07-10-13

Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I expected some enlightenment regarding the art of Andy Warhol in this small book. I heard a lot about his relationship with his cats, his mother, his objects of voyeurism, but regarding something deeper, more meaningful ... very little. Is there an effort to express deeper concerns? Metaphysics, questions of meaning, reality, sources of human knowledge are left unasked and unanswered.

This account is filled with allusions to depth of expression, but plumbs little deeper than his mother's colostomy bag and its possible metaphorical significance to his art. Don't get me wrong, its not that I would object to achieving even some small epiphany through a colostomy bag (metaphorically speaking); its that no significant enlightenment was forthcoming. The verbalization of the meaning of Warhol's visual work by this author expressed only a profound shallowness, leaving this listener bored. Unfortunately, not being satisfied with boredom, the author also effectively elicits annoyance by his pretentious, overblown, but ultimately empty style. I am unwilling to extend this critique to the object of this biography, Andy Warhol, but this book leaves much to be desired.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Legacy of Ashes Audiolibro Por Tim Weiner arte de portada

Unintended consequences

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-13-13

As Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer in Annie Hall says, “Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort and one of them says, ‘Boy, the food in this place is so terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions.‘ This basically describes my dilemma with Legacy of Ashes. The book is an 848 page Pulitzer prize winning history of the CIA based on 50,000 recently unclassified documents and offers a rare fully documented insight into the inside workings of one of the most secret parts of American government. It is a read essential to one’s understanding of America’s place in the world in the 20th and 21st centuries. On top of that, it is a compelling read, well told and better, in a way, than Ian Fleming or John le Carré because it is completely true. But... for all that, it is too short, too one sided, too lacking in broader context, and too lacking in reflective analysis. On the other hand, who is going to buy the 3,000-5,000 page complete account? In the final analysis, this book is essential for understanding America’s role in our world and the position the American government occupies in the hearts and minds of the rest of the 7 billion inhabitants of our planet.

Several questions are posed throughout this narrative of CIA failures, coverups, dubious successes and morass of unintended consequences. These questions are neither directly asked, nor answered in any coherent fashion, which is one of the frustrations of the book. In the end, this is the dilemma which this book can not answer. Is the CIA necessary? Should the US have an agency devoted to spying and overthrow of other sovereign nations? Can a country exist without such an agency?

First, is the CIA necessary? The CIA has two roles: information gathering and covert operations. The importance of information gathering to the security of a sovereign nation seems obvious. A county’s security is enhanced by knowing the motivations and intents of other powerful governments. By Weiner’s account the CIA has failed in this mission for 60 years, with a few exceptions, and in the case of Iraq, provided false information which directly led to a war. With regard to covert operations, the goal of manipulating governments in order to install leaders friendly to the US seems like it might be a good way to enhance security. The fallout from our covert actions is a justified mistrust of the American government. This arises from operations as diverse as direct lies to the american public about U2 spy planes, failed overthrow of the Indonesian government, failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, funding a brutal guerrilla war in Nicaragua by the sales of arms to Iran while providing battlefield intelligence to their enemy Iraq, overthrowing a democratically elected leader in Iran and placing a brutal dictator in the form of the Shah. One unintended consequence of these actions is the current wave of terrorism against the US.

Should the United States of America, a country founded on ideals of freedom, equality, and fairly elected government maintain an agency devoted to subverting these aspirations for other people around the world? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This declaration does not say all Americans, but all Men are created equal. The CIA has a record of political murders, overthrow of democratically elected leaders and installation of authoritarian, brutal dictators. One can ask if it is possible to have a secure nation in the world of realpolitik without such an agency, but the question this book seems to pose is “Can we have long term stability with such an organization?” The CIA may play a fundamental role in creating instability, both abroad, by sowing seeds of discontent around the world, and at home, by undermining the ideals upon which our democracy is built.

There are several limitations of Legacy of Ashes in providing answers to these larger questions about the CIA. This book relies on documentable sources and is therefore incomplete in that it can not access unrecorded verbal communications, nor reams of documents destroyed by the CIA in its frequent attempts to cover its failures. As such it is incomplete. Additionally, Weiner seems to report with a biased viewpoint. I did not wade through all of the primary sources, but it strains my credulity and Weiner’s credibility to think that the CIA has been as much of an unrelenting failure as portrayed in this narrative. It would seem likely that there have been smaller successes, perhaps a significant number in aggregate, which have been omitted in the need to show the major failures of the CIA in the space allotted. It is possible that a mass of small successes could amount to a body of actionable intelligence which may have had a significant effect on bringing stability to the American government. Or not? I don’t know. The next deficiency is a lack of larger context in Legacy of Ashes. This defect occurs in two ways. First, some wider context for the immediate events is missing. These tales of CIA woe are quite circumscribed and do not discuss the larger societal or political context of the events. With my limited knowledge of events I mostly have only a hint of what I may be missing, but having just listened to a history of Sam Zemurray (The Fish that Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen), who made a fortune on bananas and was directly involved in central american regime change with the help of the CIA, I can comment that the omission of the role of United Fruit in Weiner’s description is a serious oversight which would reveal the role of corporations in determining CIA agenda. What other omissions of similar import exist, I can only guess at. The second problem with lack of context is the complete silence on intelligence operations in the US prior to world war II and in other countries around the world independent of the CIA. These omissions make it hard to compare the relative success of the CIA and to judge whether their performance is par for intelligence agencies or substandard. Obviously, with regard to peer comparison, this simply may not be findable information, but how did the US fulfill the need for intelligence prior to world war II? This information might be crucial to answering the questions this book raises.

In the end, the role of this history is not to answer these troubling, difficult questions, but to provide enough substantial, well documented evidence of CIA shortcomings that the questions about the necessity of the CIA can be raised without being easily dismissed. In this regard, the book is a huge success. Answering these questions requires more work. A lot more work.

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Zorba the Greek Audiolibro Por Nikos Kazantzakis arte de portada

Drink life to the lees

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-25-13

I listened to this book and loved it so much that I obtained a copy and read it as well. It is definitely a top tier Audible read. The performance is excellent, with echoes of Anthony Quinn in the inflections of Zorba.

Zorba the Greek is a clamorous ode, played with wild abandon on the Greek santori about the fundamental contradiction which is the human soul. Zorba is a character who embodies the force within the human breast to live life at full-tilt with eyes wide open, nostrils flared to miss no smell, a dog joyously hanging his head out a car window taking every sensation into his being. Zorba lives every moment in the moment, fully engaged with his experiences. He possesses a pithy, folk wisdom which cuts to the heart of every issue, but doesn’t waste time with books. He lives life, he doesn’t read about living. This is the central conflict in the book. The narrator, a bookish native of Crete, hires Zorba to run his lignite mine. He is writing a book on Buddhism and contemplates how to live: let go of human desires to reach a higher plane above human suffering. He uses reason to create a protective barrier between life and his soul. Zorba represents direct engagement with life, with the very desires and urges the narrator seeks to overcome. Over the course of the book, Zorba convinces the narrator to live more from his heart by force of example of his joyous embrace of life, but he can not change the essential nature of the narrator, the boss. Each of us has his and her own boss, their inner voice of rationality. Zorba throws up his hands and proclaims, from a heart filled with a deep and inextinguishable love, “There surely must be a hell for a few pen-pushers like the boss!” (p. 306)

Born in Crete in 1883, Nikos Kazantzakis was compelled and tormented by ultimately unanswerable religious and metaphysical questions. Kazantzakis studied law in Athens, philosophy with Henri Bergson in Paris, Buddhism in Vienna, and spent time in a Greek monastery. After traveling widely and publishing many well received travelogues, he started writing novels as he approached 60. These novels, including Zorba the Greek, Freedom and Death, and The Last Temptation of Christ, struggle to articulate ideas about God, human freedom, and human rationality warring against the basic animal nature of the human creature. Kazantzakis wrote in Demotic Greek in a Cretan dialect, creating a small audience for his works, but holding true to his passion for his roots in Crete. He was anathamized by the Greek Orthodox Church in 1955 and The Last Temptation was on the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books. He died in 1957.

This is a book told with compassion for humans pulled in opposing directions by the contradictory desires of the heart and the mind. Zorba is one of the great characters of world literature, an inherently lovable bull-like force of nature. The beauty of Greece, the sea and mountains, the smell of thyme growing wild on hillsides, the taste and texture of bread, wine and olives, the sound of the santori, Zorba’s endless sexual passion, and the wild abandon of Zorba’s animal soul expressed by his primal dance full of defiance and obstinacy, are all inseparable elements of Kazantzakis’ vision.

His prose is filled with aphoristic phrases which perfectly capture the beauty and pain of the human condition. After the death of a soul mate who dies far away in the Balkan war, the narrator writes: "Luckless man has raised what he thinks is an impassable barrier round his poor little existence. He takes refuge there and tries to bring a little order and security into his life. A little happiness. Everything must follow the beaten track, the sacrosanct routine, and comply with safe and simple rules. Inside the enclosure, fortified against the fierce attacks of the unknown, his petty certainties, crawling about like centipedes, go unchallenged. There is only one formidable enemy, mortally feared and hated: the Great Certainty. Now, this Great Certainty had penetrated the outer walls of my existence and was ready to pounce on my soul." (p. 297) The narrator’s dance through this world, as with us all, careens between moments of joy, beauty, wonder, and those of pain, sorrow, failure and death: "As if in the hard, somber labyrinth of necessity I had discovered liberty herself playing happily in a corner. And I played with her. When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage! An invisible and all-powerful enemy-some call him God, others the Devil, seems to rush upon us and destroy us; but we are not destroyed. Each time that within ourselves we are the conquerors, although externally utterly defeated, we human beings feel an indescribable pride and joy. Outward calamity is transformed into a supreme and unshakeable felicity". (p. 291-2)

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esto le resultó útil a 47 personas

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